The Era of Tanzanian Discovery is soon to come to an end. All of the omens are pointing me in a new direction. Listening to the universal language of my heart, of the world, I feel that it is time to come home.

The past few months have been absolutely wonderful. I was able to take some time off of work and go on a real legit vacation. I spent some quality time with the sun, sand, the Quatraro family, and my girls from Njombe who have finished Peace Corps and now live/work in T-Zed. It was a great time to gain perspective, fed my soul, and get real with what I am trying to do here.

Arriving home to the Californians was a sweet treat. As always, their insights, conversation, and unyielding support bring a level of confidence and pride in the path I choose.

Daraja is my family, and as D Day get approaches, I mourn the distance I’m going to put between myself and my gang. The newspaper is fully functioning with very little support from me. My role has been played out, and I have gained so much from the experience (and hopefully was able to share a little too). We have started the first month of 2 issues per month, and I have no doubt that everyone will do just fine. I have never been more proud, or inspired, by a project and the people involved.

Before hitting the door there are a few things that I’ve decided to do for the newspaper crew. This leads me to where I find myself now, in Dar, getting ready to really put my big girl pants on and Do It…! I’m excited and anxious, the final test! 3 years: bush, vill, town, and city girl?

And, as always, business will be mixed with pleaser as the universe has intervened, putting 4 of my closest lady friends from Peace Corps in Dar es Salaam on the same weekend! One long weekend of gossip, banter, and unconditional love n understanding, oh yes!

Everything is illuminated, life is Beautiful,

I’ll be stateside in the quick blink of an eye.

Rain, rain, go away come again sometime before 8am and after 6pm so I can walk to and from work.

Things in Njombe are moving fast. The Daraja team is rock solid, and the longer I am here the more I get to know and love everyone for their uniqueness, personal motivation, and for the insights they bring to what we do. The newspaper is getting printed right now in Dar. Issue #6!!! We’re getting better and more efficient every issue. Starting in April we will be printing two issues a month and looking for potential places in Iringa Town to set up a separate division of the same paper (We are Kwanza Jamii Njombe and it will be Kwanza Jamii Iringa, there will be different copies of each paper).

Daraja, as an organization, is being considered for funding from the Knight Foundation, a mass media mogul in the states. We are hoping to set up another program within our organization that uses cell phones and text messages linked to internet databases to collect information from people out in the villages. Basically we will train X amount of people to use survey software, give them a cell phone, text them surveys and they will be responsible for filling out the survey on the phone and texting it back to us, which will be sent to an internet database for us to check out and make use of (like in the newspaper….!) The whole project is going to be excellent, but is contingent with the funding…the good news is that we’re only competing against a ton of other organizations for the same funds…! If you’re interested in knowing more check out the grant. This is the link:http://generalprop.newschallenge.org/SNC/ViewItem.aspx?pguid=900d111c-1475-4d78-8fab-789663818724&itemguid=d4e7bd59-09ed-4cf5-8634-0d7b7cbf29b2

My roommates, while in the states, made their organization official. Ohana Amani (www.ohanaamani.org) is now a Non-Profit Organization. While they were home they worked hard to raise awareness about their mission, and raise funds to get this baby off of the ground. They have 600 acres of land donated to them from the village in which they are going to build. It’s a couple of hours south west of Njombe town. Currently they are trying to readjust to life back here, and getting ready to spend a lot of time on their land finding the ideal place to build their home and education center, lives and future. I give them nothing but big ups! It is truly inspiring to have people in your life that will come this far to do what feels right.

In other random updates, Keith is probably summiting Mount Kilimanjaro right now. He’s been climbing since Sunday morning, along with 6 or so other Peace Corps volunteers. Mt. Kili is the tallest mountain in Africa and draws in billions of dollars in tourism every year. It is a huge deal for travelers and Tanzanians alike. I frequently find myself wondering where in the world all of this money goes…

Like I said, things in Njombe are moving fast but life in the fast lane slows down a tad when the fast lane is a dirt road and the season of rain has begun. It suddenly becomes life in the mud zone, and you’re bound to find yourself half dressed in the morning staring at your closet (which is just 2 massive spoons hung from the ceiling with rope) wondering what in the world you can wear that 1.) matches 2.) will be warm in the morning, but not too warm in the afternoon, and 3.) is mudproof. Being so fashion savvy, I’ll end up wearing some outfit that matches if you believe that Earthy Rainbow is a matching color scheme, jeans/shirt/skirt that are all too big from intense hand washing, one scarf, dirty shoes, a bright green raincoat, and ridiculous sunglasses that are unnecessary when it’s apparently gray. Ambassador of Class.

(The closet...)

So yes, the Mud Zone. It’s sort of killing my jive and vibe here. The good news EVERYONE IS BACK!!! And my house is full of Love, Energy, Ideas, Food, and Conversation. Also, there is a ton of stuff to look forward to. February is full of visitors! Meesh and Justin, two PCVs who came to TZ with me, are both landing in Dar TODAY! Brie (another old PCV) got back about 2 weeks ago and came on down to Njombe last weekend. Sarah also just crashed the pad for a week and I am going to see her again at the end of the month when I go to Zanzibar Island to spend a few days in the sun and sand!!

Today at the bank I considered losing my cool when the 10th person cut in front of me. I was dripping wet, mud covered, and not in the mood. But, the tellers were blasting Bob Marley.

“EXODUS, MOVEMENT OF JA’ PEOPLE!” And all I could do was sing in line (imagine, singing in public.... wait, that’s not shocking…)

“Open your eyes and look within, are you satisfied with the life you’re livin??”

Well, are you?

Holiday madness. Love it. After only a short snafu in Amsterdam which left me sitting in a plane, stuck on a snowy runway for over 3 hours before take-off, my return to Tanzania was a great success. Everything, including myself, made it back in a single piece, and my post-flying plane gut wasn’t that bad. A holiday miracle.

After getting back to country Keith and I made our way to Njombe for a few weeks of make-shift domestic life, before going to Matui (the village he works in as a Peace Corps volunteer) for Christmas. While in Njombe we did good making Christmas. We chopped down a large bush, cut out some ornaments, strung popcorn, hung lights twice (both strands burnt out), found a Christmas flag, hosted a few Mexican nights, hung stockings with care, wrapped presents, baked cookies, brownies, pita bread and hummus and made pasta salad to share with my co-workers at our Christmas party, where we indulged in the open(ish) bar and closed it down with some of the great people that I work with.

A few days before Christmas we hopped on a bus to Iringa, spent the night there, accidentally took the dirt road to Dodoma town (which was a 10 hour long ride of beautiful sights outside the bus and awful everything- baby feeders, music, body odor- inside the bus), we almost clawed out each other’s faces but upon arrival promptly downed a few beers, got over it, and went to his village on Christmas day.

Upon arrival in Matui village (a Mecca by my standards, as no village should have over 15,000 people, albeit still a vill with no electricity and seriously scarce and dirty water) we met up with 2 other volunteers who came to spread the cheer with us.

As we hiked up to Keith’s house we noticed that an animal, a donkey it turns out, was being butchered right on the side of the road. Very unusual. And disgusting. Apparently the donkey* just up and died on Christmas day, so the owners decided to make a Christmas feast out of it, leaving the guts to rot on the side of the road, as we noticed later on our return trip back to the “heart” of the village….

Although, before returning back to the “heart” the few of us went to Keith’s house, busted out a box of wine, 3 liters of homemade wine, one bag of homemade cookies, one container of PB brownies, and some Christmas music. We immediately got to getting drunk, filling up on sweets, and putting on our Santa hats (well, Keith did) and reindeer horns so we could pass out candy canes to all of the kids between Keith’s house and the “heart.” It was hilarious, and maybe not the best idea, just because kids already think we should have candy all of the time anyways, but it was fun. Some of the kids got the “Happy Holidays” saying down so we got from random people for the rest of the night. Once in town, after passing donkey guts all covered in pine branches, we hit up the bar, had a few laughs, watched a bar flight, came home, crashed out, and a few days later (after yet another amazing Mexican feast) I find myself back in Dodoma anticipating a fun New Years Eve and wondering how it is already going to be 2011.

*Am I alone in finding total irony of a dead Donkey on Christmas day. What if the donkey carrying Mary, carrying baby Jesus, just up and died on the side of the road. They would have never made it to Bethlehem to find all the inns full, the child savor would have not been born in a stable, but en route (if at all) and then where would our heart- warming Christmas tale be?

“…And as Joseph carved up the dead donkey to make a post-natal stew for Mary, the three wise men arrived just in time to help salt and preserve the unreliable beast.”

HAPPY NEW YEARS!!! I’ll post pictures next week.

Meab (my co-worker) and I were walking through Njombe town the other day, and amidst the chaos, I noticed a truck that had a special decal saying "NO TIME TO WEST." Assuming it was an attempt to say No Time to Waste, Meab and I got a good laugh at the drivers expense...but the more I think about it, maybe it wasn't wrong...

Let's just do this via pictures.

This is a man who sells peanuts, biskuti (cookie-esque) and other small typical TZ treats. He is reading a copy of the newspaper I work for...Kwanza Jamii!

This is our Daraja driver getting in trouble with the traffic police on the way to Dar es Salaam. They are the ones in the shack wearing white and yellow. You wouldn't now from the shack how much money they get in bribes everyday.

This is the truck that we hired and the banner we had made to drive around town and announce the coming of our paper- Kwanza Jamii! It was a traveling music show for 3 days.

This is my nyumbani. Karibu.....

When I come home from work and wonder, "Seriously...?" I check myself, stand on my front porch and admire the little valley. It always chills me out.

One day while i was in a meeting our secretary, Stella, came in and told me a man upstairs wanted to use my camera. She didn't know why so I said no way. KUMBE! He wanted to take a picture of this newborn with backwards legs and send it to some doctor overseas to see if it's possible to fix...I'm glad I went to investigate what he wanted even though it's awfully heart breaking.

This is Keith. We just finished eating 2 massive salads (with lettuce, cheese, and olives!!!), aone large veggie pizza, and more then a few goblets of wine.

What are smiles really say: "Holy shit, if this is what America is like all of the time you better love me fat!"

Then I canned my first thing ever...Beets! Who knows if I know what I'm doing, but I go SOOOO excited about finding beets in the veggie market in Morogoro town (a mear 10 hours away) that I just bought a ton and figured why not...

There was a time in which dreams were visions of hot baths, live music and endless rows of coffee shops. I’m not particularly sure where that dream has gone. I now dream in black and white, of the grind of TZ journalism and the endless warmth of CA hippie love. I dream in non-sensible chaos and piles of compost. Altogether its confusing on the level of life goals, and yet personally enjoyable.

Taking in all of these different energies is wonderfully exhausting. It’s almost as though I’ve become some sort of battery charged by the mixture of resonating energy exchange, absorption, and distribution.

Some of the bigger events of the past few weeks have included the launch of the first issue of Kwanza Jamii Njombe newspaper (Community First…or First Community Newspaper… check it out, kwanzajamii.com OR facebook Daraja). The event was held Monday August 30th. Our team rented out a huge outdoor venue, hired a traveling car and speaker system to advertise the kick off, enlisted some music groups from inside Njombe and a semi-famous Dar es Salaam singer, invited special and important people from town, had T-shirts, caps, beanies, and 3,000 copies of our paper. It was awesome. The response was great. People are pumped. The Daraja team pulled together to get it done, and after a nice dinner with the guests of honor and the famous musician, we had a few drinks and then all went home to pass out after the longest Monday of our working lives.

I’ve been selling/ gifting copies of the paper everywhere. It seems that distribution is a slight problem. Next time…People are STILL loving it, and everyone is very excited for the next issue.

After the kick off we got Thursday and Friday off of work, so the hippies and I took a road trip out to Ikuna Village to greet the family and get some of my left behind goodies. Mama Witi was happy to see that I was alive and doing well. She was wearing a Kwanza Jamii hat when I got there, which just tickled my heart. She was highly impressed by the paper, and even more shocked to see that there was a picture of me in it. It felt wonderful to make that woman so damn proud. After some food, and chatting at the mgahawa, but before a fight broke out over which one of us girls got to hold Benja we headed home. It was just a quick trip. Everyone is doing well. Benja has teeth and is crawling all around. At the end of November I am going to stay a few days/nights for Benja’s birthday. I’m still trying to put more time in between town and village life.

It would behoove you all if I told you some more about my awesome roommates. First, I should stop calling them the CA hippies because they don’t really love love it. However, it makes it easier to understand how much I jive with them and everything that they have going on. Right now there are five. Chevy, Curry and Jose are all planning to start their own NGO in Tanzania. Chevy and Curry are sisters and their other sister, Georgia, is also here traveling and checking out the TZ scene. Her friend Shannon was studying abroad in Kenya and came a few weeks ago to stay until the end of the month when everyone (but Curry) is going back to the states. So, it’s 5 ladies and one gentleman living in my little red house on the dirt mound.

About my house. It’s made for a Tanzanian. By that I mean there is a showering room, but no shower head. There is no hot water heater, but there is an outdoor dish washing station. There is a small kitchen sink and a little pantry. There is a drop toilet (porcelain hole in the ground), but also a western toilet…however the lid is broken and it’s in the “off limits” room. There are 3 bedrooms and one living room that is also off limits (but we’re using it regardless) and is missing all of the glass for the windows. It was just build last year and they did no landscaping so we’re surrounded by a wooden fence, on a little hill of dirt. Also, the land they chose needed to by sliced into to make a plot, so when you look out the back window you’re looking at a slice of inner Earth. My roommates have taken the planting seriously, and I should have beans, some weeds, and a bunch of great little plants that they got clippings of on some of their random adventures. I’m only worried that it won’t be enough to keep the house in place when the rainy season comes and we’re getting washed down the hill with no vegetation. …maybe that’s when I’ll move again.

For now I am in a stage of intense learning, sharing, growing and good life living. Balance, play, friendship, love, excess, and nothing at all is here. Pieces of me are just missing home, but the whole of it all is happy with how its rollin’. I hope the same is happening for you.

It’s pretty evident that I have been putting off updating. The thing is that I cannot possibly sum up my Peace Corps experience in any commentary that’s worth reading. Nothing witty or awe inspiring comes to me, and that is terribly disappointing.

Leaving Ikuna was yet another Hallmark “Strange Transition.” Due to a slight calendar error the full good-bye party is planned for sometime next month. We managed a half good-bye party which included some songs, poems, dancing and presents…and a few not so brief speeches. It was all very sweet and entirely overwhelming…I’m not too sure what’s going to happen at the good-bye again party. Maybe it will be more like the Peace Out in 2008 party with homemade piñatas and kegs…that would be amazing.

The morning of departure Mama Witi came to see me off and we had a discussion that I feel would make a great independent film. Sitting outside under a cold, gray morning sky, on my dad’s canvas Cabellas bag full of crap we just kept saying to each other every minute of so, “This is a dream…right?” Suddenly I was whisked away in a taxi, and I am sure she believes that I will never return again.

After that I dumped off all of my belongings (which include 4 buckets of various sizes, and assortment of metal pots, and a whole set of mismatched dinnerware) and headed to Matema beach for the wedding of two Peace Corps volunteers. Attendees of the wedding included a bunch of other volunteers, a TZ Rasta man named Goba, a money named Monkey Baby, a random puppy and a crowd of gawking TZs. Naturally. It was absolutely beautiful.

After the wedding I headed to Dar es Salaam to complete all of my final Peace Corps paperwork, and say adios to a lot of the people who came to TZ with me. It was slightly traumatic and awfully scary thinking about being here without them (which really means wondering why the hell I wasn’t getting on a US bound plane too.) The day I finished up my stuff I headed out to the beach for a few days of rest and relaxation in the sun before heading back to Njombe to start my job.

Boom. 4 days later I started my job.

2 weeks later and I’m still here. I’ve been living in a hotel, but will be moving out on Wednesday, if all goes according to plan. On Saturday I am getting some roommates from California who I meet a few months ago in town. They are super jive and I’m excited to see what happens.

About my job. I absolutely love it. Making a newspaper is the shit. Making a newspaper in Tanzania, with Tanzanians, for the people that you have grown to love is kick ass. Sure, there are glitches in the system, and I know that still being here is going to get a bit weary, but I’m game for this, and thus far it’s been a healthy challenge.

Working with educated, informed, motivated Tanzanians could not be more different then the world I just came from. It’s incredibly empowering to me just to see these people in action, and it really makes me believe that good things are happening….good things coming from, and driven by Tanzanians.

As much as I am in love with everything that I see, I keep reminding myself that although opinions stemming from my mind are valid, they aren’t actually that useful, and can be pretty much counter active to the whole idea of what is going on at Daraja. So, I’m staying busy under other peoples direction, studying the psychology of this new, old, newish world, and trying to find the invisible line that links us all, inspires us all, and makes things work...naturally.

(In case you were wondering, I talked to Mama Witi, Baba Eliza and baby Benja on the phone a few days ago. Everyone misses me, but other then that life is as it was.)

Wrapping it all up is a lot more awful then anything ever. I know that I’m not really saying good-bye to the village cause I’m moving 40k away (which is considerably less then my relative distance from you cats right now…). What I’m saying good-bye to is this footloose, easy going, self-motivated, self-directed lifestyle that I have come to embrace fully. What I’m about to walk into is a Monday through Friday 8-5. Yeah, I’m balls to the wall excited about the actual organization that I will be working for, sure I cannot wait to get er’ going, but I’m a damn liar if I don’t say that my heart feels pretty sad about leaving behind the “Margaret scheduled” life of yoga, dog walking, neighbor visiting and baby loving.

So, that’s what it all comes down to. The last 2 years of my life can be summed up by stretching, walking, talking and loving. Not an ounce of me feels disappointed in that. Reflecting back on my goals coming into Peace Corps, I have surpassed all of my own imposed expectations.

My goals before come to Peace Corps Tanzania were:

1- Become fluent in Swahili

2- Integrate myself into a community of rural Tanzanians

3- Guide ONE person in making informed decisions about their reproductive and sexual health.

Done, done, done

Here’s the catch. Peace Corps, with, “ Life is Calling, How Far Will You Go?”, “ What’s 27 Months?” And all of the other advertisement campaigns, is not just about your goals for yourself. It’s about the goals of the program for the volunteers in-country. It’s about the goals of the community in which you work and live. It’s about putting on a pretty face and making it all (the work, the pride, your own nationalism, and your newly found nationalism) look real damn good. Have I done that?

Eh, not so much.

And I feel not so great about it. A tad bitter. A touch tricked. Overall, I’m let down by my own inability to constantly save face and make this country look easy, and by my own lack of desire to fulfill the goals of the program that I was accepted into.

But I don’t want to do it their way. I don’t want to work for the man. I don’t think I can do it better then the man, or that I know more, or that I’m some sort of omni-God who just intrinsically knows what is going to work better then what they are telling me to do.

However, what I see is what I see. What I feel is what I feel. What I know is what I know and what I am driven to work for and towards is where I am going to direct my efforts. In the end my feelings of personal satisfaction in the arenas that I live and work in seem to make more sense then “paper satisfaction” for the policy makers, funding lobbyists, and movers and shakers in DC.

I’m fairly confident that makes me the antithesis of a Team Player, at least in this far-fetched grasp on my reality in the real world. I don’t really care. The team that I’m playing for is on a different continent, drinking Starbucks and having cold draft beers with their co-workers. I cannot justify their demands in my field of work when they are that far removed from everything I am doing, living, breathing, eating, drinking and experiencing. I would not expect someone in my position now to adhere to demands from me if I was sending them from the Mother Land…even though I have been here. “Having been here” and “Being Here” are not the same.

So, I’m not content in my output. I am not okay with my work effort. I do not feel adequate in what I’ve done here.

What am I going to do about it?

I’m going to buck up and DO something that I am Driven to Work for and that has Direction stemming from here, that is relevant for all of the people who I’m working side by side with. That is interesting. That is demanding. That makes clear cut sense from the word “Go.”

I’m ready to kick ass, take names, do it well, and walk away with my head held high. And STILL walk, talk, live and love as a means to accomplish goals set outside of my own.

An 8-5 doesn’t mean that I am finally doing something. It means that I have to show up. I don’t want to just show up. I want this to be amazing. And it will be.

And that’s the final word.

Contents

Clothes enough to last 5 days and then repeat. All dirty, loved and in need of a serious washing machine.

My computer inside of its waterproof case (2 ziplock bags cut and duct taped together to make it long enough)

Charging devices for one phone, 2 ipods, the computer and an outlet adaptor to actually use any of it

At least one book I haven’t started and probably won’t

A notebook full of ideas, letters, plans, memories, and garbage

My planner, sporting a picture of my grandma and me on the front and baby Benja on the back

A medicine kit with hardly any drugs, just some tampons, aspirin, Neosporin, band aids, razor and soap

No less then 5 headbands

The little bit of make-up I’ve been using since 2008

Assorted Tanzanian jewelry

One red camera that is not used enough in travel

A bottle of shampoo, borrowed face wash, toothbrush and paste

The deodorant that Chris and Michelle sent to me last year

Sunscreen I found in the Peace Corps office, and never actually use

Glasses or sunglasses, depending on what is on my face

The yellow and blue shawl from my Aunt Marg, which triples as clothes, towel, and in-bus dust shield

Assorted random papers, newspapers, work papers, receipts, you know- paper

Always, at least, one bit of mail I plan to send tomorrow…or the next day…

My backpack is heavy. It’s always stuffed to the May Not Zip point. I won’t put in under the bus because it will be ganked and I will be shattered. It never fits in the racks above the seats in the bus, so it’s usually under my feet serving as an obnoxious and unnecessary 12 hour footstool. It’s dirty no matter how much I wash it, and I do wash it, I mean, at least 2 times a year. After a long bus journey I dread more then anything putting it on and lugging it to wherever we’re going. By the time I arrive I’m inevitably rocking matching Left and Right red stripes on my shoulders. It’s full of a lot of stuff. It’s full of a lot of memories. It’s the best and worst thing ever and I’m glad that my days of filling it up with all that stuff and all of that anticipation of a new journey are not over.

It’s my bag.

It’s that time of the year again! The African winter!! Word on the streets is that the past few weeks in MI have been unusually warm. Well that’s just D-A-N-D-Y for you cats, it’s glass cutting over in these African hills and I’m not in love with it. The weather has been gray and cloudy with heavy doses of morning mist and partial sun in the late afternoon. The good news…okay, this typically up and up lady can’t actually find anything good o say about the weather right now. It’s the worst. Well, not as bad as a real winter, that would kill me for sure.

Aside from the weather things here are pretty damn good. Life in the village is wrapping up and I can’t say I’m too terribly sad because I’m only moving about 40k away. That’s right, I’m not coming back to the Mother Land, I’ll be living in Njombe Town working for this non-profit that sounds right up my ally. More details on that at the bottom of this entry.

The last 2 weeks in the village have been busy with lots of planning for an AIDS awareness day in Ikuna. I say “awareness” not because the villagers do not already know about the disease, believe me, they KNOW, the thing is that this is supposed to be an AIDS testing day, however I cannot get either the testers or the tests and I’ve talked to pretty much everyone and anyone that I can think of in order to get this done, but this is TZ and like many things, the system is corrupt and tests have been “lost in transit” or I just am not willing to pay the right price (…for AIDS tests that have already been paid for by some US/European aid organization). Whatever the case really is, I have been trying since JANUARY to get people to come out here and test the villagers of Ikuna, and it’s not possible. I’ve come to terms with this, and I had already requested money to do this, so I am just going ahead with the day and doing all of the planned things without testing. It’s happening tomorrow, I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes.

In preparation for the day ELIAJA, the health choir, is helping me out to run some information and craft tables and they have been busy working on some new songs they are going to bust out. I’ve been busy meeting with them, meeting with the government officials who have to know what I’m planning on doing, and busy trying to keep myself busy because I only have 60 more days until I’m no longer a PCV (Okay, officially I’ll be an RPCV…haha).

Meanwhile, things at the mgahawa are going per usual. Witi is finally stepping up to plate now that Benja can sit by himself, and she’s been working at her pre-pregnancy pace. I’m digging it and so is Mama Witi, who is finally able to have some free time with her other family members (what this really means is now Mama Witi can go home and cook dinner for her husband and kids every night and he won’t be angry anymore because she was always too busy to ever leave the mgahawa before…Ugh, TZ!). Benja is getting huge, and I’m shocked by the whole thing. Do babies always grow up this fast? It just makes me more leery of motherhood, I mean it’s not that gratifying when suddenly one day you look over and your tiny toddler is walking around eating everything and talking to you…is it? It all feels kind of heartbreaking to me, I already want him to stop growing and he’s only 6 months old. How do you people deal with puberty and then little adults..? I can’t fully stomach laying down to sitting up.

Pakilo is still around. That’s right 7 whole months and I still have the same dog! Take that you Doubters! Are relationship is getting better, I actually patted his head today when he came barging out of the garbage hole to lick me in greeting. He did give me a good laugh today when he was barking at this goat tied up to a pole in the center of my village square. The goat was freaking out and Pakilo was running it around in circles, making the goat get stuck really close to the pole. I thought it was hilarious, the goat owners were less then amused and I pulled a classic “ I don’t really know what you’re saying” move and walked away with Pakilo in tow, laughing all the way home. I’m not always that nice.

I have a lot of random sad village news that is too long of a story to get into. Just know that all of the characters that you have come to know and love are all doing well and are not that excited to see me go, even if it is only 40k.

Which reminds me, Mama Witi and Witi want me to go on a quest to track down their missing daughter/sister! The quest, if I so choose to accept (highly unlikely considering it will be illegal travel, expensive, and probably hellish), would take me to one of the Northern most regions in TZ, the region of Shanyanga. It’s at least 3 straight days of travel there. Their plan to find her is to broadcast their names and phone numbers over the radio and hope they get a hit. The story is that this is actually Mama Witi’s first child. When the daughter was about 8 years old they went up to Shanyanga to visit her grandparents on her dad’s side. Apparently they got there to find that the grandpa was dead, the children all left, and the grandma in desperate need of help so Mama Witi just left her oldest daughter there in plan to return for her. Shortly after returning home Mama WIiti found herself to be preggers with Witi and one thing lead to another and it’s 22 years later. When I was told this story they acted as if this was just some run of the mill story, a kind of story that every family has. I mean, even for TZ standards, this is a little bit out there. So, they are finally going to track her down and I’ve been sequestered to come along. I’m not planning on going at all, but who knows, maybe they will drug me and throw me in their luggage and days later I’ll wake up on the train on my way to the uncharted North. Who knows…

I’ve decided that Tanzania is a land of extremely strange occurrences, twists of fate, and random chance.

For example, a few weeks ago I was on the bus on my way to Dar as Salaam for my Close of Service Conference and there was a MASSIVE traffic jam. Apparently a truck had flipped over right in the middle of the road and no large vehicles could pass. This created a dead stop string of busses and trucks of at last 4k. When my bus got to the line of waiting vehicles people were basically just setting up camp on the side of the road, so naturally I went to join them (who the hell would chose to sit in a stagnant bus for God only knows how long). I went out of the bus and quickly realized that I was the only white kid stuck in this mess for as far as my eye could see. Hmm, a least 300 aggravated TZs standing on the side of the road, not really a good time to make friends. So I just walked around a bit, tried to flag down some smaller cars that were still moving in hopes to get a lift to Dar and avoid the whole scene, averted the stare from some dirty truck driving men, and just tried to figure out what to do. As I was sitting in the grass, pondering my situation, my hypothetical arrival time in Dar, and what the heck was going to happen if I had to stay there, a man just walked up to me and introduced himself and out of all of the hundreds of people on the side of the road, this man and I both knew all of the same people in Njombe, and he was very familiar with Peace Corps and had actually heard of me from this guy in Njombe. It’s VERY rare to meet a TZ who knows about Peace Corps, even more so when you are traveling, even more so when you are meeting one person out of literally hundreds. It’s even more rare to meet someone who knows of you (rare as in it’s never happened before and I don’t think it will ever happen again).

It’s not just things like this that are just strange, but other things that are just lucky (or un-lucky). Like when you missed your bus and at the very moment you realize you’re screwed a random man is paying for a cab to the next town (which never happens) and you can just hop in without paying anything and get to the town before your bus does and then just get on your bus in the next town.

Or when you are stuck in Ethopia on your way home from America and you have no idea what to do, then you run into the only Tanzanian that was on your flight and missed the same connecting fight as you, and “Would you like to eat dinner with me?” And then you’re emergency friends and then, “You’re from Ikuna Village!?!?! My mom was born there!!” And come to find out her mom was Mama Witi’s friends.

Or it’s 2 days before you are supposed to be testing a lot of people for AIDS and every person you’ve contacted to come and test has turned you down, so you rely on Old Faithful, your village nurse, he can’t not be around and he’s certified, and then WHAM his wife has a baby that dies in labor and you don’t know if you want to just cry until next week or pull out all of your hair out or both.

It’s celebrating the fact that your teenage street kid “brother” got himself a job in town and then running into him 2 weeks later to find out that he quit.

It’s writing a blog all about your life as if it were Alice in Wonderland and then reading the next day online about this Alice in Wonderland movie that JUST came out and you really had no idea…

It’s wanting to go home and see your family and friends and just be American in America then getting a job offer you cannot refuse from a company that totally compels you, working in the only place you’d like to work in, and being able to just prolong what is turning out to be quite an adventure.

It’s meeting people for the first time and they say, “Oh hey, I know you, I read your blog!”

It’s meeting a person who you think is the cats pajamas but you only know them in TZ, are they really that great outside of this context? You can’t even know right now cause you are here.

It’s watching a totally random movie about the French singer Edith Piaf and then being sent her CD, without asking for it, months later.

Anyway, that’s enough examples off the top of my head.

About this job, in case you’re dying to know. I’ll be working for an organization called Daraja, which means bridge in Swahili. (Check em’ out at daraja,org). They are a non-profit funded by the UK to help connect rural Tanzanians with the government of Tanzania. I’ll be part of the team doing a project in Njombe called Twende Pamoja (Lets go togther). We are staring a newspaper in Njombe to serve the town and entire district (this would include farther out places like Ikuna and all of the other villages). The idea is to try and get information relayed “all the way other (t)here” and to create a venue for readers of the paper to share their own opinions on politics and news and relevant issues. There is a lot more to it that’s just too much to explain, but that’s the basics. I’ll be moving to Njombe Town in the beginning of August and starting then too. I’m thrilled, for real for real, this project is going to be great if we can do it right and sell the idea to the general public. I’m all about it!

I can only hope that you guys are all about continuing to read my blog for at least the next year!

Also, this is just a random article from Central's newspaper a few months ago...

That's all she wrote! Peace N' Love!

I’m currently wallowing in my own exhaustion, sickness and itch for change. I’ve been everywhere man and I just need to get back to Ikuna. I have no news that will make any sense so I’ll just throw up some blog poetry and call a spade a spade; I need a vacation from my mind, a way to make everything good and a Purple Heart Winter Coat Program to appear in Ikuna, with me and 20kilos of pig in toe so I can just have one last Hoorah and get this show moving somewhere that makes me feel a little more valid…The strangest thing is that I want that place of validity to be here. Oh Tanzania! How illusive you truly are!

Just for now. And here we go….

Fighting it out.

Lets not get bitter in the end.

Come and go.

Move me, move over, move mountains.

Making sense of the senseless.

The Atoms in my body going from super power charged to a beige shade of neutral.

Sounds reminiscent of manic depressive to me!

Key number 23 in the unofficial Peace Corps Survival Handbook: expertise in self diagnosis and treatment.

Ughhhhh. Oooooh. Annnnnnnnnd……

Transition!

Let’s you and I build an empire. Of sunshine. And flower gardens painted with hues from the iVibrant! color selection.

Or maybe the journey continues,

and the story never ends,

and Mama Witi takes her throne next to God

and God steps down to duke

And Humanity is RIGHTeous…

…no, humanity cannot be right it just never fails to feel so damn wrong.

After thought, after thought. Is there ever forethought?

It’s only true that hindsight makes unreachable grasses greener,

and nothing that was once So Good will be thus again.

But back to that empire of sunshine,

the ideas that free flow through time,

and a garden that grows from a natural underground lake.

No rain, no need,

nonsense.

A mystical, thuggish, love infused candle burns both ends

and this is the result.

These are the people from my training class that live around Njombe: Kat, Greta, Ralph (back), Kate, Brie, Me, Sarah, Teresa

In the Land Rover in Ruaha

The last week of Mike’s Tanzania Bonanza ended well. Flat Stanley came from Elmwood via mail to join us on our adventures. Witi taught him how to eat ugali with beans, greens and pork. I had forgotten how sticky and weird it is when you first try it out. It’s a delicate matter of quick fingers and little palm. We stayed at my house for 2 nights. On the first night another volunteer decided to crash the cab and come over too! It was fun. We got fleas (seriously, it’s the new battle against Mother Nature at Margaret’s house), made smores, hung out with the family, watched a boring movie, made a massive bed on my floor, and didn’t sleep because the mosquito net was too small for the bed, but I insisted that we try and use it. The next day we made breakfast and real coffee (confession: I was dying for that cup of coffee before I even started the vacation). We washed clothes, visited the fam dam again and wet for a sunset walk through my favorite hills. The next day we went back to town, waited for a bus and then Mike and I headed off to Morogoro. After a mere 8 hours of bus we got to Morogoro and changed our lodging plans at the last minute. We opted for a less fancy but more scenic guest house at the base of the mountains, with plans to climb it the next morning. I totally freaked Mike out by bringing him to this super nice, very “white guy” restaurant just around the corner and I’m pretty sure he ordered something called beef chili pork spice….and was pleasantly surprised by whatever came out. We tried to burn up 50,000tsh on dinner and drinks, but were not even half way successful. The next morning we went and hiked up the mountain just a little bit because we had to check out of the guest house at 10 and didn’t want to be lugging baggage all around. The we went into town and Mike confessed that he was done with bussing (as if I could blame him, I think total bus hours during trip were around 24…not including hours spent in all other modes of transport), so he splurged on a taxi to Dar. 3 hours and some kick ass AC time went by in a snap and we found ourselves in Dar es Salaam. After checking out the situation of Icelandic volcano ash, we made way to the beach. This required a decent walk in the afternoon heat, luggage in toe, one 5 minute ferry ride, and then a little ride in a 3 wheel motorcycle taxi. By the time we got there is was early evening and I think that I can say I had not only kicked Mike’s ass, by also my own.

We chilled out on the most beautiful patch of beach and ocean front that I know in TZ. The next day some of my PC friends come and kicked up the party for Mike’s last hurrah in TZ. Oh, and at some point Mike got terribly eaten up by bed bugs and/or mosquitoes. Yikes, I feel terrible, but how could I have known?? So on Friday we woke up and milked our last few hours of beach time, went back into the big city and cleaned up a bit. It’s amazing how sandy and salty everything gets on the beach. After some relaxing and beer drinking with the random people who were in Dar at the time, we took a cab to the airport and Mike headed home. I headed back to the guts of the big city and the next day hopped a bus headed in the direction of home.

I am excited to get some feedback from Mike about his trip after he has time to figure out what happened. It’s totally awesome to have a guest who has no idea what to expect about any of this. It’s like watching an American kid at a Toys R Us in China. They are so overwhelmed with everything and they want to touch it, taste it, ask about it, but they don’t know if it’s okay or they don’t have the right language. It was just kick ass to see everything with “baby eyes” again and kind of give myself a little pat on the back for being able to make sense of this crazy TZ system. That being said, it was totally exhausting and I love you all very much, but if you are planning on trying to spring a last minute trip to TZ on me I only ask that you wait until July, that’s how long I will need to recover.

In Ikuna news, things here are just silly. I am feeling frustrated and incredibly overwhelmed with this crazy emotion I call Love. I feel frustrated because sometime during my travels with Mike I got a call from the man who was supposed to be guiding me and starting projects with me this whole time. He called to say that he is ready to start working with me… now. Why now? Because he needs my help to get a new doctor at the dispensary. Why does this frustrate me? Because I told him in SEPTEMBER that I would help him do this. I asked him why he just left me here to do whatever and nothing for the past 2 years and why he thinks that now, just as I am trying to say good-bye, I will be willing to work with him. He didn’t really have an answer, but did admit that he totally dropped the ball on me. I would like to punch him in the face, and I would also like to kiss him on the cheek, because if he had not dropped the ball I would never have the relationships that I have in the village. So I guess, in the end, I’ll just do my best to help him now, and be happy as hell that I was able to do what I have done here.

Mama Witi and family are all really great. Mama Witi is getting fat and is happy as a damn clam. Witi is also growing in that dreaded East to West direction, but she seems to think it’s the cat’s pajamas. Benja has been renamed! He is now Messi…thanks to his dad (?). Benja Messi Baby Love is probably going to break my heart. We have a very special relationship and I do not look forward to leaving him in a few months. Randomly, I think that babies in TZ grow a lot faster then babies in America. I guess it’s cause they don’t “baby” them. By the end of this week I predict that he will be sitting up by himself. The kid is only 5 months old, does this seem ridiculously early to anyone else or am I just experiencing the “shocked at how big he is” psudo-mom phenomena?

The season of cold, gray, wind and light rain has started in Ikuna and I cannot say that I am terribly excited, but it is kind of a nice break from the sweltering Dar heat. I will be going back to Dar es Salaam on the 2nd for my Close of Service Seminar. I cannot believe that it is already time to say good-bye. After all of my bitching and mood swinging, after all of the lonely and lost moments, and all of the feel good weeks, I feel totally unprepared to leave. I do not feel like I am done here. I don’t know what to do about any of it…well, I do, but it’s not ready to be blogged out yet.

Until I figure it out, or someone just tells me what the hell is going on, I’ll just say that in the end all that I have ever felt was love reciprocated: a constant exchange of objects in motion staying in motion, as my heart fills to exploding from the volume and ever expanding degree of all of this awesome Energy.

My HizzHouse

Flat Stanley Visits Morogoro

Beach Sun Rise

A Piñata Full of Desire and here I find my guts on the ground. Better nab it before it’s no more cause this Desire is laid flat out dead on the floor.

What I mean to say is that life is a grand parade in celebration of something absolutely wonderful that I have yet to be informed of, so I will just stand on the outside and cheers to its passing me by.

No, no that’s really not it either. This piñata full of Desire is defiantly in it to win it. Grabbing life by the horns, sucking on the marrow and consequently choking on the bone. Things here have been totally unplanned, unpredictable, and pretty damn good in total randomness.

A few weeks ago, after the disaster of an event that I planned and planned and tried to execute but was totally unsuccessful at the last possible minute, I decided that it was time to go to the dentist about some serious teeth problems that I have been having. So, I abruptly headed to Dar and ended up crashing a big Peace Corps meeting of different representatives for all of the areas in TZ we have volunteers. What started as really sore tooth turned into 2 cavities, a mouth guard for sleeping, a few crazy nights and a hell of a good time. I then took the 12 hour trip back to Njombe and back to Ikuna and was in the village for 5 days before VAROOM off again back to Dar to pick up Mike from the airport. Mike is a friend from high school who came to crash TZ just cause he knew he could. Sarah and I traveled together to Dar and after Mike got here we met up in Zanzibar.

Mike and I stayed in Zanzibar for 2 nights which included: one 2 hour ferry ride, one crap hotel room, one Ocean Virgin finally meeting the ocean, a lot of translation (and probably feeling lost in it), one day on Spice tour checking out the origins of cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, ginger, random fruits, papaya liquor, cardamom, and other, one day spent in the company of a bunch of wacked out Europeans, one night with Rasta men at the bar, one day of walking through a maze of tall white buildings and row upon row of ancient wooden doors leading somewhere awesome, one cotton candy machine, ¼ liter of fresh street dates, 3 plates of spicy rice, who knows how many beers, 4 man sized freezers stuffed with homemade chocolate popsicles, one phone call to America to wish my pops a happy birthday, one American girl who knew what was going on (or doing a good job pretending), one American boy who didn’t and was being a trooper.

After Zanzibar we went back to Dar (via ferry) and then woke up early the next morning to make way to Iringa. After a 6am bus ride we got to Iringa around 3, cleaned up and went for food. Mike meet Huruma who is finally studying at secondary thanks to help from his Peace Corps buddy Ben and some moral coaching from me. They hit it off. We had an early night because the next day we planned a safari to Ruaha National Park. We headed out of town around 10am in our own car with a driver named Felix, who was just the bomb. We got to the park around 1 and spent the rest of daylight trying to track down lions. We found giraffe, hippos, charging elephants, wart hogs, birds of all color shape and size, impala and moneys. When we went to the bandas that we had arranged to stay in the lions were waiting for us…well, they were about 2 football fields in length away from the tin bandas and an elephant was checking out our sleeping area when we pulled in. The whole set up was right next to the river. After some food and a quick phone call we busted out the Captain and watched the stars and listened to the sounds of wile animals…in the wild. I don’t even have words. The next morning we got up before 6 and headed out to watch the sunrise. We saw lions attempt hunting as the sun broke the horizon. We pissed off some more elephants and tramped through the alligator hang out during the peak of rainy season. We climbed a baobab tree and walked a rope bridge and I sat in lotus on the roof of a Land Rover trekking through the African bush in the glow of mid-morning light and just enjoyed the hell out of life. Around one we left the park and got back to Iringa just in time for some cleaning up, dinner, and Friday night drinks with some of the best Tanzanians that I know.

What I have learned is how much I have forgotten. Swahili is not just a language you can pick up in 5 days, nor is TZ culture or understanding that things are always strange. Mike was a little overwhelmed by it all so decided to take a vacation from the vacation and spent yesterday in Njombe catching up on rest, breaking from this crazy life and gaining perspective before I take him to Ikuna to get down to the real heart of this whole country- Tanzanian villagers and Mama Witi. That’s happening in a few hours, but I thought I’d give a little update. Thus far all is fine, I’m ready to stop traveling for a little and just be in Ikuna, but I’m still gaining perspective, I’m not watching the parade go by, oh no, I’m in it and loving everything.

Zanzibar

RUAHA

Life, life, life, life, life!

Man, I want to say and FEEL like its Beautiful. I want to say and KNOW that the sun is going to shine down and warm my face every morning. I want to say and BELIEVE that everything is just Fan-fucking-tastic!

But I can’t.

It would just be me lying to myself, lying to you, which would only add more deception to this already terribly twisted and awful façade that we have built ourselves into.

Instead I will say that life is what you make it. Another cliché to add to the mountain of metaphors and metaphysical theories: the foundation of the House of BS that I have built around this here person. Me.

Yeah, 120 words down and it’s already quite apparent that I have had a bit too much thinking time. I can’t just shake it off and give you the Sesame Street jist of “Life in Tanzania.”

Today was one of those days where you kick your own ass for trying to re-invent the wheel, and upon countless invested hours of time, money, energy, and patience, you go to test drive your new wheel only to find out it doesn’t actually fit on the car that you wanted it to drive.

Prior to today things have been going. Life in the village is basically a constant of strange and unexpected. It’s either all happening at once, or nothing is happening at all.

Pakilo (my dog) absolutely hates everything about me. Let’s be honest here folks, I don’t even pet him. I hate dogs. He has ticks. He pees in my house and craps in my bathroom. He whines when I try to play the guitar (as if I didn’t already know that I suck). He refuses to eat ugali- the staple TZ food. He has a rat tail. I think it’s disgusting. He sleeps on a pillow in my house for 80% of his waking life. The other 20% is divided between walking with me (yes, I hate him but not enough to make him stay inside all day) and crying at the NYC sewer sized rats that have taken over ¼ of my house. I have never been so glad to give a dog such a stupid name. Pakilo is Kibena for nighttime. I tell people that I have named him that because that is when he is mean and bites (this is a lie, he is a baby all of the time). The truth is that in the nighttime, when I close my bedroom door and finally crawl into my Jersey cotton sheets, I rest assure knowing that a dog is in between me and anyone who might break in. That is the only real purpose he serves me. It is totally selfish to see things only in their value to me, but in terms of cost benefit, Pakilo is hardly breaking even.

There is a lot of work for me to do here still and I have no idea if I have enough gumption or time to actually do it. I am at the point of just throwing my hands up and walking away, making a large pot of coffee, locking my door, feeding my dog to the village kids and then picking up a king sized novel on the history of Japan.

I am running on empty. Luckily, I am solar powered and the sun is regularly accessible here. Luckily, I still have time. Luckily, I have good friends who will kick me in the ass and say- JUST DO IT MARGARET- and at some point in the future, I will be able to “cross the finish line” knowing that I tired real damn hard.

That’s the total insanity of “Life in Tanzania” this is all about me and not about me at all. Not even a little bit. I gotta stop white knucklin’ it, let go of the death grip choke hold, and just give into this being bigger then me. I’m actually not that important in the whole grand scheme of how this plays out, just another character in the novel- even if the novel is Alice in Wonderland, and I assign myself the lead.

So yeah, a grand summation of this blog update: High on cynicism. Obnoxious amount of reflection. Low on team moral. Hates dogs. Needs a life. Driven harder then ever to do this with all that I got left.

In the end I’m nothing but an overstuffed piñata of Desire.

“I’m late! I’m late! For a very important date! No time to say ‘Hello!’ ‘Goodbye!’ I’m late! I’m late! I’m late!”…Or so I would be if my name was White Rabbit and I ran around worrying about the direction of the arrows scowling at me from my watch face.

LUCKILY, I’ve opted to take to role of Alice- living more or less in my own Wonderland for countless, consecutive days. Also, I’ve been eating strange foods that make me (okay, just my stomach) grow and others that induce less then optimal shrinkage (AKA excessive bloating and unpredictable body clearing diarrhea). In Wonderland there seems to be no difference in the right and left side of a mushroom that causes stomach pains, just the whole damn thing. As for the cookies, well they taste like stale shortbread and after week-long binges, it does seem that I have grown in a East to West direction (Which when facing West means I am 3 inches closer to home at all time…!)

AT a tea party hosted by the very petite and toothless Mad Hatter (in the form of a 60 year old village farmer grandma) I learned all of the Wonderland gossip. We celebrated the very Merry Un-Birthday of a certain unborn child. After tea, I was pulled aside by a drunken man (not a mouse) and given the most heart-breaking news that he, along with his lover and the unborn Un-Birthday Object of Attention, may all have AIDS. (We have planned to go and see the Great and Powerful “Wizard of Oz” for confirmation, but hat is not until next week and a totally different story).

I shyed away from interactions with the not-so-wise, giant, hookah smoking caterpillar (other wise known as the Masai witchdoctor) but, I did get close enough to listen to his latest magical antics- which included assaulting and ‘cursing’ a village bar owner because he intervened in the pipe smokers plans of a midnight rendezvous with a village bar maid.

THE Queen of Hearts, as it turns out, is only foul tempered when you act like a total idiot. I have learned that when in her Royal Court- or mgahawa- and would like Royal Attention- or food- then manners must be used accordingly. If you happen to be in her Royal Service then do make sure that the kitchen in cleaned, the potatoes are peeled, the bread is baking and the Roses are painted Red before Her Highness awakes from the mandatory afternoon slumber.

TWEEDLE Dee and Tweedle Dum seem to have multiplied in numbers, become an earthy shade of Night, lost the suspenders and found incredibly 1980s fashioned T-Shirts. They are much more shy then I had predicted, but all Fifty (or more) or them, manage to suspend shyness just enough to ask the same question, “Where are you going?” Such a difficult question to answer from my position of perpetually Lost (and Alone).

THANKFULLY, The Cheshire Cat (who’s not really a broad grinned cat, but a whiny, tick covered puppy that pees inside and enjoys long afternoon walks) is able to keep me on track. It seems that no matter where I go he’s there to guide me home- or rather I’m there to tie a rope onto his collar and drag him home crying all the way.

THE Walrus (my Village Executive Officer OR the man who is supposed to be helping me out here) and the Carpenter (the ‘next-in-line’ village government representative appointed, by others, as my liaison) seem both be up to their same old shenanigans, tricking not the oysters but the villagers and anyone with anything worth tricking out of having.

NOW, you may be wondering how it has come to be that I’ve had enough time to check into all of these comings and goings, but, like I said, I’m not the White Rabbit and I do not have a clock to stare me down. Instead I use the sun and moon, or some of the auditory cues that occur on some sort of time schedule (like the bus passing at 3:30 or church choir starting at 5:30). These are my means of telling time and I have found they are very reliable, although I do admit that things were a tad easier before I dropped my phone (the last remaining clock after the watch battery died and rats at the digital alarm clock) into a mug of hot coffee.

WHAT perplexes me, beyond being lost and totally timeless, is that my broken phone was stolen from the Castle of the Queen of Hearts (the mgahawa) by one of the members of the Tweedle Dee and Dum Squad and even though the Walrus and the Carpenter pledged to work it out, they were to distracted with the business of trickery to help. The White Rabbit just ran around yelling and heating people over the head with his watch (which somehow morphed into a large time telling tree branch), in a vain attempt to get, “More timely answers!!!” The hookah smoking, giant caterpillar was too far-gone to be reached for help in any manner (including unnecessary curses). Apparently the Mad Hatter is forced by a recent economic decline to harvest her own tealeaves in order to host her weekly tea parties, and was in the farm doing this when the incident occurred.

FOR now, I am left to identify the culprit Dee or Dum with the help form the Cheshire cat (…, or dog) and Mama Witi, who could never actually be anyone but her own amazing self in any story- tall or true.

THROUGH the Looking Glass and back again, this past hunk of time and space in Wonderland would really be a chapter called, “Biding Time.” Although it makes a good tale, things here are stagnant, and as either Alice or myself, I’m beginning to feel that it's high time to go back up the Rabbit Hole and get into a more ‘normal’ state of reality~ even though being in this perpetual Wonderland never fails to be interesting.

this is a blog that I wrote in February but never posted...just figured I'd throw it up here since I wrote it...

It’s 9:14 pm, do you know where your kids are??

Well, if your kids are Peace Corps volunteers then they are most likely in bed, cause that’s how cool we are.

If your children happen to be Tanzania village kids then they are most likely outside (even though its pitch black and they have no flash light and the only kerosene lamp is being used by you, cause you’re the Mama and you better be cooking) trying to gather or cut fire wood, trying to wash dishes or get water or just sitting outside wishing that you would hurry up and cook already!!

It’s 9:14 pm on a Tuesday night and what is going on in Ikuna village?? Well, every Mama (except Mama Witi and Mama Tekila- cause they are running mgahawas) is at home in front of her respective mode of cooking (for about 95% of these women we can safely assume that is fire via wood…not charcoal, which would make up the other 5%). They are probably stirring corn flour into a boiling pot of water right now. Which sounds like a hell of a lot easier then it is. You gotta stir- with 2 hands griped to “white knuckle strength” and use your upper arms- until every little bump and chunk is out. You gotta be sure that for each mouth you have to feed there damn well better be a size of ugali (what you were just making with that flour and water) equal to the size of their head, cause your family hasn’t eaten for about 8 hours. You better be sure that the leafy greens that you just cooked up in oil with some salt, one tomato and 1/8th of an onion are steaming damn hot, but not burning hot, once the ugali is ready. You also need to have hot water at the ready because before anyone can dig in you or your oldest daughter need to wash the hands of everyone eating- the oldest man first, to the youngest man then the women in the same order. Hopefully you did good and everything will go smoothly, everyone will be full, and you can do the dishes in peace. Unless of course the fire starts getting smoky and your husband starts getting aggravated, or you get a random late night guest, or really only God knows what could happen.

This is all going on, right now as I lay in my bed typing these words, listening to Blues Traveler, and wondering how Mama Witi got so lucky…or did she?

Right now she is at the mgahawa with at least 20 people crowding that 25ft X25ft room. The generator is running and they are watching “The 10 Commandments” dubbed in Swahili while Mama Witi cuts dough to make fried bread, fries the bread, all the while Benja is tied to her back. Meanwhile Witi is serving all of the customers and Tuma (the new helper!) is sitting around a ring of blazing hot charcoal “stoves” (imagine a portable fire pit in the US, but its maybe 1 ft tall and 1 ft in diameter), cooking up tea, chips, chips and eggs, warming food, and trying to finish cooking the bread that is always supposed to be for tomorrow, but will be consumed tonight.

Right now Chuzi, their next door entrepreneur, is selling liters of moonshine by kerosene lamps and listening to so crappy “Bongo Flavor” music. He’s trying to make the room stop spinning, which isn’t going to happen any time soon considering the amount of moonshine he’s consumed in drastic contrast to the lack of food.

All at the same time Suzie, my little 8 year old cutie, is at her house cooking dinner for her grandma, the last living relative she’s got. The two of them eat together every night in the vast emptiness of their large cooking area, sitting in the smoky room, unfazed by the rats lurking in the corner, trying to make conversation stretch from one to little to understand and one too old to break the beautiful innocence of childhood. Next month marks the anniversary of Suzie’s mothers death from AIDS.

It’s Tuesday night and someone somewhere is drunk and horny. Someone somewhere is trying to get laid. Someone somewhere is not using a condom. But you know what, maybe someone somewhere is.

I think about all of this. Life. It’s going on right now and I’m laying in bed trying to figure out how the hell I fit into this whole scheme. I’m not cooking dinner for my family, I’m not running an mgahawa, I’m not tending to my grandma, and I’m sure as hell not trying to get laid. Am I living here, or am I just like the kids who stare in awe, watching something I think I understand, but really don’t even kind of grasp….?

Wondering What Happened To Top Villagers 1-5? Next week....

Instead of writing about myself and my adventures I have decided to write about my 12 favorite people in Ikuna- their stories, and why I think they are amazing.

10: Onesmo Mwenda: This man is a GEM!! He’s a tailor in the village. He is a hard working, sober family man. His shop (which is a 10X10 room with 3 sewing machines and walls racked in fabric) is about a 2 minutes walk from the mgahawa. He’s always polite, funny and he likes to just chill with Witi, Mama Witi and I after he eats dinner at the mghawa. Considering that most of his peers are busy being drunk and causing a shit storm, I just give this man “Big Ups!” Plus he makes the most comfortable pair of PJ pants for under $2!

9: Suzie [and her Bibi (grandma)]: Suzie is an 8 year old village girl. Her story breaks my heart, not because it is the most tragic story I have come across, but because Suzie has the most amazing spirit ever- even after a crap hand at life.

Suzie’s mom dies last spring from AIDs. Her mom contracted the disease during a stint in the town of Makambako working as a prostitute. (It’s very common for village moms to leave their children with grandparents or relatives and go to town for a few weeks, work as a prostitute and make some quick cash). Suzie’s dad does some kind of wak in Morogoro- which may as well be Alaska- and I’ve never met him. Rumor has it that he is just trying to start a new and different life far away.

Suzie now lives with her Bibi who is old. She’s one of those women that’s so old they look as though they were made from the earth and clay itself. It’s beautiful, but also sad and scary. Between the two they maintain a farm, cook, clean, gather water and firewood, have enough extra to donate to church, pay for clothes, soap, salt and any other extras…its pretty much amazing. Suzie is just AWESOME because she does all of this basically for her Bibi which makes Suzie act like this midget 30 year old sometimes, but when she plays she is 100% kid. She loves to have me carry her around on my back, she like to draw, and sing and dance, jump rope and braid hair. She likes hanging out with me, but it’s so funny when she comes over she brinks a basket of potatoes (like a village Mama would do) and will only eat or drink ½ of what I give her because the rest is for her Bibi.

8: Gesu (or Chania Dunani…Which Means “Combs the Earth” …Which is what you do when you don’t wear shoes): This guy is the right hand man for everyone. One minute I may see this 23 year old guy washing the only car that brings goods into Ikuna, the next minute he is helping Witi hook up the power lines for the TV to the generator, the next minute he is trying to learn how to work the electric razor and play Barber and a half hour later it’s likely he could show up at my house with a 30 lb bag of charcoal. He’s just the class clown of the village, he likes to drink and I believe he smokes pot, but people still love him because he’s just lovable and real. He’s not married and has no kids, but he does have a girlfriend…whom I’ve never actually met. He has all types of crazy ideas- like to start up a music shop IN THE VILLAGE, but ideas are good!

7: Chuzi: The village drunk. The village moonshine seller. The man with the fishing hat and ripped navy blue coat he never takes off. The guy who’s sometimes so drunk he can’t walk more then 3 feet. The guy who waters down his tin roof to cool off his customers on a hot and sunny day. The man who yells to me, “HAS THE DOG BURNT HIS TAIL??” When I’m cooking at the Mgahawa and he wants to know if ugali is ready yet. The guy who took part in my Iron Chief competition and made ugali himself, even though all of the village ladies were laughing…specifically at him.

6: Mgana and family: Mgana and his wife, Mwalimu (teacher) Chota are my next door neighbors. Because Mgana is a “Big Wig” in the village government, the man has money. He also has a different wife and a totally different family in a completely different region of Tanzania, but whatever, I can’t disrespect a man for being as he feels he should be. The man says he’s got 16 children across TZ. I’m sure its more like 20. He’s probably one of the most scary looking Tanzania men that I have veer seen. He’s about 6’2 and at least 255lbs. He’s got hands the size of my face, and could possible kill me in one serious squeeze, but that’s one of the many reasons I am glad he’s my neighbor. Also, he’s smart has hell and his kids all look exactly like him. Plus, even though he has money and a TV and a generator and a motorcycle and a million kids, HE STILL DOES PHYSICAL LABOR!! And that folks- well, it’s amazing! Also he loves when I come over in the middle of the night to borrow his cat cause I can hear mice in my house. He’s a funny man with diabetes, and I think it’s weird cause even though he’s black and he lives in TZ, I feel like he could be my grandpa Korte’s African twin.

January 25, 2010

After less then 20 days back in Tanzanian I feel like I MUST have been here a lifetime already. Things have quickly fallen back into the place in which they were residing before I left.

Life in the village is mostly unchanged,

Yes, Benjamin (Witi’s baby boy) is fatter and darker. Yes, my house is filled with more rats then when I left. It’s only true that Tanzanian men have beat more women, and wasted more of their hard earned money on booze. But, all of these things were primarily a predicable change.

I’ve noticed that “free time” is a lot more difficult without the joys of text messaging, internet, or nearby family/friends. I’ve noticed that I really do not enjoy any part of Tanzanian cuisine. It’s become evident that time really is not, really NEVER, a major factor is any sort of planning- even for government or village-wide events. It’s now evident how much I miss driving a car….Oh! Being able to come and go as I please!!!

It’s annoying. The lack of bathing. The constant battle against body odor. The fighting for a seat on the bus. The making plans, altering plans, re-making the same plans. undoing all plans, and staring it all over again. I hate it.

But I still don’t hate Tanzania. I have been grilling my mind for how this can be true. I have been trying (mostly in vain and desperation to fill my free time) to figure out how I can convey the true pulse of my life here. It’s difficult, at best, to try and word this out. Maybe I’m scared to ration out all sense and figure out the heart string that keeps me beating along any sort of purpose driven path here.

Yes, yes, Mama Witi and her family are AMAZING. They are the “one person that I want to help make an ‘informed’ choice.” As I said back in 2007 before I meet the beast of a country called Tanzania.

But really, is this it here? Is this why I love Tanzania? Is this, and your support, my only Mojo. (Or really, is this ‘Mojo’ more then any I will ever feel in any sort of ‘life quest’ AKA Career???)

Ugh. Scary.

Well, I’m still grilling me head on how to make this make sense so I’ll get back to that in a different post.

For now, Things in the village are good. Everything is truly the same. I have spent a considerable about of time meeting parents of other volunteers in Tanzania. Last week my friend Kat’s dad came (along with her uncle) . They didn’t get into Njombe until late and they headed out to her village early the next morning, but we did have a few beers and he brought all of this amazing stuff to share with us (Almond M&Ms!!, along with stories from his journies in Tanzanian thus far. He was a total sweetheart.

I also was able to spend some quality time with the parents of Vincent, the French doctor who was here a few months ago doing volunteer work at TANWAT hospital. They wre absolutely adorable and I now have an open invitation to visit them in France (which who knows, I will most likely take up!)

Being able to share this first hand with people is just totally amazing. Any thoughs on coming to Tanzania?? LET ME KNOW  I’m a good tour guide.

For now, I must say Adios. I have little time and patience for the internet today, I just wanted to let you all know that the village is good, everyone is alive and I am trying my damn best not to get disheartened by the fact that nothing really is going to change in massive number…and that’s really okay!

Peace and Love!

December 15th, 2009

The Time Has Come

…or the time came and went.

Big news, great news, good news for the land of 24 hour Christmas Jingles and non-stop shopping: Witi had her baby!

Witi, Pakilo (my dog/ newest animal project) and I went to the village of Luduga to wait at Sarah’s house for the baby to come. Sarah’s neighbor is an older nurse with lots of birthing experience and one of Sarah’s good friends. It seemed like the best idea considering there is no real doctor in Ikuna and the infant mortality rate is 2:3.

We waited for 5 nights and 6 days.

On day 2 is coincided with the American Eat Fest called Thanksgiving. Sarah had invited her Tanzanian family over and together we made a feast. Including 2 chickens, mashed potatoes, delicious beans, honey oatmeal rolls and frosted carrot cake (which I was asked a few days later to make again for the confirmation party of a village boy). After hours of cooking and baking on coal pits, waiting for things to be ready and washing dishes we sat down to eat. We all said what we were thankful for, and grandma sang us a song in tribal language. It was a great cultural fusion.

On day 4 of waiting Mama Witi (which really does mean Witi’s mom) came to Luduga to wait it out with us. It was a lot of cooking ridiculous food, dog watching (Sarah has a dog too), sitting in the sun, clothes washing, walking around, chilling out, talking baby and all things you can possibly do with 2 loved Tanzanian women in a land of no TV, no computer, no car, no mall, just family in a time of anticipation and fear.

On day 6 Witi went into labor as I was showing Mama Witi how to make banana pancakes. We walked over to the dispensary around 10am. Chilled out while Witi had contractions. Mama, Sarah and I just tried to distract the naked, in pain and scared Witi with funny stories and back rubbing. Witi didn’t want anything to do with it. She was just ready as hell. About 2 hours later Mama got kicked out and the nurse came in. Witi asked Sarah and I to stay and together we witnessed life. After pushing and heavy breathing, having to hold her own legs and just not knowing what to do, Witi pushed out a baby right in front of our eyes. It only took a half hour. It was graphic and crazy. Her baby, a boy named Benjamin who weighed about 7lbs, came out thrashing and just as ready as his Mama. Then she delivered the after birth and got kicked out of the room cause another lady was already in labor and waiting on the sidelines to have her baby. Witi just lied on a foam mattress on the floor for a while Sarah, Baby Grandma, and I took turns holding Benjamin. Witi was too tired to try and breastfeed him, so I spent a while holding him up to her breast while she just lay there tired and helpless. Sarah and I (feeling too much like a lesbian couple who just had a baby) together took Benjamin into the vaccination room and he got a shot while I held him and his little hand.

Later on we all walked the whole 3 minutes back to Sarah’s house and Witi and the baby laid around naked as jay birds while Mama Witi, Sarah, a neighbor and I killed a chicken and made a feast.

Crazy man.

After a day of rest Mama Witi, Witi, Pakilo and I all went back home and now Witi is just holding up inside the mgahawa while Mama Witi and a new helper girl make all of the food and sell is quick as they can.

They are my family. It’s this strong woman unit; this bond that forever lies between Witi, Mama Witi, Benjamin and me. It’s so delicate and near to my heart. These people are not just Tanzanians that I know, they really are people, human beings, whom I respect and love like my own. I think that in order to keep doing this, to keep being here, I had to find this, and I am so lucky and so grateful that I have,

Other good news: The Ikuna Primary School Project is totally finished! We were able to add on a mini sidewalk to complete the whole look. The doors have been installed and the cement has dried and there is still another month until the next school year actually starts! So, not only is everyone totally proud and happy, but we finished it ahead of schedule and it looks really good. There have already been requests from people coming from Njombe for meetings to use the library, which is a really positive head start. Thank you all again and again. Ikuna village is looking better all the time!

This is just a short blog because I will be home in less then 2 weeks!

That’s all she wrote. See you in the states!!!

(And then I became a slacker and didn’t post that blog, came home and now I’m back….!)

January 7th, 2010

Sitting in the Metro- Detroit Airport. Flight delayed. Snow. It figures.

I feel like I am ready to leave this informercialized, life fearing, fast paced, choice filled world we call America.

I cannot wait to go home and see Mama Witi, Baba Eliza, Witi, Benjamin and the crew. I cannot wait to speak Swahili. I cannot wait fight with the men at the bus stand and buy bananas out of the window. Ah, to go unwashed for days and feel nothing but pride in my dirtiness!! Yes, these things sounds wonderful.

I am bubble bathed-out. I’m over stressed about all of the simple choices that we are forced to make each day- from salad dressings to which gas station to hit up- it was all a bit overwhelming. Yeah, I got used to it. Sure, life made it’s usual route back to how things were before. Of course, I LOVE going to the super market and being able to pick up any vegetable I want, when I want it, but guys I gotta get.

America vs Tanzania. Which is better? Neither. Both are unique in their own beautiful ways.

America vs Tanzania. Where does my heart lie? America hands down, making the states the place I will always call my real home.

But for now I just need to rock it out, do my thing, live with my people who never really can be my people, but whom I just love for a million reasons that I guess won’t ever make sense no matter how many words I put down, pictures I take, or stories I tell.

January 10-13, 2010

And I’m back. Almost a full 10 hours and I am already ready to kick my own ass for thinking it was possible to take too many bubble baths, because that is totally not true.

It’s hot and humid here. The rainy season has started. Massive flooding has wiped out a few places, and that’s never really good. Aside from that, everything in TZ is as much as the same as everything in America was.

I got in Dar around 3am due to all types of flight delays, missed connections and craziness.

After spending the night in DC, a whole day in a plane, a long afternoon in a hotel in Addis Abeba (Ethopia) and some serious snooze time from there to Dar I can officially say that I AM TRAVLED OUT.

Oh the woes of a young woman fueled by freedom in the prime of life, having no worries beyond today. Seriously, that’s my life…how I had forgotten in the midst of organized commercialism known as America, one can never know. As wonderful as it sounds, I will tell the truth. Living out of a bag, calling everywhere home and doing it “Anthony Bourdain style”….well, it actually makes everything feel very meaningless and very selfish. It’s like smoking a cigarette, the actual smoking is fantastic, but the after taste is terrible.

This may be why I have enjoyed the past few months in TZ the most, because I have stayed in the village and just enjoyed a home, family, job and real responsibilities there. I must say, as dreadful as the thought of leaving the internet and running water behind sounds, I am very much looking forward to getting back to the village and staying in Ikuna for as long as possible. I’m not a big fan of the “lost soul” or “wandering vagabond” role and even if it means less communication with home and the people I love in the states, I think I can hack it until August.

It’s slightly premature, and subject to change, but I did actually gain a lot from my trip home. Aside from realizing that even with all of its BS, infectious stupidity, advertising of ridiculous products, road raged drivers, and total pricks, I do love America, I also got a big Memory Shock in how crappy it is to say goodbye to everyone that I love. I have been considering staying for another year after I come home on Peace Corps dime in August, but I don’t know if I really have the balls to pack up and peace out for round #3. It’s truly terrible saying bye, and getting on the plane alone is really a kick in the face that makes you wonder what the hell you are doing. I can’t say for sure what will happen come August, I need to get back to Ikuna and re-adjust to TZ. I’m giving myself until the end of January to make a final decision and stick with it…for real real.

…It’s apparent that I have had a lot of thought filled travel time. Sorry for boring you, maybe all of this reflection will assure you that all of the though processes you dedicate to choice making aren’t too overboard. We all do it. ….Right?

Whilst Stateside:

I was able to talk to a lot of interested people about Tanzania, Peace Corps and life here. I met with my mom’s co-workers at PWC who read my blog and we had an informal luncheon. It was awfully sweet to meet everyone and see that people actually read this, think about it, and wanted to know more. It made me feel so reassured in what I am doing here and was a perfect way to start my time home. Thanks ladies!!

I also got a chance to meet with some of the students and teachers at Elmwood Elementary school and talk with them. I can’t say how well that went over because it’s hard trying to describe all of this to 5th graders, but they seemed interested (or at least happy to have no homework) and asked some pretty funny questions.

The day I left I stopped over at Lake Shore High School to see one of my teacher friends and she had me talk to her 10th, 11th and 12th graders. I brought in some pictures and they seemed to get a kick out of the whole idea. Who can say what they really thought, but they were entertained and I was glad to just have a venue to share this experience because it makes me feel good about myself, and feel pride in Witi and Mama Witi who really are just amazing people with lives that we can all relate to in some abstract way.

I also spent some great nights out with my friends, a few out with my family and one night in Mexican town with a fabulous mix of both. It’s possible I may have consumed all of the alcohol and food that I missed in the past year and a half in only 3 weeks. It’s also possible that I may need to quit my professional karaoke career.

Pretty much all of my time was spent talking about Tanzania, shopping for the random stuff I wanted to bring back, hanging out, drinking (coffee-beer-whatever) and thinking about what I am going to do when I get back.

And here I am! With a list from here to the moon of things I’d like to do. And I could do none of them without the emotional support from you guys. It’s truly amazing to even be able to do what I am doing, but it’s hard to rock this life alone, and just knowing that people actually care is sometimes all I’ve got to push me out of the bed in the morning. I guess you could say it’s my “mojo.” For that I thank you all so very much.

On the Peace Corps webpage one of the advertising campaigns deems Peace Corps as, “A Life Inspired.” I don’t know if they mean that Peace Corps volunteers are people who are inspired to live 27 months of foreign volunteerism, or if they mean that Peace Corps volunteers inspire others to engage in (via education, donations, traveling, etc.) an understanding of the world abroad. I would like to think they mean both. I’m glad that you feel inspired enough to take time from your life and just read about these experiences. A lot of people told me while I was home that Peace Corps is not something they could do. The point of doing something like PC isn’t to make other people feel crappy for not doing it, or bad for not being able to “sacrifice 2 years of their life.” It isn’t something that fits for everyone, just like going to college, or working in an office. Being engaged enough to consider other cultures and lifestyles is more then ½ of the make-up of a Peace Corps volunteer, and after all of the conversations in the past 3 weeks, I’d know a lot of globally conscious people who have taken the time to consider stepping out of the comfort zone of the states and at least think about how the rest of the world makes life work. That is more then most Westerners would ever do, so I say keep it up, stay engaged, reflect on your life and what you know of the lives of others, live globally from where you are now because I consider that a life most certainly inspired. You have all inspired me in ways, and I can’t judge how much that matters in your book, but it is a very big deal in mine.

Thank you.

And with that I head off. Back to the village of Ikuna after 5 days of travel and 2 days of sleep. I cannot wait to get back to the family and friends I have grown to love and share with them all of the stories of my trip to the states, which will seem to them as wonderful and strange as my stories of Tanzania seem to you.

October 21st, 2009

Oh this past week!

It’s like pulling doubles at a fast food restaurant and trying to run a construction site, while also lobbying for a doctor in the village you live, however; Bahati Mbaya- Bad luck-you happen to be the only fair skinned resident with enough “power” to possibly make this happen.

It’s trying not to lose your cool when you get called out for really loving a select few and letting all the rest go unnoticed. In actuality, you just reciprocate the love that is given freely while attempting to deflect the hate, jealousy, and begrudging projected onto you by people who choose only to look at the pigment of your skin.

It’s like being a monster moving jungle gym at McDonalds except the parents never yell at the kids because the jungle gym comes with its own child care staff.

It’s never bathing, even after walking long distances to deposit money into a bank account under someone else’s name.

It’s sunburns and jiggers, cockroaches, and hairy caterpillars that make you itch if you touch them.

It’s planting a herb garden and forgetting to water it until you notice that the only thing keeping it moist is a strange layer of white that is the foam of consecutive nights of teeth brushing and spitting in dirt in the dark.

It’s the crazy sounds of a Baptist revival camp meeting a Jesus intervention and the magical healers from Pete’s Dragon.

It’s a lot of dancing and singing, cooking, cleaning, running around, eating of terrible foods, sleeping hard and waking early.

Damn this week is kicking my ass people!

Witi is still pregnant and totally useless. I’ve spent who knows how many nights now at the mgahawa with Mama Witi making Chipsi Mayai- Fried potatoes in an omelet- for late night customers, while Witi crashes out at 7 leaving the two of us to deal with the drunkards while Witi’s deep snoring wafts over the half wall from the attached room. Witi is so big she can hardly bend over to wash a plate so notions of carrying water, sweeping the floor with a hand broom , or moving 50lb bags of potatoes are pretty unrealistic. I’ve been going in the morning while Mama teaches preschool, leaving in the afternoons and then heading back in the early evening. It’s insane.

The Assembly of God Church has started its week of “villa-vangelism” and it’s more like something you would see on TV then anything that can happen in real life.

Exhibit A: A one legged man jumping and dancing around on his one real leg and one fake leg that wears a holy sock, singing “HALLELULIA JESUS SAVES” while 30 or more people are literally bum rushing the stage where a man with this deep raspy smokers voice proclaims that all sick persons will be healed- even those sick with the disease of prostitutes- if only they accept Jesus into their lives.

Seriously? I told Mama Witi I just wanted Jesus to heal my toe that is infected with Jiggers. She laughed her ass off, shook her head and said in English, “Helpless.” (Coming from a woman who knows about 50 English words I am more impressed then insulted) This Baptist-esque revival is happening approximately 20ft from the door of the Mgahawa and even if I am not there there I can still hear the singing, shouting and terrible keyboard sound effect of “Excellent!” and “Yeaaaaah!” from the comforts of my foam mattress. Can this be for real man? I think it is, or maybe I’m just dreaming, or maybe this really is Africa and you never know what the hell to expect.

In slightly related news, I learned a new phrase when I started conversation (AKA getting really pissed off) with the local construction men who need to be working on the school. “I’m going to light a fire under their asses.” Does translate into Kiswahili and actually also has a Kibena translation as well! It’s very possible that I have used this phrase to its absolute maximum at this point, and may have offended some peeps, but I will light a fire under their asses….or figure out a new plan.

November 8, 2009

The past little while has been really good for a number of reasons. Unfortunately one of them does not include the fact that I was there for the birth of Witi’s baby because that has yet to happen. The little monster is still in there juggling with her hormones, feasting on her daily fried potatoes and eggs, kicking around, making her back ache, her feet swell and voice raise at pretty much everything. I think it’s slowly turning into a giant in her body and eating all good and happy energy that she has ever possessed. This has yet to be seen. (Major props to all people who have ever lived with their significant other while they were pregnant, how you did not claw their eyes will remain a mystery to this girl).

One of the things that finally happened is some work at the school. I’ve been basically jumping around on my rooftop screaming, “GET ‘ER DONE BOYS!” While they stand like Larry, Moe and Curley pointing at each other saying, “Who me? You must be talking to this guy. I would never!” So, after using some sweet Swahili psychobabble, luring them in with money and then attaching it to the hook of my fishing pole, and casting it out into the undiscovered depths of “Work Ethic” and “Timeliness” I got them to finish the job they signed up to do. Awesome.

Actually, the construction is looking really good. The classroom, library and office are all cemented and we have enough left over (due to no calculation fault, just some abuse of the system) to cement the pathway and finally make this train wreck look nice. If all goes according to plan, which is highly unlikely considering that this really truly is Africa, it should be completed by December. If not, I just hope it’s done by the time I return in January. Pictures below:

Other things that have occurred that are sill significant enough for me to recall:

---I covered a burn victim in Neosporin after he told me that he just used the simple remedy of honey and eggs to treat his chest, arms, hand and face.

---I took a weekend adventure to my friend Brie’s site. She lives about 30k from me and had an AIDS testing day. An astounding 275 people were tested and I am proud of her and proud of the people of Image. The feeling of standing with a bunch of people waiting to find out if they should plan for their children’s wedding or their own funeral is slightly unnerving at best. At worst its looking another human being in the eye and knowing they just got the equivalent of a one-two punch to the heart.

---For Halloween I had the pleasure of an American guest from the village of Luduga. Her name is Sarah and she’s great. Keeps me sane during insane times. We made a bunch of delicious food and had an entire day of what we imagined life in Morocco to be like- sitting around on mattresses, under homemade canopies, reading girly magazines from last year, sunbathing, drinking cokes and eating copious amounts of spicy food. Afterwards we got bitched out for sn ubbing our duty of attending every village wedding and not going to work at the mgahawa. Haha, this is NOT getting out of hand!

---One of the village corn mills burnt down. This was such a huge concern that a new one was bought, installed and a new roof build within 3 days after the incident. Food actually is a priority here. Good to note. Also good to note, do not fall asleep with candles lit when you live in a house with a straw roof.

---The rainy season started and it never occurred to me that when it rains it smells totally wonderful outside, especially at night with all of the eucalyptus trees and the fresh earth all exposed. However, it smells terrible inside especially in a large glorified van with a bunch of old people wearing unwashed clothes who just came from a room with a smoky

fire.

---I made a package of Veggie Chili that my Dad send me last year. After I made it (which only took half a day considering I started with dry beans and went from there) I decided I wasn’t all that hungry, even though it was pretty delicious. What’s a girl to do with a good 5lbs of chili when she’s not starving but bring it to the local drunks? Duh! It was a huge hit, especially with my favorite guy, Chuzi, who blows a whistle everyday and shouts from the village square when he is finished making chicken soup (a daily crack up, most days he is already too drunk to stand). He recently made village headlines by deciding that his customers (he owns a moonshine hut) were too hot, so he got a bucket of water and proceeded to water down his tin roof. Genius! For about 3 minutes…

---Making friends with fickle Tanzanian children is usually a huge disappointment. Typically they scream and cry at the unsightly appearance of the freakish looking pale person. All of this screaming, crying and snot dripping usually happens while they are strapped onto their Mama’s back with a long sheet of filthy fabric and their Mama is yelling at them, “Greet the white person!” and cracking up. I cannot say that these run-ins leave me with a warm feeling. This was all until a recent success. One of the most Mzungu wary children is an adorable little girl named Johari. Her mom is especially intense with the whole “shove your kid in my face and maybe she will like person X” theory of child development. A while back Johari’s mom went away (okay, she’s making money “selling bar” in a town…I cannot even go into that right now) and Johari and I made a peace treaty. It started one day while I was dancing outside he mgahawa. It may or may not have been just me dancing solo, but for some reason it cracked this 2 year old up. Now we’re a traveling dancing duo and let’s face it, it’s pretty damn cute.

---My next door neighbor has two things that I covet. One is the cat, which I now borrow on a nightly basis in an attempt to annihilate the rat kingdom that has become my home. My neighbors second valuable is a TV that shows nothing but shit ass Tanzanian crap, but it makes sounds, it’s bright, it makes me feel all warm and I just am attracted to it. Like a drag queen to sequins, I cannot help but want it. Bad.

...Its just extra awesome when that’s time in the village with nothing huge going on.

In case you were feeling extra curious, this is what the day in the life looks like:

7am: Wake from some intense dream and spend the next hour laying in bed, trying to figure what the hell I was just dreaming and if it will be a sunny day by looking through the slits in my shutters.

8am: Finally get out of bed. Put on my slippers. Stretch. Wash my face. Get some fire wood.

8:15am: Start a fire. Put water on for coffee and then make some oatmeal.

8:45am: Breakfast. Then wash dishes.

9:15am: Put on some presentable clothes. Grab 2 20 liter buckets. Go to the water pump by the dispensary (it’s really close) or find no water and go to the well at the pastors house (its not so close).

9:30am: Fill buckets. Greet a million grandmas (Bibis) and kids (watoto)

9:40am: Walk home with one bucket of water on my head while everyone laughs at me. Return to get the other bucket.

10am: Drink the rest of my now very cold coffee. Think about with to do with the day. Possibly read, listen to music, sweep, organize, make some crazy plans, write a letter, wash feet, put beans or peas on for dinner, or just stare into space for a while.

11am: Go to the Mgahawa (café) to help the now SUPER prego Witi and Mama and the new girl that works there- Emelia. Cook beans, wash, cut, and cook leaves, peel potatoes, cook potatoes, buy some random café supply, carry water, listen to Kibena, get quizzed in Kibena, get frustrated, Go home.

1am: Arrive at home. Break time. Find something to eat. Relax.

2pm: (Now that I just bought some awesome soap in town!!) Wash something! Clothes, blankets, jackets, shoes, dishes, random fabric, ANYTHING that needs to smell good or look clean. Hang it out to dry.

4pm: Return to the Mgahawa for round 2 of the above mentioned tasks.

7pm: Return home. Find something to eat for dinner. Make it, clean up.

8pm: Text some people, read, stretch, write, listen to music, or just crawl into bed.

9pm: Sound asleep

That’s basically my life, at least it has been for the past few weeks. I mean there are a lot of other random things that have happened- meetings, baby weighting, a wedding, an impromptu Frisbee match, hanging out with some adorable kids, and some sporadic gardening- but that’s the foundation of my days over here in Ikuna Village.

Things are pretty low key. The school construction is set to commence this week. On Thursday we are buying all of the supplies in town!!!! Awesome.

The World AIDS Day Event should be pretty cool if I can pull it all together, its just a lot of random meetings with all of these people who think that they must be “in the know.” So I’m trying hard to stroke everyone’s ego and not totally piss people off.

I’m basically in limbo waiting for Witi and this baby thing to get going. I’m really excited for her, but super nervous too. She says that she is not due until November 25th, but I have a feeling that is way off and it’s more like an any day now thing. We will see.

Anyway, I love you all and I hope that you enjoy the pictures!! Thanks for the returned love and continuing support. Had a GREAT mail week : )

A FEW DAYS LATER...

If I could write a whole new blog post I would call it "Hike up your skirt a little more and show your world to me."

Yesterday I was in town and I decided to take a shower and get dressed and go to the bank to get out 4 million shilings for the school construction project because today we bought all of the supplies. I cleaned up and actually put on a cute wrap skirt (like the kid you can tie around your body), but I didn't have any clean underwear and rather then put on a pair of dirty ones I decided that I would go without.

I got to the bank and realized that even though it was a Wednesday it was closed for the holiday of the first president of Tanzania. I was talking to the security guard when a gust of wind blew my skirt flap over. All of the way. Exposing not my bum, but a much more personal part of my body. GREAT! I just started cracking up and I think the man didn't even know what to do or say. Also all of the other random people watching were probably thinking "Seriously???"

Yesterday I was in town and Sarah Koch cut up the innards of a pillow exposing the absolute most disgusting thing ever- pillow germs (I’m being TOTALLY serious)....

Yesterday I had breakfast for two meals

Today I spent nearly 2,500,000 tsh in slightly over a half hour. YAY FOR SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION!

Today I read some inspiring words written by an amazing man in perfect construction of my life, thoughts, feelings and ever pulsing, moving, driving Heart

September 24, 2009

Oh Birthday, Birthday. What do you mean to me these days? I usually think about my birthday the way that most people think about New Years. I use it as a little marker to reflect on the past year, figure out where I am going, where I am headed and how I plan on getting there. Nowadays I think a lot about my mom on my birthday and what it must have been like to actually give birth to me and bring this whole crazy (then) little person into the world. I can only imagine that it was insane and someday I will celebrate my birthday with some real life knowledge on the whole subject of birthing...thankfully that day is no day soon. Haha.

This year I will not be spending my birthday in the village watching Mama Witi get a shot on her rear end. Nope, I will be on a bus for most of the day on the way to Dar es Salaam because this year I am celebrating my birth and the tragic end of life for a fellow PCV. It's all pretty unreal to me. Let my preface this by saying that PC is like a family. As much as you all at home love us and care for us, there are a lot of things that get lost in translation and thus are unable to be really understood. PCVs who are here in Tanzania with us understand that which cannot transcend the barriers, we support each other, we try and make it all work out, make sense, make meaning. Its actually really more profound then that, but I'm not too great with words.

On Tuesday the 22nd Joe, who was originally a PCV in Kenya but was evacuated during the outbreaks and decided to continue service in Tanzania, died in a rock climbing accident. He was with a fellow PCV when it happened. As far as I know she is physically unharmed. He was working as an education volunteer in the "Deep South" of TZ in a village called Ndanda. I met Joe a few times. He was a really great guy, very hospitable, very chill and super easy to get along with. On Sunday the 26th PC is holding a memorial for Joe in Dar es Salaam. This feels like the most appropriate way for all of us to gather, grief, remember and support each other.

Like I said, it's all unreal. I keep thinking about what his family must be thinking and feeling. I keep thinking about what the volunteer who was with him must be thinking about and feeling. I keep thinking about the memories that I have of him. I keep thinking that tomorrow I am damn lucky to be marking my birth into this world. I wear this invisibility cloak that makes me feel untouchable. I will not die in this country. How pompous is that? I think that 23 is the unveiling of that cloak...maybe I am getting old now.

Because life is not just a one page book, there are a few other things that I wanted to write about. The school construction project is about to get underway. When I get back from Dar, if there is a huge mound of sand- which is the school's contribution to the project- we will begin buying supplies. They are really excited and totally grateful. I had a meeting with the school board last week and when it was almost wrapped up the Mbunge, or parliament representative for Njombe showed up on surprise notice and decided to tell us what to do with the building project. Then he quizzed me as to why we were putting certain things where we were and I responded in Kibena, which shut him up and cracked everyone else up. He's also excited that he project is really going to get finished and we all agree that it needs to be done before December so that it can be ready for the next school year to start in January. I'm really exited.

In baby/birthing news, Witi is bigger then ever and about to burst any day. I asked her to please try and wait until I get back from Dar and she just laughed and told me that she's not having this baby until November. That's basically impossible. She's huge and I cannot wait to be there with her and bring this baby into the world. Now that will be a good day.

That is really all that I wanted to update on except that I meet a man that I knew before I left and got to re-know him during this past little chunk of time and it's been really awesome.

Please send your prayers, good vibes, little bites of inspiration and warmth to Joe's family. I cannot imagine how terrible this is for them. They probably need all of the goodness that they can get during such an awful time.

I love you all and I can feel it coming back at me. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Peace and love from Tanzania to Michigan, California, Montana, and where ever it is that you lay your head at night. Life is precious, I'm noting that in bold and going to carry on with my 23 years holding that pressed tight against my heart.

September 29, 2009

Exhaustion. Every tweak in my body and here I am tweaking out. Time is wearing me down. Travel is wearing me out. My body feels like a temple to the god of unrest and booze filled dreams. Some parts of my brain are missing, along with meaning, usefulness and QUIET. Unrest for the weary and nothing but insanely profound words for closed ears. Falling quite in dark rooms while moving between shadows of self-definition. Don't define and confine. Don't, don't, don't.

Parts of me feel like they are marinating in sorrow, sadness and guilt. Parts of me feel like they are helium particles, floating up up up. Somewhere I exist neither floating nor marinating. I'm just there sweating out all of those bottles of water we remembered to buy.

I had a dream that Scott Wallace came to visit me and we went to my village for a week or so, played Frisbee, ate with Mama Witi and crew, peeled potatoes and tried to bake a carrot cake on coals that were a tad to hot, then we went to the beach and spent too much time in the sun, but loved every second of it. Who knows. It was a really good dream and I didn't want to wake up from it. I heard a quote once, "I wake to sleep and take my waking slow." A perfect description for such a dream. There are a lot of things that I can't actually talk about in this blog because I have to censor it.

Joe's memorial was terribly sad, but really healing. It was good to see Jenna even though she was an emotional wreck from being with him. It was good to hear stories of him. I didn't share mine but I am holding it close to my heart. Some of his students came and it was moving to see how loved he was by these guys. The wind blew out most of our candles during the candle lighting ceremony, but I think it was Joe himself breathing down from heaven saying, "Stop mourning me! I am still here!"

I don't know. It's real to me now and that's difficult but better then pretending that I still wear the invisibility cloak. I'm sending his family the only thing that I can- healing vibes of love and some strength to help them carry on. I can't spend all of my time just feeling bad for them because I don't think that's very helpful. I don't really know if anything is actually helpful in situations like this.

Also, I am actually 23 and it's old. To celebrate a very nice gentleman took me out for dinner and dancing. Hummus in Tanzania is really only for very special occasions and I loved every garlic packed morsel. Dancing till 2am and coming home with your dress stuck to your body because you got so sweating dancing your booty off, well that's only for really special occasions too. It was fun despite all of the outside crazy life events.

The good:

-Ikuna school construction project is fully funded! BIG Thanks to everyone who donated. I’ll do my best to keep a pretty constant progress update so you all can know how its going. Supply buying will commence later on this week.

-Went to Mid-Service Conference this past week and found out that I do not have AIDs, I do not have AIDs. Was able to network with a bunch of awesome Tanzanians who managed to respark my drive to keep rocking this out.

-Have a SWEET idea for World AIDS Day and I CANNOT WAIT to try and work it all out

-Got 3 bags of fake hair twisted into my head before going to Dar es Salaam and now I’m a Rasta Mama

-Caught up with all of my fellow PCV health/ed class and had too too too much fun

-Got to spend a bunch of time with some of my favorite people

-Talked to my family a lot this week… : )

-Played bartender for a night at a really nice bar in Dar and freaked out all of the non-Peace Corps white peeps

-I’m excited to get beck to “normal”

-Peace Corps gave my money to actually thief protect my house!

-I just love life….a lot

The bad:

-Dar es Salaam is too much for me to deal with. I’m not used to life in the big city

-My friend Korie got robbed on the beach

-My fake hair is itchy…

-I’m tired of explaining that I am not a spy….

-…that’s really it.

The city:

(Blog poetry take 3-Dar es Salaam)

It smells like the bean crock pot soaking in the sink the day after Christmas

It smells like my hair the morning after a night of sitting around a Garfield Gang bon fire

It looks like Detroit minus awnings plus overly used public transportation

It looks like Detroit, inner city, nursing home Ave. in 2020 after no city reform, restoration or construction

It sounds like New York in Swahili

It sounds like Christmas in Hawaii but in September and all on FULL BLAST with extra base

It tastes like bad attempts at American food, extra oil, extra salt hold all condiments

It tastes like 200 cigarettes smoked consecutively without brushing my teeth.

It feels like this is not my home because in the big city my purpose gets drown out in all the other senses

It feels lonely, it always feels lonely, but somehow lonely feels inspiring and makes me head spin with ambition and hope- two dangerously intense weapons in my ever shrinking arsenal.

It's a damn good thing that I am not ranking the grossness of my weeks because I don't even want to recall if any week can ever come close to this week. I guess disgust of things that truly are disgusting is a great way to remain distracted from the disgust of complete and total, disenabling apathy…so, I’m just going to except all of the weirdness of this week and hopefully gross you out in the process.

To begin with, as I write this is has been officially 7 days since I have made any attempt at bathing, but to be real, that’s basically every week….haha.

Last weekend after the seminar I was taking a day of relaxing before coming back to the village frustrations. A couple of PCVs and I decided it would be fun to watch a video tape and be super old school. We hooked it all up, but for some reason the player wouldn’t say on. I, being the fixer of all things technical, was tenaciously trying to figure out what the problem was when we noticed that a nostril burning stench was coming from the tape player. We deduced that it could only be a nest of dead rats, even though that was just some half-hearted guess and not really what we expected to find once we opened up the deck. Well, it was what we found. A small next filled with baby rats, starved to death, their rib cages showing and their little rat feet all wrapped up around each other. They were oozing an extremely potent liquid and smelled like something that Satan would spit at you upon your arrival to the ever after. So, naturally we tossed the rats out, I tweaked the chewed wires, we popped in a tape and promptly ordered dinner. Lets just say that sensitivity to things that should be revolting is at an all-time low these days.

The nest day I came back to the village with my buddy Isaya. He’s a street kid, orphan punk that lives in Njome and was invited a while ago by Mama Witi to come to Ikuna. I have to say that not everyone was thrilled by my guest (with his 2 left shoes, torn jacket without sleeves, and the underlying stench of someone less bathed then myself), but whatever, I do what I want. We watched the championship football (I think it’s called soccer in America…) game in the village. It was my sub-village versus another sub-village and Uhuru, my sub-villag, Shindwaed! (Won!) After that we went back to my house and Isaya rocked out to some country CD that I didn’t even know I had white I did some a patch job on some of his clothes. Then we headed up to Mama Witi’s for a true family dinner.

Isaya is unique in the fact that he isn’t just a kid yanking my chain. His parents are really both dead, he lives in a house by himself in town. His grandfather is a rich farmer who wants little to no contact with Isaya. He can go to school for free, but at the age of 14 after living on the streets without any rules or regulations for along time, chooses only to go if he’s really hungry and wants the free food. The school that he goes to is actually an NGO for orphans called Compassion, but I don’t really understand the logistics. I’m just glad that they feed the kid every once and a while. He is totally a little pocket picking thief, but he knows better to mess with me cause when he does all the shots are off and we can’t be friends anymore. I have known him since last November and see him in town often. We usually just mess around, have song offs, grab some food, or not, and enjoy the day. So, he was thrilled to be able to go to Mama Witi’s with me and sit in a real Tanzanian kitchen, around a fire, and chat and laugh, share stories, listen to the news, and eat like a real family does. He highly impressed Mama Witi’s youngest son and they became immediate buddies, however Baba Eliza (the dad) was about to kick my ass for bringing this kid to the village, especially after my recent theft situations. Baba Eliza made it a point to bring up the fact that they beat the crap out of the thief that robbed me, and Isaya, totally unfazed, only topped his story by telling what they do to thieves in Njombe. Apparently they tie a bag around their head, make them stand in a tire, douse it in gasoline and then light them on fire. It’s called Choma Mwizi, Or Grill the Thief. Sick.

After dinner, I was parched and drank some water that I know was unfiltered. The next day Isaya headed back to town and I was sick the entire day. I’m talking feel the worms growing in your stomach and exploding on themselves sick. I didn’t really get out of bed expect to use the latrine, which is in serious disarray right about now…do not ever drink unfiltered water in Africa. You will get sick.

The next day, after a Tony Danza style body explosion I was feeling a lot better and decided to take on the task of cleaning my house. When I opened the door to the room that I have made the office I noticed that the door wasn’t opening all of the way. I looked at the bottom of the door and noticed two little white legs sticking out from underneath it. Hm, yes, a dead rat door jam. Awesome. Upon further inspection, 3 rats had died in the “office” and it smells equally as terrible as my bathroom, but not as bad at the liquid baby rats nest from the other day.

Later that day I was sitting outside recounting all of the gross things that had happened in the last few days, dead baby rats nest, totally body explosion, dead mama and baba rats…and then I noticed that the bottom of my foot was killing me. I was checking it out and saw this little brown thing sticking out of the side of my pinking toe. I grabbed some tweezers and pulled, but it wouldn’t budge, so I took a knife and cut it, pulled again and SHA-BAM! It was a jigger, or just a jigger egg. I don’t know, but it was sick and pussy and that’s all I’m going to say.

Haha, okay so that’s the most disgusting week ever. You’ll all be happy to know that I have finally bathed and the sickness, rats and jigger are all gone. I have pictures of all of the dead rats but have decided against sharing them. : )

Rocking it out one day at a time.

Oh, the best quote of the month is from a book that my friend Patty send me. It’s called the “The Water is Wide” by Pat Conroy; “I was young and stupid. I thought that people would care.” It’s in reference to his Peace Corps-esque adventure on a poor island off of the coast of South Carolina. It’s perfect for my life.

About my fight against apathy..well I’ve decided to let apathy win for a while and not fight the fight again not wanting to fight…hahaha. I think it will get me very fast and vastly broaden my horizons. Seriously though, it’s impossible to make people want to care about themselves, their health, the beating of women, the over workload of mothers, the lack of food variety, nutrition, AIDS…anything.

I cannot fight the apathy, in regards to the issues, alone, and it’s totally senseless for me to do so when these are not my issues, this is just my temporary life, I get to say Bye and pack up and go on living and fighting for the things that have some relevance to my life. These topics DO have relevance to my life RIGHT NOW, but they are not things that I will ever really LIVE with. Even thought they manifest themselves in countless ways day in a day out, I cannot make people suddenly believe that beating your wife, having AIDs, or working from dawn till dusk while your husband drinks, are problems, or issues to be faced. So, I don’t know what that leaves me with.

Like Conroy said, I thought that people would care, I am young and stupid. My best foot is being put forward, in the direction of showing empathy, care and understanding with Tanzanians, and in the event that I find a man, woman or child with a voice for these issues, I will be there to encourage the hell out of them to speak up, speak loud, and engage other people.

Okay, love ya’ll and missing the world of chaos that I could find some bit of reason and sensibility in, even if it was equally as demoralizing for a slew of different reasons.

So much easier said then believed. Ah, another week in Paradise, and it has been interesting. This week was highlighted by one great phone call, one long seminar, lots of random planning and running around and an attempt at figuring out what to do after Peace Corps….

Basically the main chunk of my week was hosting a seminar with one of the sweetest PCVs that I know. Her name is Kat. She lives in the village of Wangama and I’ve been there a couple of times. It’s a little bit farther from Njombe then I am, but it’s on the other side of the road and has just a totally AWESOME mountain, pine tree, lumber jack atmosphere. It’s sweet. The guy that’s in charge of her village government, Julio, is nothing short of hilarious. He’s probably one of the most hard working Tanzanians that I have ever met, he’s funny; he solves problems and crime and just all around rocks. I told him about some of the problems that I have been experiencing in Ikuna (theft, apathy, etc.) and he took matters into his own hands during the seminar.

It was supposed to be a seminar with 10 people from Ikuna and 10 from Wangama, but because we were not giving people money to come to the seminar, some of them dropped out. The point was to go over basically everything about HIV/AIDS (facts, what to do when someone has it, medicine, transportation to health facilities that actually have the medicine, testing, foods that help, etc..). We asked three people to come and do a teaching session (2 from NGOs and one doctor) and none of them showed up. That could have been disastrous, but we decided to just do a lot of group teaching and brainstorming. The whole point of the seminar was aimed at getting these people to help us get villagers tested for HIV/AIDS and them set up groups to help care for the people with the disease (like visting them, making food, talking to friends and family, making a legacy, helping them raise money to be able to pay for transport to the drugs, and overall ATTEMPT TO REDUCE THE STIGMA)…That’s a pretty lofty goal, but we figured WTF, ain’t got nothing else to do and it will be interesting to see what happens when it’s all over.

So, we stayed in Njombe with the 17 people that showed up from Thursday to Saturday and did all of this. Highlights included one condom demonstration with a Banana, Julio talking his ass off and making points and numbering them while he was making them (much like something I would do), a long discussion on masturbation as a way to avoid getting AIDS or STIs (or pregnant)…which totally freaked out a lot of people until we just let on that Americans do it to and it’s fine, all of the villagers of Wangama craking down on the villagers of Ikuna for letting the vill government be so stupid and lazy and a long discussion on how to change that (I loved it, they asked the people of Ikuna if I was really just supposed to do nothing here for 2 years…!), a session on planning what we are going to do with this information once we get back to the village ( Ikuna decided to start a group called MATUMAINI MAPYA, a new hope, and first work with trying to get people to go and get tested) and then a massive bitch fest about why they were not paid for their time. Sweet. I consider that a great success. No speakers, just everyone from the villages teaching everyone else…Who knows, we shall see what happens in the end with all of this. Today I am returning to the village and going to an all village meeting to introduce this new group, hopefully it will turn out to be something and they will take the advice of the people from Wangama about how to deal with a crap government….

That has basically been my week. I still feel like I’m somewhere in the gray about being here, but not going to make any rash decisions. I know what I signed up for, I just didn’t really anticipate it being this hard and lonely compounded but a bunch of totally unpredictable B.S. Thank you ALL for the awesome comments on my last really dreary blog. It feels amazing to know that so many people care. Don’t worry about me, that’s all that I can say, because I will keep on moving on here until I know that the path that I am on is no longer my path, or until the adventure is really officially over. For now I leave you with nothing but a huge smile and warm TZ energy (or cool, if you’re already hot…it is August in MI) and one picture of some of the kids and a random old man at the festival held by SPW last weekend.

So I made a list of things to keep me here the other day. It’s called “When it Gets Hard.” I spent the better part of a morning coloring it in and writing it out. It’s not really that long, but it helps to have these little reminders of what keeps me here. I don’t know if the summer of Tanzania is like the winter of Michigan and everything just seems unbearable or what the deal is. Don’t pity me. Things really are fine I’m just terribly homesick, tried of eating terrible food and ready to DO something. Yes, that’s right, I may have traveled half way around the world to do “amazing things”, but let’s be real, the only job that I am dong here is serving as an American Ambassador for a small village in Tanzania. It’s totally what I had expected , but hoped in the deepest parts of my heart would not be true. So, I sound terribly cynical and I’m going to drop that gray colored hat right now!

Okay, good news. The thief has been caught. In a series of stressful, unfortunate and totally stupid events he broke into my house and stole my camera. In distress I locked myself into my house and read “Son of a Witch” for and entire day trying to calm myself down. It’s a terribly violating feeling when the people that you are trying to work with steal from you. I mean seriously, screw that. So after a day of seething and reading I went to Mama Witi’s house in the evening and told her about what had happened. Because my walls HAVE BEEN MADE HIGHER! (but without cement so they are just going to fall down, hahahahaha) they thief broke into the window attached to my Bafu (bathing room) on the back of my house, which then leads into my courtyard and then my house. Yeah, somehow they got into my house and stole my camera and that is that. While I was telling here we were sitting around a fire cooking ugali for dinner and her son Olie, who I had helped a few months back when he was sick, told me that he say a student with a video taking camera at school today. Well, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that that had to be my camera because nobody in the village can really afford my camera or has the means to attain one even if they could. So, Mama Witi and her hubby Baba Eliza did a night raid and went to the kid’s house to get my camera. In the process they got a full confession from him. Apparently he has been stealing everything from me, breaking into my courtyard and just plain old trying to scare the crap out of me. Cool. Not.

That night around midnight they came back to my house to return my camera and give me the full details on the kids confession. The next day I had to got to his “case” and sit in a tiny room with a bunch of old me and his parents, my village government and Mama Witi while the fired questions at him. It was terrible. I felt bad and sad for him and myself at the same time. It was super strange. Then we pulled out my camera and he had taken pictures of himself so they were the damning evidence. In the end I think he got beat even though I was insistent that they show him mercy. After that I think they just sent him home and now it’s just all supposed to be fine. I would have rather talked to him personally, avoided the beating, and gotten to the heart of the matter then what happened, but in the eyes of the villagers, its all fine because I got my stuff back (which is a big relief), but it’s still scary…like who breaks in a says my name under my bedroom window in the middle of the night? This kid apparently. I don’t know. How am I supposed to feel about this??

Other updates, this week was cold and blah, hence my mood. I was charged by a bull not once but twice, walked a crap load, helped SPW do their festival and made lots of posters and just some random running around, I spent some QT with Witi and made a million fried bread rolls with her yesterday morning, which was a great way to spend a lazy Sunday morning! I beat the crap out of a bunch of corn, polished off some books, got stuff ready for the seminar on Thursday (which may have to be postponed due to my friends illness…), I made friends with the rats that won’t die and have named then Steward and Edward, however I pray that they do not make babies, I’ve struggled a lot, but that’s life man. We can’t always expect it to be easy….right?

Anyway, missing everyone tons and I can’t wait to come home for Christmas….! (God that sounds SO far!) Hahaha, okay life IS good and I miss the life I knew. It’s selfish and true. Damn.

Last March a 20 something year old British girl with deep Sudanese roots (Dot) moved into the village of Ikuna along with her Tanzanian city girl counterpart (Luc). Their house is directly across the street from me. In a good wind I can spit and hit their window. Volunteering for Student Partnership Worldwide (SPW) on a health HIV/AIDS project, they have some along with an extensive and long “checklist” of thing to do in Ikuna. Everything they are working on or teaching is stuff that falls under things I should be doing as a Peace Corps health education Volunteer.

I will say that it has been nice to speak English to someone in the village and The Brit's presence is a sort of comfort, especially because all of my other neighbors are only within yelling distance. However, the last few weeks have been…well, they have been intense.

After the Morogoro/ Dar es Salaam extravaganza, Dot and I returned to the village together (she was on holiday with her friends) and Luc has been MIA in Dar…

Dot has limited Swahili skills and relies heavily on Luc for translation, so I spent the past 2 weeks with her as an assistant of sorts. Because she is leaving at the end of August she is very driven to do a lot of seminars and meetings and things that she had originally set out to do in her 6 months in the village. As well as being her translator/assistant, I’ve also been a cultural translator of sorts. I cannot imagine trying to do everything that she wants to do in a 6 month time frame and also have time to fully culturally adjust or really begin to understand the mechanics behind village life. Dot is more concerned with the work part and less concerned with the cultural adjustment part, understandably, so being a cultural translator has not been the easiest of tasks. Also, we have extremely different ideas and approaches to the whole theory of development so it presents many challenges. On top of all of that, she is working with ELIAJA (Mama Witi’s singing/dancing health club) as her primary Community Action Group (CAG), and I am actually a member of this group. She, in the lack of Luc, has placed heavy emphasis and tons of work on this group and it is stressing them out. It’s turning into a crazy scene in which she wants seminars and meetings with the whole village every weekend…trying to translate the workload + exhaustion of the villagers + lack of care/concern on their part + feelings that this foreign girl is talking to “us” as if she knows it all + Swahili = totally overwhelming and absurd, isn’t it me that is supposed to be the outsider who thinks she knows it all….

So, I’ve stopped doing Peace Corps work until she leaves because I know that calling another village meeting or trying to further “educate the masses” at this point, will be the matchstick in the hay stack.

Aside from actually trying to work or help her out, she has been a great comfort in the past while, especially in regards to the thief that broke into my house last Thursday by means of ripping the chicken wire off of my bedroom window. Luckily, I was at the mgahawa with Witi and when I came home that night I unlocked my door and heard a weird noise and just knew in the pit of my stomach that I did not want to go in, so I locked my door on instinct and went over to Dot’s house. I got her and Mama Simone to come and look in my house. We found the broken screen and nothing missing. Even though tit was 9 pm my village chairman, Mama Witi, Baba Eliza (her hubby) and Witi all come to Dot’s house and we went over to my house and did a Scooby Doo style hunt for clues. After 2 hours, we came up with a foot print in the sand and I spent the night at Dot’s. The next day 2 teenagers were put into Lock Up (otherwise known as a room in the village office building) and I busted out of Ikuna and went to Brie’s site for the night. Peace Corps is on top of the situation and I think that my courtyard walls are going to be built higher with broken glass cemented on top to prevent further situations. (PLEASE: don’t let this tale freak you out, I also have a night guard now and they are all VERY concerned, I will be safe, do not freak out)

Aside from not sleeping due to thieves, I also have a crazy rat problem now that Bingwa (Champion!), my cat, has either ran away or been eaten by large dogs. The other night I was in my bed reading when I heard a rat in my dresses, so I grabbed the rattrap that I found and spent 20 minutes trying to set the crazy thing. After snapping it on my finger twice I realized that I had no bait and then remembered that I still had left over tiny dried fish that I was using for cat food. So, I grabbed three of these tiny fish and tied them onto the rattrap with floss. I expect that when I get home today I will find some sort of dead animal, who knows if it will really be a rat, but that’s what I’m hoping for.

Haha, so yes, this really is my life.

In work news, ELIAJA is going really great despite Dot’s rigorous agenda. We’re in the process of making a teen health sings/dancing club.

My friend Katelyn and I are planning a big seminar in August to get some care groups for People Living with HIV/AIDs started in the villages.

A testing day is scheduled in August along with a lot of things that Dot and Luc want to do (like soccer and netball games.

I finally weighed babies this past week and it was great. I’m glad that I did it just how they have been doing it because it has helped me to get lots of ideas of what they can do to make weighing babies a more information/education thing (like also measuring their height and then talking about malnutrition and what can be done to help…)

I’ve started a village secret ballet –esque Q and A box for health and/or life concerns for people who are too shy to come and talk to me about what they want to know. We’ll see how all of that works out.

My grant to finish building a classroom, library and offices is OFFICIALLY ONLINE. You can easily done by clicking https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=621-189 . I’m trying too get the money by mid-September. Any bit (even $5) will help TONS. So please spread the word so I can try and get this rocking and hopefully finish the construction before January (when the new school year starts)

Witi is super pergo and mean. She makes her hired help (who is this sweet girl named Faraja from another village) cry daily…which is not a cultural norm, crying that is. So now when I am sad we just talk about homesickness and ask ourselves “What the hell am I doing here??” Until something happens that is so outrageous we can only laugh. It’s amazing how you can relate to people in seriously intimate ways even though there are so essentially different from you.

The garden/farm is nothing but dryness. We let the corn dry on the stalk so that we can machete it off, wash, dry, shell, wash dry, grind, dry and then use it to make ugali. So everything is very fall looking with dry corn everywhere. It’ also freezing. FREEZING. In terms of degrees I do not know, but I can say that I now were a pair of pants, a skirt, 2 sweaters and a shawl everyday. It’s insane. This is Africa…right? I think it’s over in a month, thank God.

That is really all of my updates for the past 2 weeks. They have been busy and even though the Brit, the Thief and the Rattrap is not as exciting as the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, I can still pretend it is.

Life s funny. It’s summer in Michigan and I’m not up north or eating garden burgers. Man, this is weird sometime.

For now Peace and Love and thanks for all of the comments and concerns. Don’t worry, I am doing just fine, trying to tough it out and make some meaning out of all of this!

So I am officially a slacker extraordinaire! Its been almost 2 months, but I must say that due to the lack of response from my last blog, I have not felt quite the motivation needed to write another. Also, I blew up my computer cord so I can’t just pound it out when I am at home or at the hotel in town and using the internet is expensive and not really that much fun in town with all of the horrible music, crazy distractions and strong desire to just go and take a shower.

Ok enough explaining myself! I only have 10 minutes to write this blog so it is going to be grammatically horrible and very short, but all in all I am still alive!

In the past few months I have been on the usual whirlwind adventure. From digging up 30 liters of peanuts with Mama Witi and crew, to adopting a cat that I have actually kept, to having a Dad’s Iron Chef to talk about work roles in the family, from going to a community theater seminar followed by a brief stint on the beach and then a workshop to learn how I can best serve as a listening ear for my fellow PCVs. I also sang in the health club entertainers group for the “Children of Africa Day” and freaked out all of the villagers! Phew, its been crazy, but awesome. I am starting to grow in new and cool ways, but at the same time I feel let down because in the end when it all comes to, no matter how much I feel that I am part of the people, I am truly becoming Mbena, some crazy thing happens to slap my right back to reality…I am still just the white girl from American who does get to go home and walk away from all of this, this is only my life right now, this is not the life that I know I will wake up every day and be living. It’s so difficult o feel like you are really becoming one with everyone, that you truly are starting to get it, when you feel offended by other white people and their horrible comments, when the oldest woman in the village comes up to you to tell you that you are no longer a white person that you are now a member of their tribe, and then the minute you take yourself out of the context and get to the big city and mix in with the people who really are Tanzanians (and don’t have to try) they only see you for what you are…white/money/really stupid to be here in the first place.

I understand that the whole purpose of this “adventure” is not to become a Tanzania, but relating to the people that I live with and understanding everything I possibly can about how they live is just how I do. There is no other way in my mind and it’s incredibly difficult to get out of that context and then back into it…

Okay 2 more minutes and I’ll just end with an “ I love you all” and I’m sorry if this blog makes no sense. I promise that at some point in the near future I will give a less “feeling” filled blog and a more “action” filled update of my life!

Until then, PEACE AND LOVE

So much happens in just one day that it’s hard to try to trace the steps back and bring home up to date with Tanzania.

A lot of the past month can be summed up in a few words; chaos, gossip, illness, anticipation, freedom.

Chaos? This describes not only the past month but my life every month since last year when I graduated college (which I still cannot believe is already done..)

Gossip? A lot of PC drama and insanity went down this month and it’s been a non-stop talk/texting circle of gossip, lies, truths, and misinterpretations. In the end a few people that I really did love had to go home, a few people got to stay on “probation” and on the whole the PC office in Dar is sick of the shenanigans.

Illness? Aside from the hospital stints of Olie and Joshua, half of Ikuna has been sick, I got a pretty bad case of the stomach flu (or something like it) and everyone seems to just be not in great health. I actually think that this season is the time for dying…That’s really morbid, but I cannot tell how many funerals I have been invited to.

Anticipation? Well, I can finally, FINALLY say that I am doing real life work. Not teaching too much, but working on income generating projects that the villagers have been asking about. They are SO excited, and so am I. In defense of not really teaching, I must say that with the SPWs teaching day and night about AIDS, I really feel like they have the bases covered, and plan on taking over the things they have set up once they are gone. It will be great. Actually, it already is great : )

Freedom? The past week I have been traveling. Not for fun, but for work and “supply collection.” I must say, it has been wonderful. I know that most of you won’t like to know that I have been traveling alone, but I have and it ROCKS. Yes, I am being VERY careful. Yes, I am meeting up with my PC friends, but for the most part I am just exploring my will to explore. Man it’s exhausting!

I just finished reading The Secret Life of Bees, and I put it on the must read list for everyone. Even though it’s not about Africa, it’s about African Americans and it just really speaks to how I feel most days being the white girl in the black village. I must admit, my color has never mattered more to me, and at the same time, it has never mattered less. I don’t know if it’s because Westerners have lived in Ikuna village before, or if it’s because I took the time to really get to know people , the community and culture, but I do not (on an average day) feel out of place when I’m walking around Ikuna. I don’t get anything out of the average, just a greeting, handshake, and that’s that. It makes me appreciate Ikuna SO much, knowing that I do have a place to go home to and know that I really don’t need to explain myself to anybody.

Well, on Sunday (and most of the reason for this long crazy trip) Mama Witi and I are going to teach a bunch of Mamas how to make Batik (WEBSTER: a method of hand-printing a fabric by covering with removable wax the parts that will not be dyed). I would like to try and turn it into an income generation project, but first we need to see what the Mamas think about it. It should be a BLAST, and a headache, but I look forward to it.

Right now I am in the beautiful city of Iringa. It’s about 3 hours north of Njombe (my banking town/home base town). It’s on the top of a mountain and it just totally jive. There is a university here so a lot of the Tanzanians know English and assume that I don’t know Kiswahili, which turns everything into tons of fun. There are a lot of places to get good Western food, and just an all around awesome vibe to the whole place. Aside from that, being on the top of a mountain on the sprawling city, you not only get food, culture and life but a breath taking view. I’m a big fan and never knew it. I will admit that it saddens my heart a little bit to know that I will come home one day and have nobody (but my fellow PCVs) to relate to about all of this, but hey that’s life and this is my adventure, so I won’t let it stop me from just doing my thing.

Well, I promised a picture post and here it is, assuming I can get them to actually post! Hope that you are all enjoying life and looking forward to the summer sun. I’ve been basking it in for 11 months now, and I must say, it feel damn good!

Pic 1: The Kibena Hospital waiting room, complete with fresh breeze, tea, and a bicycly

Pic 2: The day I got some of the baby hats that my grandma made (thanks g-ma!) I went to visit Olie and Mama Witi and found out a woman in my village had twins! So, I gave them matching hats (not the ones in the pic). It's Mama Witi and the babies grandma holding the kids

Pic 3: While sitting in the hospital "waiting room" I met a little boy and tried to show him how to make glasses with his fingers...he got this far. It was cute.

Pic 4: Mama Witi and I have spent a lot of time looking at each others feet, we have decided that they really are not all that different. We walk the same path together and it's good.

Pic 4: This is my Mama, and I just love her. What more can I say?

(All of these were taken during a LONG 2 week wait at the hospital)

Walking, walking, walking

Talking, talking, talking

Eating, eating, eating

Sleeping.

Get your kitchens ready,

Big Mama is coming home!

...In about 8 months.

Lots to say and little time. Will say it all next week when I have a free computer in the Peace Corps office. Also, get ready for pictures! Thought I had my flash drive but I don't...just a few more days

The F squared sun burn blues,

man on man how they got me d o w n.

Face and feet.

Wrapped tight in colored fabric that must have been sewn from a mound,

of glory-ous flowers.

Not from the mound in the graveyard

under which lies that little boy in the bed next door,

with eyes half cracked thinking I was an angel.

Well, sorry kid, I’m no angel and I wasn’t comin to take you away,

but you up and left anyhow.

The F squared sun burn blues.

Where they came from…

maybe all of that sitting and waiting and sun bathing,

wrapped up tight in my fabric,

face and feet left to the elements.

Or maybe just sheer bad luck.

Bahati-Luck has a lot to do with pretty much all things,

Good or bad, it seems to be the biggest curse, or

a really great gift.

Our boy, in the peak of youth, curled up in fever and fear,

he was asking for a miracle.

Actually he wanted Huruma- Mercy.

A friend that he made with me.

Either way, I did my best to bring him both

Huruma and Bahati.

We fed him oranges, pineapples and peanuts,

prayed for blood, and played the game.

It was easy with a walking trump card-

The white kid that speaks the language.

We waited outside with a mob of Mamas,

gave a sermon on egalitarian relationships and were applauded.

Trying to pass the time, we walked

the maternity ward,

the malaria ward,

and learned, learned, learned.

We picked off the skin drying on his lips,

rubbed down his shaking body,

put the cup to his lips to drink.

While waiting, back-ups were called in.

One white kid equals startling,

5 equals downright scary.

Work began!

Blood came!

Attention came!

Jealousy came.

Rearing its rank face in a place that’s already pretty much

rancid.

Ward 4 was suddenly a shrill of pleads…

please pay attention to my sick person,

please help me pay for this medicine,

please, please, please…

I said it man, I said it,

I am no angel.

The temperatures rise, he gets a fever,

we can all feel the heat,…

waiting…waiting…waiting…waiting

is what a heart monitor would beep,

but we’re a far cry from heart monitors

Then, “Getting better” began.

The shakes stopped, the fever went down,

color came to his eyes and hands

just in time

with the sun bringing color to the world,

rising again, another rotation around the Earth

and we’re still here, but now with more then a hope.

Luck is seems, the bearer of news good and bad,

wanted to bring us good.

5 days and the F squared sun burn blues got me d o w n.

Eyes wide open, I went and saw…too much.

Peeling red skin, but no lotion will heal these wounds,

to fresh, to bitter, to deep.

Some pretty big question marks have been drawn in the notepad of my mind.

No actions can erase them.

Damn those blues.

I really don’t have much more to say then that. I’m just here now, trying to figure out why government hospitals are so terribly corrupt and lots of other answers to questions that I don’t really want to ask myself.

I never knew that waiting in the hospital was such a horrid task. It doesn’t even matter if you’re in what looks like a WWII field hospital or you’re in the comforts of St .John’s, it is a TAXING job and I applaud, and pity and give nothing but warm and the courage to go on for all of those who ever have, or ever will have to sit and do it. The reality is that it stinks, worse then a Tanzanian man who hasn’t bathed in a week…and that’s basically the most horrible it could get.

In much happier news, aside from illness, dreaming death and constant worry, I am okay. I still love my village, love my life, and if anything feel more and more like I am really just one of the family. It’s funny, I talked a lot about just making a difference to one kid and I got a whole family…! I mean, the rest of the village is a concern too, but I have made my concentration pretty well known and made myself open to everyone, so we will see what comes of it.

I’m bummed out cause I didn’t get to teach the Mamas last week due to a middle of the night village evac with Mama Witi, Olie and Baba Witi, We got in a taxi to town and tried to go to the hospital that my friend Vincent (he’s a doctor from France) works at, but they wouldn’t take him. So we went to the city hospital, which is a joke for SO many reasons, and Vincent met us there. It was his constant showing up to make sure stuff was going on, and my constant presence that got Olie a blood transfusion…after 2 days of waiting…and now Joshua, his twin brother, is sick too, but we don’t think that he needs a transfusion. We think it’s just malaria, so that’s good. As of today they are both doing a bit better, and things are looking up. After 5 days I had to get the hell out of there and come home to help Witi with the Mgahawa and just BE.

Village projects are at a stand still seeing that I am supposed to be working with the SWP volunteers and they have been gone for 2 and a half weeks now…it’s okay though. I have been enjoying my time, but find myself getting very frustrated with the lack of enthusiasm, and the school headmasters efforts to thwart the pen-pals…apparently the two weeks before national exams is when the teachers start teaching, so I look forward to translating responses next week.

Other good news is that I applied to be a member of the PSDN (Peer Support and Diversity Network) for PC Tanzania and I got 1 of the 10 positions open to all 150 volunteers in the country….! I’m REALLY excited and can’t wait for training and to take on this new task. It will be a good way to stay busy, and do what I love to do!! Just PUMPED about it!

So, in sum, life is crazy and kind of hard, but all in all I am good. I have some great friends here who get me through and I have this amazing little Tanzanian family that is just…well, fabulous!

Also, package update! I’m having a crap time with the post office so I am going to start posting again the packages that I get, just so you can keep an eye out if you sent me something. SO, thank you Devon, Danelle (Mama Witi says KAMWENE and loves you!) and Mema/Daddy-O.

Just one more side note, I get the news about life at home and I just want to say that I’m sorry for everyone who is currently laid off. I’m sorry to hear about money problems, worries about keeping houses and cars and making ends meet. It’s very surreal that all of this is going, I can’t really get a grasp on it, and I guess it’s a huge part of the reason I’m just throwing myself full thrust into life here. I hope that you all figure stuff out. Who knows if and when the economy is going to get better. One of the biggest lessons that I’ve learned is that it’s not about worry about tomorrow, it’s about enjoying and getting through the day, if you can do both you have been successful. So, good luck in working it out. If I find the illusive tree of money I will be sure to pick enough of its fruit for everyone.

Love to you all from the bottom of my heart.

Memories suffocate my ability to focus on the moment in action. A whiff of nostalgia and I’ve wafted back 8,000 miles and 15 years ago bundling up in fall jackets and hats to pile into the car with Tommy, Mom and Dad and head off to the cider mill on a beautiful late October afternoon. Watching the apple press squeeze the sweet cider out and into confusing machines, eventually making its way into our cups, eating warm doughnuts, watching the water mill, walking in the wet leaves next to the river with the smell of hay and sweets lingering in the air.

Come back, Come back to this moment- Oh yeah, here I am, wiping the sweat off my brow as I pull weeds from my carrot bed in Africa.

I need to be less of a time travele, but I enjoy these vivid recollections of my life. I am learning to enjoy not only the simple pleasures of here and now, but also the sweet taste of the here and nows past. My life is rich and good and I am nothing but grateful for every memory, each experience (good or bad) that has brought me to this present understanding, It feels so free to live knowing you know nothing and everything you really need is locked close to your heart (ok, with the exception of water which is usually available somewhere…)

I get lost in my recollections of the past, I always make then sweeten then how it really happened but I don’t mind because how I decide to remember an experience is how it really happened according to me. I get lot in dreams for the future and force myself back to the Earth, where I’m presently losing myself in the milky cover of stars and the piercing, ever waxing and waning, luminescent moon.

Yeah man, it feels good.

BUT, I’m sure that you are much less interested in my state of mind and much more intrigued by my current state of being (assuming that being is doing)

Well, life here is good. My work is what I choose and that’s almost more taxing then having it chosen for you. The mgahawa is going well. I made French Toast the other day and it wasn’t too scary for the Tanzanians to risk it and test it out. Once we get cinnamon and vanilla for the mgawawa I think it will always be on the menu because everyone loved it. Haha…and the cultural exhange grows!

Pen-pals are really fun and the kids LOVE it, but they had big exams for the last week, so the headmaster is cutting my translation time and now its vacation and the process of writing back is in a major hold up.

I had a meeting with the doctor the other day to call him out on his very bad example of “do as I say and not as I do” with the nurse sex scandal. Well, the man cried and asked me what I wanted him to do. I told him to just work it out and figure out want he thinks now that he has ruined his reputation. I was not my place to call the man out, but maybe I made him feel bad enough that it won’t do it again…haha, that’s SERIOUSLY wishful thinking!

The SPW volunteer from England and her Tanzanian counterpart are here now. They are my new neighbors since Anita (the nurse involved in the previously mention scandal with the doctor…) was kicked out of the village. I’m looking forward to working with them, but I am not looking forward to watching REALITY and DISSAPOINTMENT come crashing down on their SAVE IKUNA VILLAGE dreams…They are both really nice people, but man it’s weird speaking English in my village.

I think that my school grant finally went through so look for more on that later….

I’m teaching the Mamas at the dispensary on baby weighing day this month and I am really looking forward to it.

In garden news:

Place is a disaster area!! I’ve got some super sunflowers and corn, but my cucumbers were eaten by bugs. Damn. The onions and eggplant never came up but the squash and pumpkins are making little babies. I’ve got more edible leaves that grew as weeds then I could use in a year and my carrots ROCKS! (It’s only one bed, but 50+ carrots is tons). Beans are ready to be picked and dried and my huge peanut square needs a weeding bonanza #2. The potatoes…well, I have no idea cause I haven’t looked! My peach trees are done for the season, but I may have some bananas soon. All I really have to say about all of it is that I LOVE THE RAINY SEASON!

So, basically I have been in Tanzania for 10 months. Insane! I’ve grown the eyes of adjustment to the following things (which I need to think about in terms of shock value)

 Old ladies with no teeth, moonshine breath and hands as coarse as sand paper

 People picking their nose for extended periods of time

 Mamas in the field with a hoe and a baby tied to their back

 Grandmas wearing dirty old fabric and CONVERSE ALL STARS

 Kids carrying kids/babies on their backs

 People dying

 Having to wait hours for a bus after they tell you it’s leaving right now!

 Busses breaking down

 Being told “you have arrived” hours before you are really there

 Being asked for anything and everything under the sun, to the moon and back

 Being hazed in the fruit/veggie market

 Seeing man urinate anywhere

 Tanzanian’s undying love of Celine Dion

 General apathy towards everything

 Being ripped off

 Being screamed at in Kibena. Yes, I WILL understand if you say it louder…or not.

 Power outages

 Eating enough beans and rice to bore a Mexican

 Being gawked at when I do physical labor

 Meeting people who don’t know where Michigan is…what egocentric lives we live!

OKAY! That’s good for now. I’m off to work it out, share the love and do something really really important like eat some M & Ms. Haha, I miss and love you all.

HAPPY EASTER!!!!!!!!! Sending big love from this crazy world.

Moving within the shadows of myself.

Tracing the walkway back through the sticky mud

(the kind that sucks your shoes off your feet)

the ponds lie still and tall grasses sing frog songs.

I spot my reflection,

blue gray in the colorless early morning world.

Out of place, even at the break of dawn.

My comrade, a young boy with a sore tooth,

makes not a sound as we march through sunrise,

and into the foggy morning mist.

My thoughts skip puddles like stones,

skimming half a dozen spots for a brief instant,

then falling into the depths.

Attempts at conversation are lost,

either in translation or the groggy morning.

One can never know.

We move through our village,

passing the mud houses already awake,

brimming with smokes from breakfast fires,

and the constant swish swish of sweeping dirt.

Outside of the village the mist becomes a rain,

the houses become corn fields,

the sound of brooms becomes our own four feet,

making headway to Nyombo.

A man passes on his bicycle,

our eyes meet for the briefest of moments,

shock meets shock, greetings forgotten.

And so we carry on, through the farms,

past the school, eerie in the absence of students,

and into the next village.

Here the breakfast fires have been put out,

the sweeping is done,

the sitting and watching game begins,

And the tremor of my presence,

feels bigger, and tastes more forlorn

in the color filled world, of post dawn light,

as we pass families and strangers.

I wonder if this undertone is felt,

by my escort. Who fits in so nicely,

without this ghost, walking within her shadow,

beside him.

So that’s my attempt at blog poetry. How does it feel? Haha.

On Saturday of last week myself and Oliey headed out of the village via foot at 6am to Nyombo to hitch a different bus then the one that passes through my village. I’ve decided that I want to boycott Sembula Exp. now that we have this new young guy driving and this new door man, and I really don’t like either of them. Tanzanian men are absolutely rotten in every way, and I wish to deal with them as little as humanly possible. Anyway, we left before the sun rose and walked 8k to Nyombo in the rain without an umbrella, got there and waited for a long time and lo n behold, Sembula is the first bus to pass…damn!

We got on it and got to town much later then expected. The reason we went was because I needed to go to the bank and post office and Oliey needed to get a tooth pulled. Luckily, I have adopted my friend Ben’s buddy Huruma who lives in Njombe. I had Huruma take us to where Oliey could get a tooth pulled…however, that was another long walk in the rain. I ended up leaving the boys at the doctors and went to the post office alone while teeth were being pulled. It’s a good thing I went because letters from Elmwood were waiting my arrival! About 2 minutes after leaving the post office I got caught in the POURING rain and was soaked through to my socks, or underwear, which ever way you want to look at this. So, I sat at the Internet place, talking to one of the other volunteers who is in the 60+ range. Her name is Bibi Jan and she’s the bomb. Then the boys showed up, just as wet as me, we all had chai and then Oliey and I had to boogie back to the village before we even had time to think about our crazy day.

About two days later I was laid up with the worst head cold later, and now that I have overdosed on all types of cold medicine and tea and things warm and good, I am feeling much better. Plus, it’s St. Patty’s Day! (Ooooooh time! How you evade me!) And I have my weeks worth of work cut out for me with all of these letters, the mgahawa, a health club, a bunch of drama with my doctor and a nurse doing dirty things and the most exciting news that there is going to be another volunteer in Ikuna. He/she is an SPW volunteer and will be here for 5 months…!?! I have no idea what any of that really means, but it should be another twist to this already outrageous adventure. Haha!

Thursday March 19, 2009

Witi went to the dispensary the other day and Mama Witi and I happened to be leaving the preschool just as she was leaving the dispensary. After Witi finished up at the dispensary (she went into the office alone), the three of us walked back to the mgahawa to do our routine pre-lunch cooking. I got bored with sorting rice so I decided to head home and wash clothes and Witi escorted me for a few minutes. We got to the duke (shop) that she wanted to go to and she pulls me aside and whispers in my ear, “ I have a present in my belly.” I think my sigh could have knocked Mike Tyson out of the ring because she just looked at me and asked if I was mad. I just had to laugh cause here is Witi, possible ex-prostitute, 20 years old, running a Tanzanian Village doughnut business with no husband, no grasp on reality (the girl spends at least 30 minutes of each day looking at herself in the full length mirror dancing) who is about to be one of the thousands of Tanzanian women getting ready to bring a baby into this crazy world…yes, just what we all need, more children. Haha. Oh man. All I can do is laugh and kick myself in the ass for not giving her more serious lectures on family planning…as if that would have been useful. She is happy as a clam. Seriously beaming with pride over this unborn child. Ohhhhh, so where does this leave me? Hm, well seeing that I spend basically all of my time with her or her mom I will probably start lecturing her on pre-natal care and see how all of that goes! The exciting part is that I will be here long enough to watch her stomach swell with life and see this baby born, hell maybe even take its first steps…dude, I am here for a long time! She says that she is due in November but I have a feeling that this is going to be a September birth- if so, it’s likely that the baby is not actually a “present” from her boyfriend/ possible soon to be husband??....ohhhh man.

Aside from that I’m in town cause I used the wrong format to do my grant…or something like that…so I wanted to come in and fix it up ASAP and get this thing off my lap. I’m not really here to gain perspective in grant writing. I went to the bank today and was almost slapped a very obese woman who was about the 8th person to cut in front of me, then I remembered that I know a secret language called English, so I swore under my breath and apparently she understands English too cause I was faced down with the most sinister evil eye I’ve ever encountered. Note to self: must stop assuming things.

Anyway, I’ll just wrap this up for now. I’m sure there will be lots to post next week after I meet the new mzungu of Ikuna…I have a feeling that things are only starting to get out of control.

Peace, love and all things eluding to Spring!

Ah, the life and times! The past few weeks have been semi-steady. I’ve been busy (and not so busy…) with the mgahawa, school, farming, planning stuff for later, being in my village and just living.

School rocks and I love my students, although I will admit that I could be making a much more pro-active approach to teaching English or something that they want me to teach. However, in my defense I’m trying to be the poster child for “Tell me you want to live in America then I will show you YOU HAVE TO WORK EVERYDAY,” Which is one of the many problems at my school, it’s usually a random day of the week when I come to town and I can’t think of a single ride to town without one of the 8 teachers coming with me…meaning they are not teaching. It’s just not a standard here. I didn’t come here to temporarily pick up the slack of the teachers that just don’t feel like teaching, so I’m not going to.

In related terms, I went to town for the weekend and my friend Kate’s Birthday Bash. When I got home on Monday I found out that the head doctor of my dispensary had been locked up in the village office building because his wife complained that every night he goes home and sleeps with Anita, the nurse, my across the street neighbor. Sweet. Anita, who is like 24, tiny little thing, missing one front tooth, but sassy as hell. What in the world???? The doctor is the head of my “health club” which I have officially declared broken up. Anyway, since then neither he nor Anita have bothered to go to work, which is STUPID. Hello people, you guys make choices and live with the consequences. I just got back from giving Anita maybe the 7th lecture of the week, after going to the dispensary and seeing how crazy things are over there night now…

Aside from bossing around my neighbors like I have any idea what the hell they should do, I gave the standard 7 students their first homework assignment to choose who really wants to be in my health club. They have to write me a paper and I’m excited to go and pick them up. They should be interesting to read, or at least mildly entertaining. Out of the 60+ students I am only taking 15 for my club because I want to create a small environment and hopefully it will help them to be more open and less shy. Anyway, consulting one of the teachers on Monday after I read the papers to see what he thinks.

The farm is, as always now, OUT OF CONTROL! No worries, I have harvested a very small amount of cucumbers. My carrots are huge (ps fresh picked carrots are mind blowing). The tomatoes had to be torn up cause they are all bad…oh well it’s the one steady thing I can buy here! The corn is frickin hilarious. When you look at my farm from the side it’s like this little slop of great corn and little baby corn. Haha. The potatoes are doing…well, lets be real, I haven’t looked. The green peppers are turning red- YUM! I do believe the beans will survive through anything. My peanuts are rocking along and most exciting of the month- my sunflowers are just beautiful and big and crazy! I think that’s everything…oh I have this monster pumpkin vine growing out of nowhere in my courtyard, it’s grown the length of the courtyard and now is deciding if it wants to grow out the door (a bad choice because I’ll have to kill it) or into the choo (another bad choice cause it’s the bathroom…)!

So aside from dealing with my farm and it’s every growing list of needs and attention, I went to one of Mama Witi’s farms for the first time yesterday (just a side note I have been to 5 of them now…like ones that are not near her house). It was on this hill slope and consisted of countless rows of corn all the way down to the bottom. Just she and I went (and the dog…more on that in a minute) with a small bucket of fertilizer and some hoes. I’m thinking that it’s not big deal, just the usual, maybe weed a little, dig up some dirt, whatever. Yeah right. She puts a little bit of this white fertilizer at the base of each stalk and then you basically have to go through each row and re-till the earth up around the bottom of each stalk. So, 8 rows later I was DEAD. I have decided that even if I come back from Tanzania with a sick beer gut, I will have monster arms! Haha.

After Mama Witi (who’s at least twice my age) kicked my ass two times over in the farm, we went to the mgahawa. Dynamics at the shop have changed a lot in the past week. First off, we got these two poor farm girls from another village to come and work there everyday, they even live there! They are about 18 and cute as buttons, but man, I scare them. I guess if women empowerment is going to start anywhere it’s going to be there. Also, Witi is making the mgahawa super “safi” (half assed translation is “nice”). She got a new cabinet for the fried food and some tables and some plastic chairs. She wants a radio but it’s going to cost her 100,000 tsh, which is a lot. I keep telling here that she doesn’t need it to sell food or live so she doesn’t really need it. This usually equals a hissy fit…she’s a brat but I love her….

Because we have there girls working there now I am basically useless. I guess we could say that I have been fired from my job at the mgahawa. Crap, what do I do now?!?!?! Well, I came up with a great idea! (Which actually started before these girls came). I decided to teach Mama Witi to make perogies! Haha. So after the day of farming we went to the shop and I busted out some perogies. Let me just say, I have actually never made them before so it was a little bit of a test run. I fried some onion and threw it in with the potatoes and I think that was a hit…I don’t really know yet, have to stop buy and see what people are saying and wait to see if Witi wants me to make them again, if so CA-CHING! I’m back in a job! : ) Although I will say, making those babies is so much more time consuming and much more work then I ever anticipated, do I really want to make dozens of them everyday…yeah, probably not. Maybe today I will try cinnamon rolls...

Okay, so about the dog. Yeah. I got it and it was cool for about 23 hours. Then on the 24th hour it pooped in my house and I knew that Loki and I could no longer live together. I put the pup in its basket and high tailed it over to Mama Witi’s and dropped her off a little present. I figured that at least it would eat well and her kids would play with it, never did I think that she was going to fall in love with the damn thing. The next day she took it for a stroll around the village after she dressed it in white lace…! Oh man, Mama’s got a new best friend! Now I see Loki when I go to the farm and he is our little escort. The funny thing is that he always follows me around and could give a crap less about Mama Witi. Little rascal, I know where his alliances lie.

Peace Corps came to my site on Tuesday of this week and it was great. I should say Karen, the PC Tanzania doctor, Jackie, the go to girl and Brie, who was hitching a ride back to her village, all came to Ikuna. You know that you are in with your village when Peace Corps shows up to your house and you are wearing some REDICULOUS Tanzanian outfit that your Mama had made for you as a surprise. After some chatting and snooping around my house I took them all to the mgahawa for lunch, and I knew that I had maybe gone a little too far when Witi busted out of the mgahawa wearing the exact same matching outfit and then I proceeded to serve them all because, ugh yeah, my PC experience is a 9-5 at this little hole in the wall making French fries the size of your thumb. Ohhhh classic! (FYI the outfit was two different kanghas sewn together to make matching skirts and tops. The skirt was a Mama Witi original with a tie going up the sides and a bottom that poofs out, like the end of the sleeves on the top.)

Like I said, the life and times! Could love life no less right now. Miss you all. Thanks for reading. It means so incredibly much!

A lovely Tuesday evening, and here I sit organizing my thoughts for some sure to be fun-filled culmination documenting my events as of late or just random snips of sheer madness.

Regina Spektor is blasting away on my little green Mac book, “and it breaks my heart, breaks my heart…” at this point I could agree no less. I mean yes, it’s clichÈ as it gets, but it about sums it up. I feel like I’ve been brain washed, just a tad, into believing that I can really help stop the spread of HIV/AIDS by education alone. I have a strong theory that the brain and the heart are attached, at least mine. So, when I find out that a person I know and love in the village who moved away to become prostitute, leaving their 8 year old child (who I want a mini version of to bring home with me) in the village with their dying mother, has the balls to come back home with AIDS…well, it breaks my heart. This would bum me out no matter what the circumstance, but here’s the biggest kick in the face, this woman was a member of my health club (like one of 12) who went around to other villages singing and educating others about HIV/AIDS…

So yes, a karate chop to my face. KAW POW!?! Batman style. I consider this case strong #2 against the effectiveness of just teaching about sexual health and condom use, monogamy and masturbation. So what’s the POA? Well, of course my wheels are turning at a neuron exhausting level, and this is what I’ve come up with.

First off, I am trying to figure out why just education is not effective. I think it has something to do with the fact that many of these people are living at the flight or fight response of life (okay, to be fair it’s really flight, fight or freeze, but whatever). In this mind of thinking nothing else truly matters except survival in the present.

So, lets say that you are broke; like broke can’t feed your children, broke can’t buy soap to wash your clothes, broke like your neighbors actually shut their doors when they see you coming. This will trigger the flight or fight response. In this situation you need money. You need money fast. In Tanzania it’s illegal to prostitute yourself. The problem is that nobody is enforcing these laws. I would go as far as to say that prostitution is basically a given in this country. Yeah, sadly, if you see a woman at the bar getting drinks bought for her by a man I’d say it’s a 2:3 chance she’s trying to make money. Anyway, you need money fast and prostitution is like selling sluprees in the states, it’s the a quick and easy way to make money, involving basically no skill set, so screw everything that you know and just “git er’ done”…right?

Okay, so maybe that’s one of the reasons why people just check the NULL AND VOID box in their mind when it comes to making “better” decisions about their sexual health, how about another. Speaking again from the woman perspective, as I have basically chosen this as my population for the next 2 years, in Tanzanian women don’t really have a choice. I don’t even want to begin to fathom the number of women raped daily in Tanzania because I think that it would to far more then break my heart, it would obliterate it. Women are expected to not only be the machine that keeps everything together, they are also expected to be the double expresso to keep the driver performing at a high, doling out commands, doing whatever he pleases. In fact, many Tanzanian men have more then one wife, and pretty much all will speak openly about the need for “more lovers then just one.” It’s like I can hear the crack forming, preparing for a drop, crash and nothing more then a broken heart.

Right, these are my two rough theories, but I see, and hear stories of their proof time and time again. I need to figure out what the hell I am supposed to do for the next year and half to “tackle the issue of AIDS” and “adequately fill out my PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) forms” considering I am a PEPFAR volunteer and all.

I am really curious for some input because I might be way too deep into this thing to understand the bigger picture. First, I must admit that I have no idea how to tackle the issue of flight or fight, expect to try and move people into the next stage of thinking. But how do I seriously do this when these people are living in fight or fight? What magical things can I do or bring, say or sing that will help people to not be in survival mode? Well, I got nothing. My only idea to is teach them about the modes of survival, the stages of the brain, how we work and hope a very VERY high degree of understanding occurs. In order to do this I need some handouts that I have left in America so if anyone who knows who Kathy Griffith is or who works with/at Oasis High School in Mount Pleasant would be so kind as to check that out for me….just kidding, I’ve got the internet, it’s already done. But seriously, I could use some input here. How do I show this, teach this, be an example of moving beyond survival in the here and now, especially when I myself feel that way sometimes. ……?!?!

Secondly, I am all about women’s’ empowerment. What does that mean? That means I am all about providing role models, CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS (this applies to men too! YAY for men, I do have faith in all of humanity!), a collective place for women to come together and be women, to feel happy to be born as thus. I want to just make women feel good for being women, and open up a dialogue about why we are awesome, and why we’re not (like when we don’t make a fuss when someone steals our most sacred thing, our body). I know that this is way to big of an idea to be successful in such a short time period, but hell I’m giving it a go with the hopes that I can pass the torch when I am gone.

I don’t want to sound like I have given up all hope and totally abandoned teaching about HIV/AIDS. I haven’t. I still teach, and talk, and make my fuss about how we all need to use condoms, and that is easy. That is the road that PC has so nicely paved out for me, and I will admit that I am using some of their ideas, but really come on guys, I’m over here in my little house, with a rain pounding on my tin roof, sitting by candle light wondering if that lingering smell is my unwashed body or the stink of rats ready to eat my face tonight, and basically, I’m just going to have to do this my own way.

So, that’s this week’s rant. In life news the mgahawa is rocking, but Mama Witi and I are still Witi’s slaves. It’s becoming comical. I can now successfully make every basic Tanzanian dish in express time! Cheers to a grand accomplishment, can finally check that one off the list.

Letters from my students to the students of Elmwood Elementary had reached the states and my students are totally geeked to get a response. They can’t believe that it’s for real. It’s this crazy high just to see them get so excited.

I held a village meeting a few weeks ago to ask my villagers what they want me to do while I am here. I split them up by age and sex and after each group made their list we made a whole composite from most to least important. #1 is, of course, finish building the school so yeah…watch out for some updates on that. haha!

I am getting a puppy on Thursday (after some trials and tribulations) and that will surly be, well…I have no idea what it will be. I haven’t had a dog since I was 7, so it should be interesting, hopefully something random and good.

Well friends, family, neighbors and otherwise, that’s a wrap. In case you were wondering my ESP (Emotional, Spiritual, Physical) is as follows: E, slightly let down, but really beyond the point of expecting anything less, but really still smiling at each day . S, amazing, re-reading “Eat, Pray, Love” and digging it just as much the 2nd time as the 1st (makes me think of Patty!). P, sunburned and very, very tired!

Peace and love flow to you all from my somewhat dented, not so terrible mangled heart!

**UPDATE**

Yesterday I was digging around in my garden/farm/weed pit of crazy and I dug up a raddish larger then my fist! Mama Witi was AMAZED! (And so was I...) Also, my sunflowers are starting to bloom and they are gigantic, most of them are taller then me!

I could not possible love, like or enjoy life any more then I do right now. It's true, at least in this instant.

My life in the village has been jam packed of wazungu fun, complete with an array of guests, a few neighborhood trips, a great Valentine's Day party and a trip to Dar to take care of some Peace Corps business. Also included has been working on some fun projects, attempts at setting up a blog for my students...or at least a photo bucket account, and spending a lot of time trying to really reason this whole "Peace Corps Experience" out.

I don't know much, but I have deduced a few things in the past few weeks of serious contemplation.

One- I work for Peace Corps, this is a J-O-B

Two- I hate real life jobs (I'm still a kid!)

Three- I can do any project/work that I see fit in my village

Four- I have lots of ideas that do not fit the instituted "Peace Corps model for sustainable development"

Five- That doesn't really matter because this is my "Peace Corps Experience" so I just need to do what myself and villagers want

Six- I am starting to wonder about some of the comments that were made to me before I left in regards to the actual motive behind this program

Seven- This doesn't dishearten me because I was never stupid enough to fall into the "Well Golly Jeeze Mom I'm going to go and save the world!" crap

Eight- Ignorance is totally bliss, but I hate feeling left in the dark... I want in the know.

Nine- I will not bring massive amounts of money to my village, it's neither sustainable nor does it reflect my value system

Ten- I love my life, I like my job, I think the people in Peace Corps are great and everything else just lends me to more contemplation.

The wazee writing down their needs at my meeting

Kids at our tree planting

A lotta Mama Witi, a little of me and one of my students

It’s another Saturday night, and per usual, I ain’t got nobody. I just got paid. Now how I wish I had someone to talk to, I’m in an awful way.

Okay, I’m not really in an awful way, it’s just thundering like tomorrow will not come and my roof may crash down upon me at any time. I’m just saying that the loud KABOOM over my head is causing the little jars on my windowsill to fall, and I can see the lightening striking in the midst of the valley outside of my window. Haha, Tanzania in the rainy season, hey this is new!

But alright, whatever, I’m here and I’m soaking wet and covered in mud. It really is Saturday night and I just spent the last 2 hours serving food to a witch doctor. Wait, what? Yeah, serving fried potatoes and tea to some witch doctor. Okay, back track.

REWIND about 4 years. Here we find the last PCV and Witi living together while she is going to secondary school, and the last PCV is finishing up her work in Ikuna, and Mama Witi is rocking the village with her mgahawa (direct translation is café but please picture a small dark room, a few charcoal jikos, pots full of fried potatoes and bread and an endless supply of chai. Oh, and really loud religious music). The last PCV leaves, Witi finishes as far as she can go in school in Ikuna (which isn’t actually finishing Secondary school cause it doesn’t go that far in Ikuna) and Mama Witi closes her mgahawa.

Some months later Witi moves to Nombo, the next town over, to work at a bar. Barmaids are notorious prostitutes in this country, I’m not saying any more then that. After a while I show up in Ikuna, befriend Mama Witi and make the inevitable trip over to Nombo to meet Mama Witi’s daughter. Okay, just what I had expected, some little dinky bar with bad music, lots of beer and ulanzi (the local bamboo moonshine) and a million wasted horny men. I was proposed to more times then I can count in less then 4 hours.

About a month later Witi finally decides that she no longer wants to work at the bar and she comes home with a plan. She is going to get her dad, a police officer in Dar who she hasn’t seen since she was 4 years old, to let her live with him and get some work in the big city because the farm girl life is simply not for her. Okay, that was a great idea for about two and a half months until she finally gave up on finally getting a hold of her dad, and in desperation, decided to move to the booming city of Njombe and work with her cousin at “a bar next to a hotel,” or so I was told.

I was pretty skeptical of the whole silly situation from the get go and after an inquiry of the third degree about what exactly Witi was going to be selling, the only answer that I got from Mama Witi was “Sielewi” or “I don’t understand.” Okay, forward about two weeks after Witi leaves to go work with her cousin, I am giving the arduous task of bringing her a letter from her brother. Because I was only making a day trip to town and I had precious little time to spare I went to the “bar next to the hotel” right away. When I got there it was about 8 am and nobody had ever heard of this bar, just the hotel.

I was mad. As much as I wanted to believe that something is not what it seems, that someone who lived with a PCV couldn’t grow up to sell their body, that somewhere we actually HAVE TO HAVE an impact, I was wrong. After sanding outside of the hotel for a few minutes I got a hold of Witi’s cousin and they came outside, looking like they had just had a long night with their weaves half pulled out of their heads, smudged make-up and coat of filth that after a long night you think only you notice, but if people know to look, others can see it too. I basically couldn’t look at Witi and that was the last time I saw her for a while.

About a month later Mama Witi and I headed out to Iringa for the seminar, which dealt in large part with health and HIV/AIDS in our area. When we got back from the seminar Mama Witi was a lot richer and suddenly Witi was home. Was this seminar the stone that broke the bridge and forced Mama Wito to get Witi to clean her act up? Was Witi just tired of doing this? Who knows.

What I do know is that about 2 hours after getting back from my seminar and finally sitting down I heard a little HODI (“Hey, white kid, open your door!”) and it was Mama Witi ranting about some mgahawa that Witi was going to start in Ikuna, and could I please giver her back all of the money that she gave me to put in a bank account so that she can give it to Witi to buy supplies to start her mgahawa. Okay, sure Mama Witi, if that’s what you want it’s your money…and suddenly SUPER STAR MGAHAWA was born. Or should I say, it came into being with a lot of help from me and Mama. In fact since it’s been open I’ve been cutting, peeling, frying, sweeping, making wall art, washing, serving, etc every day. Along with Mama Witi, who is also teaching, running the CCM (T Zed political party) branch in our village, running a few other groups, and raising 5 other kids.

Where does this leave me? Well, it leaves me cooking potatoes for a witch doctor in the middle of the night during a down pour, which then leads me to running back to my house, slipping countless times in the cold mud, and finally sitting in my living room wondering by candle light how it’s another Saturday night and I ain’t got nobody, I got some money cause I just got paid. Now how I wish I had someone to talk to!

Thank you Mr. Cat Stevens, I feel ya bro.

Kiswahili for the Choo (John)-Mawazo: thoughts, ideas

-Maisha: life

-Ndoto: dream

-Kahawa: coffee

-Watoto: kids

-Nyota; stars

-Wimbo: song

-Lala: sleep

-Magingira: environment/nature

-Dala: Cheap taxi van, usually overflowing with people, pop and pets

-Basi: DONE

Mawazo (Thoughts)

It’s been a fast track running nowhere. The pre-holiday low of laying in my house, watching the rain fill my water tank, marking off the days until vacation begins, to the during holidays explosion of outrageous extremes from baking carrot cake in a rodent infested kitchen, to going to the mountains of Morogoro, to eating pizza, moving the show to the ocean front tent, to barefoot, outdoor discoing the new year away, to enjoying more American food, and drinking much to much Konyagi, and of course the post-holiday low, returning to the village to a mouse infested, wet couch, insanely weedy garden and no oil to light my jiko.

Ah, the road! The journey of a countless inspired affairs, adding miles to the odometer, but in isolation not able to amass a true destination.

It’s difficult to step back and look at the whole picture. Why am I here? What am I supposed to do with this time, these tools, and my constantly growing body of knowledge? In the end, what is the whole picture of my current work in progress? How do I paint a picture when I’m not really sure what the picture is going to look like when I am done? Hell, I don’t know.

Peace Corps, as a government run, PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) sponsored agency, has made sure that my lack of direction has been cleared by a number of goals; definite, measurable and concrete. Because this journal is for entertainment value only, I will not let that value be diminished by writing these goals out. Just know that it involves counting the number of people helped within given deadlines.

In an effort to remind us of the benchmarks that we are to strive towards, Peace Corps held a 2 week long In-Service Training for all the volunteers in the Iringa and Mbeya regions. About 25 volunteers in my class gathered in the town of Iringa, along with their Tanzanian counterparts (who are villagers that we foresee ourselves working with). The seminar was split up into three parts, one was actual IST on starting and executing a project, the second was a piece in PEPFAR and HIV/AIDS education, and the last was the best, a hands on perm culture session that involved making a school garden and a really gnarly compost pile.

It was a long 2 weeks in the big city, highlighted by an outrageous used clothing market, a few great Americanesque nights out on the town, the Masai market (wall to wall shops full of beads and Masai women with their beautiful fabric, XL-earring holes, crazy jewelry and fun bags), delicious bread, the making of one slightly ridiculous movie, befriending the ladies that work their asses off in the hotel kitchen, 5 meals a day, corn on the cob, and of course spending an obnoxious amount of time with Americans.

I guess I didn’t realize that my time in T-Zed would be like every other conquest in life thus far; me trying to do what feels right, what is good for the here and now, but having to somehow make my path converge with the seared out highway that marks “my goal.” What happened to taking the road less traveled? Does such a thing seriously exist? My doubt on the subject is beginning to grow; another pinch of cynicism to my spoiled brew of realism.

Aside from leaving me slightly overwhelmed, IST did fill- to overflowing- my idea tank. Ambitions are always great to have, until you realize that as amazing as Mama Witi is (she’s who I brought to my conference) she may not actually do much to help you out when you get back to the village. Damn.

Nilifanya nini kwa mwezi ilopita? (What have I been doing with the last month?)

One whole month of bus rides, and late nights, Kiswahili and an exuberant amount of English (which is extremely hampering my Kiswahili/Kibena skills)!

For starters, I love this country. To be precise, I love the countryside and the women, the crazy fabric, the admiration for our new American president, and the ability to buy fire roasted corn at every bus stand. Ah, Tanzania!

After a muddy Christmas in Njombe, my banking/gathering of wazungu town, myself Greta, Kate and Brie headed out on the 6am bus to Morogoro for a pre-Dar extravaganza, and that it was. We stayed with this education volunteer that none of us had ever met (the beauty of Peace Corps) who lives in an absurdly American house tucked into the mountains, surrounded by mango and banana trees on a Secondary school and college grounds. We got off the bus on the side of the road about a half hour out of the actual city of Morogoro (with all of the Tanzanians wondering what the hell we thought we were doing), and we walked with all of our crap down the road for a while looking for the college. It was the middle of the afternoon with good old Mr.Sunshine blazing down on us. I had my backpack, my refugee bag full of crap and a tent. All of us were a little more then weighed down, and I was defiantly wishing that I had just been born a camel so storing water inside of my body wouldn’t be a chore. Eh, whatever, it was hot and we were tired but Tanzania is seriously breath taking, plus we knew that at some point a dala would pass and we could just hop in and hitch a ride up to the school…where ever that may be.

After a while of walking, sweating, swearing, admiring the mazingira a dala did finally pass. Yes, just pass. The Konda (door man for a mini-van!) stuck his head out of the window, asked us where we were going, laughed at us and kept right on going. After some brief thoughts that this might really be the end, that making it to a totally unknown destination was never going to happen, a Pepsi truck/lorry passed and we flagged it down. The driver just laughed at these 4 white chicks with a bunch of bags walking down a shade less road in the middle of the afternoon and told us to hop in the back, and that we did! The trip up to the school gates was only like 10 minutes from there, but possibly the best lift in country thus far. Anyway, we made it to the school and our friend Justin (he’s in our training class) met us at the gates and walked us up to Luke’s house [Justin and Luke are buddies cause they live in the same region, much like me and all the people in Njombe].

After removing some sweat drenched clothes and taking real life showers in a bathtub/shower combo (with no curtain and a full length extra wide mirror on the wall to give a more grand “Oh damn, is this really me right now” effect) we headed out to a wazungu joint in the big city.

Dragonairs is notorious for its brick stove pizza, extra cold beers, and chill Tanzanianless vibe. Perfect after a long hot day of riding on a stinky bus, walking in the merciless sun and trying to figure out what they hell we’re doing here. The gang (Kate from Arizona but grad of U of M, Greta from NY, but former kids petting zoo farmer, Brie, a jive turkey from Portland who always smells of natural everything and my only remaining Vegetarian comrade and Justin, who’s probably Boston’s only leprechaun) made our way from the village into Morogoro for a chill evening of the above mentioned amenities.

We took a taxi cab (yep, a real life cab) back after a good evening and, due to a lack of sleeping space (i.e. 3 beds and 8 people), Greta and I set up her two man sent on the front lawn and crashed out. I woke up with the Muslim call to prayer at the crack of dawn, with the realization that my pillow was a rock under the tent and my legs were chow for the mosquitoes, but swelling with bliss in Muslim mantra of waking life. What a way to start the day!

The gang had Chai in the village by Luke’s house which was totally adorable. The best Chai places are the ones that have just white curtains for walls. You can sit and eat your choice of fried bread, drink your milky tea and listen to the morning life of Tanzania, feeling as though you are waking and knowing that the rest of this country has already been busy at work for hours. Ha, it’s a hella kick in the butt, but hey that’s a cultural difference that won’t be changed overnight.

After some clothes washing we headed out to hit the city back up for some serious shopping and random sight seeing. It was nice having an afternoon just being girls. We checked out the sweet safi duka after a late lunch of rice/ugali and beans, and we grabbed some snacks, went back to Luke’s to watch movies and pass out. I got lucky with a real life bunk bed stuffed into a closet.

The next morning we got a taxi out of Moro to go to Dar and get there in time for a champagne brunch. Before food we stopped at Megan and Patrick’s (old PCVs) house to drop off our stuff. They are friends of Greta’s and offered to let us crash with them for free. I don’t know what I had imagined their house in Dar would look like, but I can certainly say that air conditioning, cold water, hot showers and EVERYTHING American was not what I had expected. Plus Megan had collected a huge box of goodies for us to share. It was almost mind blowing. Anyway, we went to brunch when it started and stayed long enough to eat breakfast and lunch and drink our share of champagne then boogied over to the mall. Yes folks, the mall. Of all the places that I end up in this third world country it is the mall, shopping for clothes and considering watching a movie. No lies, I had a bit of an anxiety attack, all of these people speaking English walking around like it’s just another day in America Tanzania for eating and spreading incredulous amounts of money, so I called up my friend Idris, who lives in Dar and drives a car, and had him come and pick us up. We went over to another pretty American joint and chilled for a little bit before going to Q Bar, the most notorious prostitution joint in the city.

I think I can speak for all of us when I say that we were amazed at how gorgeous the prostitutes were. It was crazy. I can fathom a million reasons why these women end up doing what they do, but I just can’t see how they can get their conscious to go there or why they don’t try and use their good looks for something else. It’s totally heart breaking and incredibly disappointing seeing these women just got for the quick buck. I understand that being a woman in this country seriously hampers opportunities, but I wish that it didn’t have to be this way for women to live…LIVE here, and by going to the bar and acknowledging that this is what they do there, and still spending money there, are we supporting this discouraging cultural norm?

Ah, anyway, after that we just chilled back at the pad in the AC. The next day we didn’t move basically all day. The 4 of us just stayed in and read O magazine, cooked lunch on a real stove and got giddy over the box of American beauty supplies. In the afternoon Brie meet Megan for yoga and Kate and I went swimming in an Olympus pool overlooking the ocean. How crazy to swim in a pool and look at the ocean, but really absolutely perfect.

The next day we hung in Dar and then headed over to Kipepo, a little private resort on a peninsula. It requires taking a ferry and then a dala to get to and it’s basically wazungu city, but they have bandas on the ocean front and the beach is really clean. Plus you can camp for super cheap and get food and drinks at basically any time. There we met up with almost everyone from our training class and spent a few days celebrating New Years. I stayed in a tent the whole time and it was hilarious and random. One night I woke eating the side of my two man tent because three of us were in it and my friend Meesh was on her back, post-up passed out in the middle, one night I had to clean somebody else’s puke out before getting in, one morning I woke up with my feet half out and so it goes. I can’t even begin to describe how much I enjoyed the beach. The sun and salty water, the waves and random T-Zeds selling beads all day (my future profession). It was glorious! I didn’t want to leave and I can’t wait to go back, I was having such a good time being lazy with all of my peeps!

The sad news is that I did have to leave after grand celebration and random times, but no worries, when I got back to Njo it was cold and rainy and I felt right at home. Haha!

Going back to the village was a lot of build up and anxiety, but in reality kicked ass…well that’s until I tried to get on my bus to the village and found out it was broken down and I now have a flat bed with a canvas top to ride in to and fro. : )

My house was well looked after in my absence, Mama Witi’s sons stayed in it while I was gone. My only troubles were that the hole in my roof leaked lots of rain onto my couch cushions, causing a putrid smell and I have a new mouse problem, but other then that my transition back to the village was seamless.

I was only in my village for about a week before having to bust out again. During that time all I did was farm my time away. What I found out was that when you plant a crap load of veggies and then go away for a while, you come home and find more weeds then you can deal with. That and the fact that Mama Witi and I are doing work for each other, she helps me and then I help her, so my progress on the weeding has been slow. In fact, when I actually left the village only about ½ of my farm was done being weeded but there was really nothing more that I could do with it. I had to leave Ikuna again to go to IST.

IST was what it was. Long, full of too much info, fun, bad, entertaining and boring. That plus my vacation = no time to write a journal, so sorry to all of you guys who have been waiting to know that I am alive! Really, I’m here, just rocking T-Zed like it’s my job or something. I’m actually totally exhausted right now, and I can only imagine why…basically 14 days of being in a classroom learning what I am supposed to be doing here, and trying to remind myself that Peace Corps is not a competition, it’s my experience, my village, my thing and I can do with it what feels right for me.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to getting back to the village today!!! I can’t wait to sleep in my own bed, carry my own water and start my own projects! It’s an exciting and nerve racking time here for sure!

Random stories from the past month

One day during my adventures on the beach I had to go to town to buy my bus ticket. My friend and I hopped on a dala and headed over to the bus stand (which is like 40 minutes away). When we got on I started talking to this Mama about her trip to the US and how she cooked ugali for some Americans, then she got off and this dude got on next to my friend. He got into a fight with the Konda about the price of the ride, he was basically arguing over a dime, and when the driver couldn’t take it anymore he pulled the dala over and started yelling at the guy, who they tried to get out, but wouldn’t budge. Then the Konda ran up to the front of the dala (where I was sitting next to the driver) and opened the glove box. I started freaking out thinking that he was going to pull out a knife or a gun, instead he pulls out a screw driver and attempts to screw driver assult the man out of the dala until my friend and I just got out and then, because the wazungu left the car, everything was suddenly okay and we all got back in and drove away. All of this over a DIME!

The other day, on the way back from IST with all of my Njombe people, my friend Sarah and I decided that we really wanted to buy some corn from out of the bus…guess you should know that in T-Zed you can basically buy anything from eggs to a switchblade via the bus window. So, we got to the stand about 2 hours outside of our town and were asking about the corn from our seats and nobody ever came to the window. About 5 minutes later, as the bus was in motion, I saw a kid on the side of the road selling corn so I “Njo”ed him (Njo is like come here), held up two fingers, screamed run and managed to buy us two cobs of corn out of a moving bus. Magnificent!

Alright, I'm going to wrap this up with just a thanks to my Aunt Marie and my rents for some sweet packages. I have been getting a lot of stuff and it's hard to remember who I've said thanks to thus far and who I haven't so I think I'm just going to stop saying thanks via blog and send ya'll letters : )

Peace and Love and all good things!

Missing you all, even when I hear it's 14 below and I'm busy getting sun burned on the ocean.Don't be jealous. I'm really working here!! Really...

The snow has yet to come and the lawn ornaments never went up, but it’s still Christmas Day in Tanzania and I have to say that all factors taken into account, this Christmas feels as close to Christmas as I could ever hope to get.

As expected, it’s strange being in this far away country for the holidays, but I am still having a blast. One of my good friends made a great point, even though none of us are spending the holidays with our families we are spending them together with this new, amazing, family that we have created. The relationships that we’ve made with each other will last long after we all come back to the states and start that “normal” life that looms ahead of us. So, as much as I missed a tree with lots of fun wrapped presents, and stocking stuffed to overflowing this morning, I was perfectly content to wake up with my friends and proceed to make pancakes and hash browns so my little make-shift family in TZ could have a nice Christmas breakfast.

I just wanted to put up a quick post and let you all know that I wish you a Merry Christmas and a fabulous New Years! I love you all and am keeping you in my heart every day!

Hello friends and family! Sorry that it has been so long since my last post. Things have been CRAZY. First off, I am finally an official Peace Corps Volunteer! Yesss! Secondly, I have moved to my new home! My village is called Ikuna. It is in the Iringa district of Tanzania, in the southern highlands- thats right I am in the mountains! (And yes, it is a little bit cold right now...)

My banking town is called Njombe and that is where I am right now. The internet here is the whip, but I still don't have a working flash drive so all of my fantastic ditties that I have written for you all are still just waiting on my computer...sorry!

Anyway, I will try to give you all a little highlight of what the life and times of Margaret Bidigare have been of recent.

First off, we swore in as official volunteers last Wednesday. Then on Thursday we all boogied off to our sites. There are 10 other new volunteers in the Njombe area so we all traveled together and spent the night in Njombe. The next day we had about 2 hours to do all of the shopping for our new houses that we thought we would have to do. It was pretty ridiculous. Seriously, what in the world are we supposed to buy when we have no idea what is at our house...? Oh, great times. I bought a jiko and some paint...a bed probably would have been a good idea, but thats okay cause my pops made me bring the camping airmatress which has been my saving grace.

SO, My village is FANTASTIC. First off, it's totally just a little farming country village out in BFE. There is not a lot to do or buy and there is no electricity or running water or any of that "good" stuff, but there are a lot of people, I would say like 750 and they are all very excited that I am here. My house is HUGE. I have three bedrooms, a courtyard, a dining room, an outdoor choo and shower and kitchen area. I love it. There have been 3 voulnteers here before but not since 2006 and I am the 1st health volunteer. There is a church, a dispensary, a primary and a secondary school. It is really beautiful. The weather right now is a lot like Michigan in the fall…actually the scenery is a lot like MI in the fall as well because there are a bunch of dried up corn fields just chilling out.

When I moved in I left Njombe with my Village Exec. Officer, his name is Sambanye and he’s pretty cool. He speaks no English, in fact nobody in my village speaks English. They all speak Kiswahili and Kibena, the trial language which I now get to learn! Yesss!

Anyway, Sambanye and I took the public transportation to the village which was totally insane. The only “bus” that goes from Ikuna to Njombe is this crazy van that is driven by a man named Sembula. He’s old and funny and thinks I am crazy, especially when I just showed up with a million bags and a bunch of random house crap that pretty much filled his bus to the brim, but wait, we still had about 20 other people in it…hahaha. Oh Tanzania! The ride is about 2 hours, give or take, through the mountains and it’s beautiful/scary (Tanzanians should NOT talk on their cell phones while driving…oh man).

When we got to my house it was totally EMPTY. Seriously, not even a chair. Well, I guess I was a little lucky in the fact that a clothes line was still hanging in the courtyard, but really that was it. The inside of the house is painted all fun with dog prints from the previous volunteer so even though my house is empty is feels homey. There were three women there trying to help me figure out what in the world I should be doing. It was cute. They helped my get water from the spring fed well down the way (seriously, it’s a little cut in the mountain that I am getting water from) and they cooked me dinner : )

Since I have been here I have just been meeting all types of great people, trying to make a home, hanging out, and learning Kibena.

My best bud in the village so far is totally Malisalina, she is like 25 and has the most adorable 4 year old daughter- who absolutely loves me and calls me sister Margaret. It’s sooo cute. I have also meet some good teachers, learned a lot about the previous volunteers and basically just chilled.

I came to town yesterday to buy some essentials for my house and I am actually feeling pretty excited to get back to the village. I have SO much more to say but I don’t know how much longer the internet is going to be working and I really would like to post my NEW ADDRESS

This is not actually MY address, my friend Jess is lending me her PO Box for a while, but have no fear, anything that you send me WILL GET TO ME. When you send stuff please address it as follows: (and put AIR MAIL on it…)

Jessica Clark, Peace Corps Volunteer

c/o Margaret Bidigare

SLP 917

Makambako, Iringa

Tanzania, East Africa

Don’t ask why…I promise it will work and I am basically dying for mail.

I told my mom that I would post some ideas of things to send me if you are interested in sending stuff so here goes:

Solar Charger (for I pod and phone)

Fun “home” stuff

Pictures!

Gum…

Things that smell good (hahaha!)

Lotion

A new flash drive!!!

That’s really all that I’ve got…I like to keep it random.

Listen, I love you all and I miss you lots and I hope that you try to call me or send some love. I have 3 bedrooms so KARIBU VISITORS!!! I promise, I will buy a bed for you…they are crazy cheep here : )

Well, it’s been like a month since I’ve posted and I’m sorry to say but my flash drive is broken and it’s really hard to be a fun writer when I’m sitting in an internet café wondering how much longer I have on the computer…

Anyway! I just wanted to give a quick little summery of the events as of late:

Here goes in bullet fashion. Always the best!

-I went on an African Safari with the rest of the training group a few weeks ago. It was really cool. I actually used an American style toilet and didn’t know what to do. It was funny. We saw basically all of your safari animals with the exception of the infamous lion. And when asked by a Tanzanian why we didn’t see a lion I busted out some sweet Kiswahili and told him that it was because the lion was sleeping with me…Oops. (Yeah, I was trying to say that he was asleep but whatever)

- On that note, I have finally finished my language learning classes and I have no idea how did, but it’s all pretty inconsequential anyway! YES!

- We all left Kilosa for a while to go to shadow a current volunteer in the field and then for site announcements in Dar es Salaam. Basically in the last week I have ridden a bus from Kilosa to Morogoro, then 2 days later from Morogoro to Mpwapwa, the from Mpwapwa to Kibakwe, then a few days later I rode bikes with Tony (that will be explained in a second) from Kibakwe to Kinketi (like 1 hour…and sorry it’s all spelled wrong), then the next day walked/took a lift in a truck back to Kibakwe, then the next day a bus from there back to Morogoro where I find myself now! I feel very well rehearsed in traveling…which is so crazy I cannot even try to convey it right now…really. I’ll save that for later…but please, just imagine riding along at full speed over dirt roads trying to to focus on whip lash…hahaha, whilst being smooshed up again a million other bodies, babies, animals, bags, whatever.

-Anyway! So, Did I mention that we are a training group of 46, because hey guess what, we are a training group of 46 and out of all of those people only one of us went to go and shadow alone. Guess who the lucky winner was!?!?! Me, duh, I’m always a winner. So, no lies I was bummed out and sad that I was going to have to spend a week with some people that I didn’t even know and not have any of my new rafiki around to hang with. Oh, PS I shadowed a couple. Well, I have to say that I had a totally AMAZING time, I have to say it not just because Tony is sitting next to me right now, but also because it’s true. Tony and Carla (it’s what we call them…haha) are really super cool people. They have a really great house, which they have made to be great, and they are awesome hosts. We had good conversation, STELLAR food (including ample baked goods), totally chill out time, we saw a bit of a soccer game between some teachers from their school district and another, and I got to meet a whole bunch of people. Including both of their counterparts, Mama Dirty, the Mzee who cuts hair in his shaky 2nd floor, and many many more. On Wednesday Tony and I ride bikes to visit this kid Ben, I met him for a second when our bus passed by earlier in the week and he came out with his owl on his arm…by the way, Tanzanians are terribly scared/superstitious of owls, hahahaha.

-Visiting Ben, well I have to say that it was kind of an unexpected adventure, but Carla wanted me to see what it is like for a single volunteer who is living basically a totally different life- i.e. having to fight for water, having no other English speakers around, living in a house that doesn’t really have too many “systems.” I wanted to check it out too, of course, so when I got there I wasn’t really surprised that Ben’s house was totally different. He’s a great person and we basically just sat and shot the shit about life and all of the horrible insanity that is going on in his district right now ( I won’t get into that because it’s just not the right venue for this kind of stuff). Anyway, his owl is a baby and he has owl flying practice every night so I got to watch that while a bunch of Tanzanian kids sat around laughing at us. It was great. Then we cooked beans and rice until midnight, drank and had a dance party with the bats. It was good fun.

The next day two little boys named Casey and Casteli came by. Casey is deaf and mute and Casteli is really little, like maybe 5. They are super tragic life stories that I don’t even want to share here, but basically they hung out for like 3 hours, eating the left over beans and rice, playing some games, but basically just hanging out while Ben and I got our crap together to et back to Toney and Carla. They were so fucking adorable and it’s really hard to think about what kind of sustainable impact any of us can really have when our first instinct is just to feed the kids and make sure that they have clothes on their backs. Ahhh, anyway!

So Ben and I tried to ride one bike all the way back to Kibakwe and that was a horrible, funny, silly idea that just ended up in us catching a ride in the back of a truck, hahaha- thank whomever for the truck! When we got back to C&T’s we all just chilled, ate, talked, looked at some pics, and crashed out because we had to catch the 5:45 bus out of Kibakwe and into Mpwapwa so that we could have tea with Matio (a really fantastic Tanzanian) and then T&C and I could catch the bus into Morogoro- where I find myself right now, tired and not really looking forward to going back to Dar. It’s so funny, I was kind of dreading going to shadow alone, but now I’m SO happy and I feel Luck as Hell (yet again)!

Ah, life I have so much more to say and no more time. I love you all. PLEASE write me, PLEASE call me you need to dial 0255783951937, that’s it!

Thank you all for the feed back, I thrive on it, and I promise to try and post the much more fantastic journal that I have saved ASAP!

Peace and Love, as always!

This happened when we had to go to the radio station...it was all too much fun.

This is what we do in class

This is me giving my friend Andrew a haircut...hahaha, I don't even know how to cut hair.

So this is a random picture my buddy Sarah took of some Mosai farmers...it's a GREAT shot, but the guys weren't too happy.

July 16, 2008 (Wednesday)

Oh Tanzania.

A few nights ago I couldn’t sleep. Why? Because I had “It’s getting better all the time…better, better, better…” running through my head. I was smiling too much thinking about how life is getting a lot easier here and also laughing because it made me think of Steve Bidigare, his love of the Beatles, and all of the BBQing that is probably going on in my backyard right now with the Garfield gang and Bidigares.

Ah, anyway, I just really wanted to emphasis that everything here is totally amazing. By totally amazing I mean, the other night I ate a fruit with dinner that I didn’t even know existed (it’s called Stafeli) and it was by fa,r the best fruit my lips have ever known.

I have been meeting a lot of great people on my way to and from school these days. The other morning I had this pair of middle age women in tears when they asked me where I was from and I told them that I was from Tanzania. What can I say? It’s good to stretch the Kiswahili skills to the max because then I had to explain why I’m from Tanzania, where I was BORN (which doesn’t necessarily mean where I’m from) and what in the world I am doing here…it was a good 7 am warm-up before school, to say the least.

I have finally met everyone who lives at the bottom of my hill. I guess that I should explain that I live at the top of this huge side stoop/hill before you get to one of the mountains. We have a neighbor on each side of the house and then it’s almost ½ way down before there is another neighbor, and when you get to that point there is a whole little neighborhood gang. I guess the people with money and cars live at the top because people without cars probably wouldn’t want to try and get all the way up here a million times a day. Anyway, every morning there are these two mzee (elders) who are chilling on a straw mat, like mid way down the hill. Every morning I “Shikamoo” them (what you say to old people) and they sometimes hear me, sometimes not, I don’t know but I think the man is blind…Well, the other morning I totally freaked them out by walking over to their straw mat and shaking their hands and telling them all about me and who I am and what I am doing and then actually kind of understanding their questions. I felt really good to finally just get it done and meet these people that I know I will see EVERYDAY until I leave Kilosa.

Most of my great run ins have been with kids. The ones on my hill are stellar. They will come up to me and hug me, and if they are really little ( like 2 or 3) they will put their arms up for me to swing them into the air. Hahaha, I can’t even imagine what their mamas think when they are watching me from afar. I have been teaching all of the kids who call me Muzungu that I actually called Margaret. Well that is great except for one huge flaw in the plan, now a whole slew of kids are constantly yelling “Margarite!” When they see a white girl. Hahahaha. Well, I tried.

Today walked a 7 year old girl to school named Gifti who lives at the bottom of my hill. She was totally adorable in her white button up shirt, blue skirt, and loved Mary Janeish shoes. She was carrying a broom and a Korie Oil jug full of water, so I helped her our by carrying her stuff and holding her hand and trying to chat it up with her in my terrible broken Kiswahili. I told her how she reminded me of my cousin Anna who lives in America and she laughed. I will just pretend that she really knew what I was saying and thought that the idea was a stretch.

Aside from meeting a bunch of random kids and mzee, I have been spending a lot of time with Myjuma. Oh man, she is so classic. I want to box her up and send her to America because she is thus far the most honest, true, hardworking and wonderful person that I have met. Seriously, the girl is 15. She has been working for Mama K since January. Her family lives kind of far away in Singida. Not only does the girl wake up every morning at 5 am (after she’s been up until at least 11 doing dishes), but I don’t think that she is every actually allowed to leave the house. She is kind of like a Cinderella and I totally hate it all for her (because she doesn’t hate it, she never whines, or rolls her eyes, or refuses to do something…she just does what she has to do, EVERYDAY). Honestly though, I don’t think that she actually ever leaves this house. I have never seen her at the market because Mama has a lot of her stuff delivered here, and she is here every single time I get home- no matter what time it is, no matter what day it is, she is here.

So, basically, I have been coming home from school early just to chill out with Myjuma, and by chill out you must picture the following scene:

It’s like 7pm and it’s dark. Myjuma is outside in the back cutting up something for dinner while chickens run amuck, a couple of cats lurk about and 3 of boniest looking dogs ever, whine for food. I usually come out and sit on the green bench next to the jiko while Myjuma is cooking and we will talk about our day, our lives and usually revert to singing. I will sing “Build Me Up Buttercup” and she will sing a church song, or we will look up dirty words in the Kiswahili dictionary, the other night we named the cats Simba and Shagabagala. Last night I wrote a song about mosquito nets (to be performed on MATI day…) and then I sang it to her. We basically just sit and make jokes about Mama and Parsons. I told her that I actually understood everything that everyone was saying, but I just don’t like to speak very much and she about died with laughter.

The other day I gave her ½ of my Twix because she didn’t know what choklati was…and she wasn’t just yanking my chain to get some candy, she really had no idea. Basically, Myjuma rocks. She told me today that she is sad that I am going to be gone on Saturday and most of Sunday! I feel like if this story were any more heart warming, it could be turned into a Lifetime special, but really, she is so amazing and I wish that I have a large enough Kiswahili vocab to let her know that because all women should know when they rock.

CBT news:

Well, this week has been a killer for the CBT of Manzesa A. It started out rough when Meesh jacked up her knee dancing and was unable to leave her house until a car came to pick her up on Tuesday, and then I crafted her a leg splint using my Leatherman (thanks dad!) and my natural sweet skills (hahahaha!). Mary got a little bit of pink eye on Tuesday. Laura and Sarah are both having “unmentionable” problems, and I am hanging tight. Because everyone has been sick, broken or other wise, this has not been of the most productive weeks ever in school. Thankfully on Tuesday we all had to go to MATI for a meeting with all of the health educators on peer education, which made the day worth while. Whilst at MATI I gave a kid a haircut because he let one of the barbers in town do it, and well is was awful. No worries, it still looks like hell, but at least he isn’t going to fly away or sprout a mullet (That was haircut #3 since departure, on Thursday Dave, the mzee of the group, wants me to cut his hair…oh man, I love it).

Today we all went and saw a witch doctor. It was pretty much what I had imagined, expect for the part where I am sitting right behind the man and his cow hide covered ass is 6 inches from my face the whole time…sweet. Really though, it was interesting. Apparently he believes in God and witchcraft at the same time, and he is smart enough to know that he doesn’t have a cure for AIDs, but stupid enough to think that he knows via his divine powers who does and doesn’t have AIDS.

Today we also had our interviews with the man that is in charge of placing us at our sites for the next 2 years. I have no idea what I have gotten myself into, but I think that I can expect to be living out in the middle of nowhere, near or on school grounds, in a very very hot place. Just a guess. I want to leave it up to fate more then what I think I want, so I just told him to put me wherever he wants. Haha! It’s more exciting that way.

I don’t really have much more CBT news to share. This is the week of many a mid test and it’s a little nerve wracking, but whatever, I am trying really hard, and that’s all that really counts.

On Saturday we are going to Mkumi National Park and spending the night. It is going to be super fun for more reasons then I can even begin to go through, but expect a full account afterwards.

On Sunday my little bro is turning 20. (HAPPY BIRTHDAY TOM! I can’t believe that you are going to be 20…what in the world is going on? ) So if you see him around wish him a happy birthday for me. : )

Afrika is beautiful, I leave my house every morning and watch the dawn fog lift from the valley below me and I think…am I seriously here?

Then I see a flat bed loaded with people flying down the dirt road and I remember, yeah, I am really here!

Peace and Love, I hope to attach pics soon!

Truly, I suggest that you read this in installments. I am sorry; I have yet to master brevity.

July 7th

Wow, have I really been gone for almost a month!?!? Time is flying by, and yet it all moves soooo S-L-O-W-L-Y. Oh, I have so much to share!

First off, I hope that everyone had a wonderful 4th of July. Mine was totally random and fabulous in its own quirky sort of way.

Since I last left off things at Mama K’s went from manageable, to great, to horrible and now everything has calmed down. Where to begin? Well, on Wednesday after I posted my last blog I came home to yet a new face in the house! Was it going to be good or another totally awkward surprise? To my delight it was a GREAT surprise. My mama’s oldest daughter, Patricia, had come in from Dodoma. She is 24 and I don’t think that she speaks much English, but she is FANTASTIC. She laughed her ass off when I tried to speak Kiswahili, but it was in a much more loving and “awww, how cute” kind of way then any that I have yet experienced. Mama busted out the camera and took all types of pictures and it was great. I can not even begin to describe the total hilarity that life quickly becomes when your Mamma Jamma is standing over you, whilst you and all of your new brothers and sisters are eating dinner, with a camera held up to her eye zooming in and out like a person who only uses a camera on very special occasions, meanwhile you are sitting there eating ugali (this crazy semi solid, non-tasting bread like mixture) with cooked okra that is the consistency of snot, with your hands, looking like a total fool…what do you do? Do you stop and look up and smile? Do you just pretend that she isn’t there? Or do you just bust out laughing because it is all too crazy to even begin to process. I busted out laughing, which was the perfect que for everyone else to cut through the crazy tension building up. Oh it was fun.

On Thursday I have no idea what I did, that feels like a million years away. Somewhere in there Patricia and Patrick left to go back to work and school and I was left here with Priscilla and on Friday Mama K’s sister and her two younger kids came. Initially, I was thinking that I would love Mama’s sister because she seemed to be just as scared of her as I was. That might be true, but on Saturday night I sat in my room and listened to Mama’s sister and my Bibi sitting outback, cooking dinner and totally talking 2 hours worth of crap about me. Man, I don’t think that I have ever felt my blood pressure rise that much. I was so hurt and angry and ready to rip into everyone, so I decided to sing out my frustrations. It was fantastic. They didn’t know what in the hell to do with all of that, and I could really care less what they had to say about me after that. When they were sitting around talking a bunch of crap about me (like how it’s crazy that I love chapatti and that I drink beer, and how they don’t understand why I am here and how stupid I must be to know be proficient in Kiswahili) I thought that my Mama was sitting out there with them and it was really bumming me out, to say the least. Well, I found out that Mama wasn’t even here, she was in town at a meeting. Let me just say, the amount of relief that I felt when I realized that she wasn’t there makes me love her from now until the end of time. Seriously, the next day I gave her a big hug and just smiled. She really is a great person, I just need to be less intimidated by her.

So, that has been the news on the home front. On Sunday morning everyone left and now life is back to normal. I have been able to spend some time talking to Myjuma and that is always great! I actually have her one of my bracelets last night when we ate dinner together.

News in the classroom: Well, Neema is now really just a good friend and no longer our teacher. My Kiswahili skills have come to an abrupt halt. Shit. Last week we had a really long conference with a Tanzania doctor about HIV/AIDS medications and it was long and totally tedious. This is information that is not important and pretty hard to understand in English, let along English with a Tanzania accent…yikes.

On the 4th Meesh organized a sports day for everyone and it was perfect. We had a relay race, volleyball, ultimate Frisbee and soccer. Teams were predetermined at random and everyone had a few Tanzanian Peace Corps workers on it. Oh man, it was so funny. First we all sang the National Anthem to a flag that one of the PCTs brought with them (thanks Greta!), then we all took part in a relay race that involved a raw egg, spinning, dressing in hats and kongas, running backwards with buckets of water and throwing a Frisbee. I must insert here that the Tanzanians had never heard of a relay race before, and we have a whole slew of neighborhood kids and adults watching all of us crazy people in the middle of nowhere running around with raw eggs screaming…Needless to say, it was a great success, not only the relay race, but the whole thing. At the end we amassed a HUGE tug-of-war and everyone was pretty pumped up. Just as we started pulling on the rope we all heard a huge SNAP and everyone fell flat on their asses, because the rope broke in half. Hahahaha, apparently you can’t tug-of-war with a rope that has been tied together, Well, you live you learn, and everyone ends up with grass on their ass. (I would say that at this point all of the Tanzanians think that we are totally insane, but they are loving it just as much as we are).

On Sunday I did my laundry and then headed over to my friend Sarah’s house to pike her up so that we could go and learn how to make Keki (cake) at Mama Kondo’s. When I got to Sarah’s her mom, Mama Haule, was happy to see me, so we danced a little in her living room (if that is what you want to call it). Mama Haule has 4 house gilrs, who for some crazy reason love me and they always ask Sarah to bring me over, so just as we were about to leave the house girl Winnie asked me to come back the next day for dinner! Oh man, I love Tanzanians! I mean I can’t really even have a conversation with you, but you want me to come for dinner, which really just means that you will have to do more work and cook more food…how more unbelievable could a person get? Maybe it’s just me, but I think that is some raw humanity there.

All of my CBT met at Mama Kondo’s to learn how to make chocolate cake over a charcoal grill, well it’s what they use as a stove/oven/all purpose food cooking, but it’s basically a grill. Let me tell you, that was the most satisfying cake that I have ever made! Yeah, it was a little burnt, nope we didn’t have frosting, sure it was cut up in little squares within 10 minutes of coming off the grill and totally gone after 30 minutes, but man it was good. Not only was the cake awesome, but so was the view. Mama Kondo lives on the top of the hill and she has this great back porch/brick patio that they do everything on. By everything I mean cook, converse, listen to the radio, watch chickens poop, and look out over the back of the mountain into the valley below. It is totally amazing (random fact, Mama Kondo has 160+ chickens, some cows, dogs, a cat and no sheep, even though Kondo is Kiswahili for sheep, hahahahaha). We also managed to have a little dance party to “Regina, Regina” some Kiswahil song that we have changed the words to so that they are now “Sambusa, Sambusa” (Sambusa is a crazy breakfast food/mini pie). Meesh’s million brothers and sisters and house girls loved our crazy Mazungu dance party, lets just say that we all made some new friends, and her little brother Aphise, who is 11, might have a crush on me, but he could just be using me because I let him play games on my cell phone…

After we made cake Sarah and I left to go to town and grab some lunch and a few beers with some of our other friends from villages farther out of town. We snagged our friend Luke and then headed over the DANGEROUS BRIDGE to meet up with the rest of the Magomeni CBT (Katie, Katherine- who is totally my cousin Liz, Teri and Kori) and attempted to climb one of the many mountains. Well, we got about ½ way up before the pathway ran out and we had to go back, but it was fun to go on a Safari after drinking a few Safaris, and to get another totally amazing view of the whole town. The bush did get a little prickly, but we were all totally fine, plus it was a BEAUTIFUL day, so what else are a bunch of 20 year olds going to do?

After pseudo mountain climbing we made our way back to the bar and things spun rapidly out of control.

We ran into some of the Language and Cultural Facilitators (LCFs) who may have had a few to drink and just had to laugh at their serious misuse of American slang…oh it was classic. I will say that my Kiswahili is at its best after I have had a beer, and I totally told a man in Kiswahili that he had blue eyes (as if he didn’t already know…) and that earned free round! Score. Note: If you are sure that you are safe, always bust out sweet Kiswahili skills, it could earn you free beer. Suddenly it was dusk and a whole gang of PCVs had amassed. My friends from Magomeni had a really long walk home and I was getting worried but then Parsons (Mama’s secret lover) swooped in, never missing a beat- or a beer at Jema View Point, and ended up driving them home…in his Barbie sided Honda. Hahaha! I may have has too much fun, and probably won’t be drinking that much whilst in Kilsosa again, but I really had to vent some frustrations that were still lingering from listening to my Bibi and Aunti saying all of those mean things about me the night before. No worries, I made it home safe and sound, Cheeki Manfred, the organ player at the church, who’s wife works at the prison, rode his bike next to me while I walked home, just to make sure that I made it home safe, thus is the Tanzanian way.

Today the new PCV of the week came. His name is Rashaad and he lives in the “deep south” of Tanzania. He pretty much didn’t know what to do with himself when he came to our classroom on Monday morning to find a bunch of ½ sleeping, totally slap happy crazy girls sitting around, attempting to learn Kiswahili but really just laughing at all of the craziness of the day before. (i.e. I told them how on Sunday morning I woke up and looked out my back window, and to my great surprise was oh so blessed to see, not a full moon, but close- my Bibi, totally naked, sitting on the chicken coop stoop, bathing her blind self…! Yes, that happened). After we sat around for a while, we went to our usual 10 am Chai and then came back to class, all took naps, went to lunch, chilled out and learned a little and then we all headed over to Sarah’s house to watch her get her hair did at Mama Haule’s.

It was fun, we all sat around and watched the sun set and Rashaad came over because Mama Haule is his host Mama from last year. It is really inspiring to see the people who have only been here for a year be able to sit and chat, kind of, with the locals in Kiswahili…someday! After a few hours of tedious hair braiding we all drank sodas c/o Mama Haule and then we had dinner! Totally impromptu for most of the gang but you can never go and visit a Tanzania and not eat food, it just doesn’t work that way.

After dinner, I was escorted home by Rashaad, Amy (the other PCV of the week) and Mary. We gotto my house and Mama invited everyone in for a hot second and somehow Rashaad managed to arrange a dinner for all of us on Wednesday! Hahaha!

After everyone left I started working on some Kiswahili and now I am here, wondering what in the world happened last night, how come I suck at Kiswahili and how did I end up with such a sweet life? : ) It’s good!

July 8th

One month! Woohoo! And, another fabulous day in the life of this Tanzanian girl. To start the day, I had a fricking omelet for breakfast, come on- sweet life in the mansion! Then I walked to class and ran into none other then Cheeki Manfred himself, yes that is really his name, and I do suggest that you say it aloud because it is worth hearing! Anyway, Cheeki was on his way to buy come mchele at the market so that his wife could cook breakfast (mchele is just uncooked rice). After a little run in with Cheeki I made friends with a primary school teacher and did a lot of Kiswaenglish speaking. It was a good way to start the day.

We were only in class for like ½ n hour, enough time to do absolutely nothing, when Big Boy (on of the LCFs) and his CBT rolled up to pick us up and drive us over to Magomeni, where we meet with a few other classes and spent the whole day with one of the Peace Corps Medical Officers cooking authentic Tanzanian food! We started cooking at 9:30 AM and finally sat down to eat, on our straw mats, at 1:45. DAMN, cooking is one hell of a process! We cooked ugali, rice, beans, spinach, tomato/onion salad, pilipili- a hot sauce, and chapatti (and meat, but I had nothing to do with any of that so I am not counting it!).

The whole day was hilarious, with little construction, little/no direction and a whole bunch of kids sitting around while about 5 of us really cooked while the Tanzanians tried to instruct us, it was nothing short of totally shagabagala- chickens pecking at the rice, flower from one side of the “yard” to the other, a lack of water, a crew of townies watching us and every hour or so one of the LCFs saying “ Okay now, who is in charge of ________” which hadn’t even been started yet.

When we finally sat down to eat, amongst charcoal ashes, chickens and cucumber peels, we were all so hungry and tired that it didn’t really matter. I totally feel confident in my cooking skills, but defiantly learned today that I will not be cooking anything to that extreme ever again. No, never.

After cooking and eating, talking and playing we went back to the classroom to “process the day.” Which basically means that we sat around until Neema said that we could leave. Then I met some super sweet tailor women who work in town and they yelled at Rasheed for teaching me what a wowowo is (it’s Kiswahili for a big ass). It was pretty funny, I think I am going to try to talk to them everyday because they know that we are just learning and they like to force us to speak Kiswahili- which I need right now.

After that I came home and chatted with my Meema! (and I apologized for being totally out of it when she called on Sunday night…sorry again mom!) and then I went out and talked with my Mama for a while. Today was the first day that I made her crack up because I knew what kiti moto was (it’s pork) and she though it was great that because I didn’t know how to say pig I just used the term kiti moto!

Tonight’s gourmet dinner featured rice, okra, mchicha and fresh picked papaya. (Mama and Myjuma also eat ate a fish, including the head, and I learned not to ask if the fish was good because then they will try to make you eat it…hahaha, no thanks, not when I can still see it’s smiling face). After dinner I tried to make conversation with Myjuma which is probably the most crazy thing ever for her because I look like a grown up and sound like a fricking 5 year old. Yes, I did ask her if she had to feed the pork tonight, because I still don’t know the word for pig. I should probably work that out…soon.

Anyway, tomorrow night we are having everyone over for dinner and drinks and my CBT is pretty pumped to come over to the mansion of awkwardness and share in my solitude, it’s like a mini vacation from constant staring. I am excited for everyone to come and hope it is a great success.

Aside from having a dinner here tomorrow, I also need to find all of the ingredients to make a chocolate cake for Thursday at MATI for the whole PCT crew and my CBT needs to finish yet another song (the Tanzanians have been requesting an encore performance from Manzesa A), and we need to do some presentation about cultural matters...oh and I need to learn some more Kiswahili and mail some letters and hey, post this blog! Haha, strange how no matter where you are there is always a list of things to do.

Things in the mansion of Mama K are getting better all of the time, and I am so glad that I am here. In so many ways I am starting to understand how I ended up here, and I am happy, even if it wasn’t very easy to get to this place in my heart.

Life is beautiful and I miss and love you all. Thank you so much for the comments! Keep posting them, it means the world to me to know that you’re reading and traveling along with me!

July 9th and 10th, 2008

So, the internet wasn’t working today when I went to post this journal, and if it wasn’t already long enough, I decided to make it longer. What can I say? Writing is my release.

I promise, if you keep reading you will be entertained (because this is my flipping life in Africa, duh!...emphasis on the sarcasm which, FYI is lost in translation between me and the Tanzanians).

I can’t even believe that yesterday was an actual day in my life. It was totally ABSURD for soooooooo many reasons. First of all, I went to school, nope, that’s really not to crazy, basically the norm in my life these days, waking up at 6 am under my blue mosquito net, to the sound of dogs getting ready to kill each other so that they have something to eat while Myjuma pours water from one bucket to the next, to the next, to then dumps it on the ground and then starts all over again- what in the world she is doing with all of that water at 6 AM is still a mystery…

ANYWAY, I went to school and we actually spent the morning doing some Kiswahili exercises, and then we went to Chai at 10. I was thinking that we might actually have a day that was productive, but I was wrong. After Chai I went to the post office with Sarah while Mary, Meesh and Laura went to the bank to change money, and Neema went to the classroom. When Sarah and I got back to the classroom nobody else was there so we sat around and waited for the gang, who rolled up just a few minutes later. But where was Neema?

Oh life’s great daily mystery. Where could she be? We all went and did random things and all that she had to do was walk back from K Town, in theory she should have been waiting for us. Taking into account that she does walk at ¼ the speed that we walk and the fact that we never have any idea what in the world she is doing, we decided to just chill out and wait for her. Mary went inside her house (because our school is basically at her house) and took a little nap and when Neema came back we decided to start working on our presentation for MATI day (the next day). We came up with this totally out of control magazine, that was neither P.C. nor really informative, but it took us all the way until lunch to do.

At lunch we split up because ½ of the group wanted “kiti moto” (pork- which is like asking for drugs because there are so many Muslims) and Sarah, Laura and I don’t eat meat. So, we went our own ways and ate lunch and my gang got back to the classroom to find it was still void of other human life. We decided it was a perfect time to take a little nap, and about 20 seconds from me reaching REM I got a phone call from Neema which went something like this:

Me: Hello?

Neema: Where are you?!

Me: We went back to school

Neema: WHERE?

Me: We went back to SHULINI

Neema: WHERE??

Me: WE ARE IN THE CLASSROOM

Neema: We have NGO meeting!

Me: When?

Neema: Now!

Me: Where?

………

That was when she ran out of phone credit. About 20 minutes later I got a message from Meesh saying that we needed to go back to town and meet at Mama Kondo’s Duka. So, I woke up Laura and we shook Sarah out of her serious nap time, and we all ran up to Mama Kondo’s shop. When we got there everyone was waiting., including all of the other CBT group and the people from the NGO. Um yeah, thanks for the for the warning guys!

So, we had a meeting with this totally random NGO in the back alley way with a big ol’ Mama, who seriously scares me with her huge red eyes, and crazy no bra wrap around purple satin top. It was ludicrous. Not only that, but also the fact that Mary, Meesh and Neema never actually got to eat their kiti moto because it took so long to cook they had to wrap it up in newspaper and throw it into a black plastic bag, and they brought it to the meeting! Oh man.

After the meeting, we went back to class and by then it was 4 so we just finished our presentation and the cranked out a song for MATI day. It was “Oh MATI Day” to the tune of “Oh Happy Day.” What can I even say about that? Nothing.

After the song, I went home to help cook food for the feast that was to be had at my house. I didn’t do much, just sat out back with a mortar and pedestal the size of my conga drums and smashed up herbs for the rice (and built up my ever growing right arm muscle). A little while later (AKA after a few beers at Jema) the rest of the gang rolled up in classic form. Mama K put on some sweet American hip hop and everyone drooled over my mansion. Seriously, I do have it sweet here. Then we sat and had a beer and laughed and chatted it up until Rashaad made his way up the mountain to my house. He spent some extra time at the bar and I can’t even believe that he made it. It is a good thing that my Mama is in love with him (I think all Tanzanians are because he is a black American man, who doesn’t want to be that?). He brought the ridiculous with him. He made a big show about himself, talked to my Mama’s son on the phone, drank too many beers and then we all feasted on a lot of GREAT food (The spread included spiced rice, chipsi, mchicha, scrambled eggs, meat, pilipili, and oranges! I know, I am being totally spoiled). Parsons also showed up to eat, drink and be merry, and listen to us girls sing our crazy “Oh MATI Day” song.

Around 9:30, which is seriously late here, Mama decided that everyone needed to go home and that Parsons would drive everyone in her car. So, they all piled high in the car and Mama, Myjuma and I sent them on their merry way. As they started driving down the hill I went to close the gate, this huge iron gate with crazy poker spikes on the top, and I heard an awful noise. To my surprise I was holding ½ of the gate (which is at least 100lbs.) because IT BROKE OFF…really, this is true,

So, not only was my home in total shambles, my friends drank every beer in the house, there was a pile of dishes worth at least 2 hours of work, but I had somehow managed to break off half of an iron gate.

This is how I know that Mama K really is golden. She didn’t even flinch, or freak out, or yell, she just laughed her ass off and helped me move the broken gate. Thank GOD she is really that cool.

So, the day was a great success. Meesh offended ½ of a mom’s club by brining pork, Mary’s little sister Zena came back to Mama Chacha’s house, Sarah rocked out her newly wrapped hair did, Laura looked up the word midget in the Kiswahili dictionary, and I broke a wrought iron fence with my single bare hand.

Today was much less eventful. We went to MATI day, saw all of our long lost friends, sang our song, learned about gender roles, drank tea, go envelopes of “walk around” money, got our 3rd rabies shot, and basically just chilled out.

I came home really early tonight and chatted with Mama for a while. Seriously, she is amazing and I never knew it! She is in charge of 2 different women’s clubs, she works, she drives, she takes care of her mom, her kids and on top of all of that, she takes care of me! Yeah, I would say I have taken a total 180 from my first few days here.

Anyway, I ate the best fruit with dinner tonight and I cannot even begin to describe it or how amazing it was in every way possible. I will say that if you ever come to Tanzania you can try the BEST FRUIT EVER, and if you don’t come to Tanzania that’s okay, you’ll never have to know what you are missing! : )

So, I am really done now. I love and miss you all. Again. Today, and basically every day. Until next time, enjoy life on the other side of the equator while I check life out from over here, in Africa, under this totally different chunk of sky.

Peace and love!

Keep the comments comming, I love them!

June 30, 2008

So, I was having a thought as I walked home today. I never really told about my first strange and terrible night at the house of Mama Kabendela, and how I came to realize, within the first 20 minutes of meeting her that I would probably never come to love the women.

Let me start by prefacing this story with another story (hahaha, classic Margaret style, you have no idea how many times I have said that in the past three weeks!).

Well, during the first 5 days that I was in Tanzania I was with all of the other PCTs, we had some training together, had some Kiswahili together, ate together, drank together and basically just hung out. When we arrived in Ilonga, a village near Manzesa, we got off of the bus to a whole slew of Tanzanians who were singing and dancing as a celebration of our arrival (We danced with them a little bit, and a few PCTs were so brave as to join the circle, but it was just a bunch of wazungu looking lost…really, I would say Classic Kodak moment). Then, we ate some food and went to our MOUND of luggage where site announcements for Cultural Based Training (CBT) would be held and we were given the name of the people that we would be staying with. I sat on my bags and waiting with more uncertainty then I have ever felt wondering, imagining, pretending that the rest of my day would not be something crazy and strange. Well, when Josh announced that I would be staying with a Ms. P. Kabendela I initially imagined a young skinny lady, living alone with a house full of kids. To my surprise I was more then 100% wrong, which I have come to find, is actually possible. After sending all of my friends away to their respective new homes, my CBT (myself, Laura, Meesh, Mary, Sarah and the LCF Neema) and I sat in a field waiting for a truck to come back, and pick us up, and take us to our new homes. About 2 hours later we piled the truck high with our belongings, hopped in and made our way over to Manzesa A. When we got here I saw this really old lady standing on the corner and a bunch of kids surrounding her, and I got really excited- Was that my Mama?!?!? (Feeling much like the bird in “Are You My Mother”)

No, that was not my Mama.

We proceeded to make our way past the houses with thatch roofs, past the children playing in the road, past the pig pen, past the outdoor choo, past everything Afrika to a huge cement house with an almost eerie gate and a nicely washed black car in the driveway. I imagined getting out of the car and having a bunch of my new little siblings running out to greet me and my mama coming out with a huge smile on her face and her arms open waiting to hug me and say WELCOME! It must have been the crazy water at Ilonga, probably some left over LSD in the cup or something because that is just a really really really funny dream now.

First of all, nobody even came outside when we pulled up. By nobody I mean the man who drove us there had to yell “HODI, HODI MAMA KABENDELA!”- Which means, hey dude, can we friggin come in?!? Then she came out. I knew almost instantly that the next 10 weeks were going to be much more real then the crazy dreams I had been having. First off, she was wearing something that my own mother would wear. This is not a bad thing, in fact it’s a great thing except for one small fact, I AM IN AFRICA, women are usually wearing multi colored mismatched fabric that makes no sense at all and that mainly looks like a crazed sheet which one can only fathom trying to wrap around your body and make it stay on your body. Anyway, she didn’t hug me, she didn’t smile, she didn’t help me figure out what the hell I was going to do with my bags, or were to put them or give me any clue as to what I should be doing. No, she corrected my Kiswahili. I tried to tell her what my name was and I said lako instead of langu and she corrected me. Our first interaction…how could I ever forget. About 5 seconds later I turned around to watch the car pull away and all of my friends leave me in the Castle of Mama K.

Anyway, after letting me look like a total idiot she yelled for Myjuma to come and help me with my bags and then proceeded to show me around the house, my room, the choo, the bath, the chicken coop, the kitchen. About 15 minutes later Jumapili, one of the Peace Corps workers, came over with money. Yes money, a whole envelope of it. This was, as I will always recall, the first time that I saw Mama K smile. Hahaha, oh I love how no matter who you are, or where you are, money will always get even the toughest of tough to smile.

After some water and strange silence Mama K gave me (on a loan, which I just found out because she recently took it back) a konga to wrap around my waist so that she could drag me over to her neighbors houses…what the hell. All they did was laugh at how I knew no Kiswahili and wonder why I was staying with Mama K, who is their neighbor, but in totally non-Tanzanian style, not their friend. Dinner the first night was so totally awkward that I have actually erased all traces of it from my memory. What I can recall is telling Mama K that I don’t eat meat and terribly offending her because she has killed a pig for me…well, all I can say is that I feel really sad for the pig. At some point during my first evening one of Mama’s brothers came by on a motorcycle to say hello and laughed at me some more, and I was also forced to talk with Mama’s son, Patrick (age 19), and one of her daughters, as well as go and meet Bibi, who lives in a room in the house but is sick, blind and totally dying, and yet still able to laugh at the stupid white girl living in her home. Grrrrrrrrrrreat!

The next morning I just wanted to get the hell out of the house and get to school so that I could see my friends, but that was almost impossible to do ASAP because Mama decided that it would be a FABULOUS idea to take me to the hospital and show me off to all of her co-workers, who also just laughed in my face. Thank you Mama K for showing me your real true colors, I now know what to expect- feeling stupid for the next 10 weeks.

So, that is the story of the first ½ of a day with Mama K. The sick and twisted irony of this tale is that I was sooo excited to get home from school today and write about it, I mean I really was thinking that I was getting into a routine, that I knew what to expect. Lesson learned, It’s never what you expect. Today I got home and there was a girl in the driveway, I thought it was Myjuma (who I have been bonding with so much over the past few days), but it wasn’t. Oh no. It was Mama’s daughter, Pricilla, and hey guess what! Yet another surprise, he son Patrick is also here AND Bibi actually came out of her fricking bedroom AND one of the neighborhood ladies that Mama works with was also around…what the hell?? 2 weeks of almost solitude and now THIS. Just when I thought that we were getting into a routine.

Mama K, Patrick, Bibi and Mama’s friend-Margaret, all sat outside with me and laughed at the fact that I still couldn’t keep up with their Kiswahili, then I was scolded for going out with my friends after class…sorry I missed the memo that I suddenly turned 15 again and had to come home right after school to do my homework…Then I went inside and chatted with Patrick for a while. He speaks a little English, AKA when I am talking to him in my native tongue I say words slowly and repeat a lot and try to use small words, which would be nice if they did the same for me, but whatever. After that I did some homework and felt like a wretched fool for not sitting with everyone, but one can only take so much. Then Patrick and Pricilla prayed the Our Father, Holy Mary, Lords Prayer and the Apostle’s Creed in English and Kiswahili and then we ate- which was worse then my actual first dinner here because Mama was totally horrible to Myjuma the whole time and I really despise that, especially because Myjuma is the only person who has shown me any care or concern in the last 2 weeks, or even tried to really get me to speak Kiswahili or sit with me in silence and just smile at the stars. Yeah, I must say I cannot stand how Mama treats Myjuma.

After dinner I went to bed and called it a night. Thank god, or Mother Nature, or the divine powers that be that I have finally met the whole damn fam and never have to have ANOTHER 1st dinner.

July 1st

Ah yes, a new month! After last night’s “adventure” into the unknown and totally strange I have come up with a long list of assumptions that I have made about Mama Kabendela. After thinking it over for a while I have decided to leave this list out, actually I wish that I could erase it from my mind because I really want to like her, but she is just not what I had bargined for- however, as Meesh said today, “The grass is always greener on the other side.” Which is so totally true, so for now I will stop feeling sorry that I am not living in a situation that I had imagined, I will suck it up and smile because, well I am living- in Afrika, and I am truly loving every second of my life- even the seconds when I am being laughed at because I have no idea what the hell is going on!

In other news, the CBT of Manzese A took a little “after school trip” to see our friends in Magomeni (I really don’t think that is the correct spelling), and after a short walk over the Daraga Hatari- DANGEROUS BRIDGE- and a long walk down a new road, we made it to their classroom, walked around the village, meet some peoples Mamas and Dadas and Kakas, and managed to squeek in a few fresh mangos. Oh it was fun. First off, Magomeni is totally different even though its only 30 minutes away. The town is really small, the market is much more cool, the people are all smiling and trying to help the white kids learn Kiswahili and it’s really flat. Random, I know, but it really is much more flat then Manzesa. So thanks to Korie, Katie, Teri, Luke and Caitlin for letting us come and adventure into the previously unknown. It was great to just get the heel out of Manzesa/Kilosa Town and see something much more like the village that we will soon be living in!

Other highlights of the day include:

A nap on a wooden futon shaped couch (with no cushions).

A visit from the Peace Corps Medical Officer, Karen, who dropped off self-test malaria kits, talked about medical situations and gave us candy- like real candy, not Biggie G (really popular and terrible Tanzanian bubble gum).

Today I also managed to get the end of a Q-Tip broken off inside of my ear…hahahahahaha. Thanks to Sarah and some sweet tweezers it is now out.

Neema hurt her leg on the choo and went to the hospital, but didn’t want to wait in line, so she came back to class.

And I gave some chocolate to Husseni, the little boy who always meets me at the end of my block and walks me home.

Basically it was a good day. Meesh is sick and I am sending her healing vibes right now. Laura might actually get to meet her Mama, who has been in Dar the whole time that we have been here. Sarah is just Sarah and I love her! And Mary is still staying with Mama Chacha wishing that Zena, the little girl who was there the 1st week, would come back so that she could have someone to play with!

Life is good and it’s getting better all of the time. Right now I am sitting in my room listening to Mama K talk with Patrick while Myjuma does all of the dishes and some crazy dog chews on a bone below my window. Oh, I can’t wait until I really have my own house, my own piece of this truly beautiful country! Which reminds me, on Sunday a group of us are planning to walk up the mountain that is outside of our classroom, I am sure that hilarity will ensue.

So, until next time, enjoy the 4th of July you Americans you. Burn things and blow things up, and be happy for the life that you have. I will be tipping a few back from 8,000 miles away feeling a new sense of American pride starting to ripen within me.

As always, peace and love, and let me know that you read this by posting a comment! Just do it, it will take no more then 2 minutes : )

Well, it’s 8 pm and this girly is hungry, but it’s not diner time in Tanzania so I guess I will just have to tap out some sweet update of what my week has had in store for me…oh and what a great week it was!

First off, I must tell you all how totally beautiful Tanzania really is. Every morning as I leave my house I am blessed by the powers that be to be able to look out over the mountains of Africa and watch the sun rise, the dawn come into being and a city, in the heart of the mountains come alive! It is wonderful and amazing and totally worth all of the hassle of learning a new language, eating new foods, having tumultuous diarrhea, and letting people laugh at me when I just have no idea what in the world they are saying to me. (I am pretty sure that they are saying, “Hey you fat white girl, give me some money or I’ll pop the tires on your bike!”…whatever, ignorance-for now- is bliss). Not only is the actual country totally beautiful, with huge banana trees and countless fields of sunflowers, but the people themselves are always a sight to be seen with clothing made of fabric from Mother Love herself! People here are always a rainbow of colors and patterns with the panache to pull it off…man how my eyes love it and my being envies those who can truly pull it off. I love Tanzanian style! It is truly classic, I am talking 50s poodle skirt classic here, but with a little more flair and A LOT less leg : )

Anyway, my week has been great. Ever since Monday night’s too drunk to handle life incident, things have been fairly sober, in a good way. My Kiswahili skills are improving at a pace slightly faster then tortoise (AKA Kobe) but I am okay with that. Basically, if I can confidently go to my village, make friends, buy food, buy a bus ticket and feel safe then I think that all of training has been a GREAT SUCCESS! In only two short weeks I think that I have mastered the making of friends and the skills to buy food at the market-without being totally ripped off. Yes, Peace Corps is realistic enough to prep you for the fact that you are a white person buying food from poor African people and they are going to raise the price because they can.

Today my CBT group (Community Based Training) went to the market to buy supplies to make Chapiti, this AMAZING flat bread that is typically served with morning Chai. We told Neema, our Tanzanian teacher that if she taught us how to make it we would teach her how to make Guacamole, which she had never heard of. So the 5 of us (AKA a bunch of young white American girls) went to the market and purchased a kg. of flower, ¼ kg. sugar, 3 eggs, oil, charcoal, 2 lemons, 2 avocados, and water. It was fantastic. When we got back to school (AKA Mama Chacha’s house) we made the chapiti dough outside, with the pigions that Mama Chacha keeps around flying all about, with the crazy well water-which we probably should not have used, with the overly loved bowl, and rolling pin, and a sweet wooden board, and then we cooked the flat bread- all 10 pieces- with the tiny charcoal grill/stove/whatever. While that was all cooking I got the crap together to make guacamole, and Meesh cut up the hot pepper while Mary cut up the tomato and Laura tried to peel the avocado that I kept giving her…Lets just say that we started the WHOLE adventure (shopping and cooking) at 8:30 am and we finally sat down to eat around 12:30…hahaha! Oh crazy, I love it! This is the real life story of how long it takes to buy and prepare food in Tanzania. In many ways I find it fascinating and in many other ways I find it to be totally scary and a lot of friggin’ work. (Side note: When we got back we told Neema and Mama Chacha how much we spent on everything and they told us that we actually got it all for the same prices that they would have, which is very calming, to say the least).

After our delicious meal of chapiti and guacamole all of us took a nap and then woke up to learn some totally random hospital words and then go out to lunch and walk around Kilosa town. It was pretty fun. Meesh bought a phone and then we went to our new 2nd most favorite place in Kilosa, Jema View Point- a sweet bar in which we always run into fun people. Today we ran into some of our friends from another village as well as my Mama’s secret boyfriend, that’s right ladies and gents, my Mama has a secret boyfriend (in fac,t I think she is with him right at this very moment!)

He is actually pretty great. He speaks a little English and likes to at least give it a shot. He works for the Health Clinic as a driver and he is all around pretty chill, in fact he reminds me a lot of most of the uncles now that I think about it. He has a keen taste for beer and is always friends with everyone who is at Jema View Point (JVP) because he knows everyone! I would tell you his name, but this will be posted on the World Wide Web and I would just really not want to totally piss my Mama off…if in fact, she ever started reading this very journal. In any case, he is a good guy who likes to drink beer and all of my friends were pretty pumped to finally see my Mama’s man friend-who does not know that I refer to him as my Mama’s man friend, but I guess that some things are best kept a secret.

After JVP I came home, and I actually just finished dinner which Myjuma (I asked her to spell her name for me) so kindly prepared. It was rice, cabbage/carrot/tomato/onion and ½ of a banana. It was only the two of us for dinner…I really have no idea where my mama is, but I did tell Myjuma that I was not going to go to church tomorrow morning (I need a jumakupumzika-DAY OF REST) so hopefully my mama gets the message and she doesn’t kill me when I don’t wake up for church tomorrow morning.

Before I go I want to highlight some other points from this week:

On Tuesday we really truly did sing our song for the local government officals. Oh man, Meesh and I with the rhythm eggs, Lara holding down the bass and Mary with the soprano…we have decided to call ourselves Manzese”A”capello. Our song was about how we were unsure if Manzese C- one of the districts that we saw on a map, even exists and then we all sang about who we were staying with and in the end we can together in harmony to sing that we had wrote the song just for the government officials…it was a hit (at least that was what the Peace Corps translator told us, hahaha). After our song the head district woman decided that she wanted to tell us about Manzase C because she thought that we had some misconceptions about it. I guess it’s only on the maps for political use. Anyway, we were also asked to sing our song on Thursday to the whole group of PCTs and all of the Language and Cultural Facilitators…who also loved it. John, the man in charge of everything that we are doing right now asked us to please write a serious song about HIV/AIDS to sing and also a song to sing at the end of training...being random is apparently a GREAT thing when one is working with Tanzanians.

We also did a presentation of haikus on Thursday. They were pretty amazing. We had to present about some of the changes that we have faced going into a new home and living in a new culture. It was pretty funny. Here is an example: “We poo a lot more, Our Mamas take good care, Hakuna Shida (Kiswahili for no problems).”

Also on Thursday I gave my friend Andrew a haircut at MATI…actually the 2nd haircut that I have given since I have been in Africa. I guess it’s a skill that I am supposed to have because I never told anyone that I knew how to cut hair…it just kind of happened.

Other randoms:

-At JVP there is a bathroom behind the building and when you walk through the alley there is a totally random place in the wall where they keep a goat…weird.

-Neema has named the ½ finished house behind our school after me because I go there many times a day to find my Zen

-I showed Myjuma my markers the other day and it was the first time that she has ever seen such things

-I got my first piece of mail! And it was actually a post card from my friend Jared from Germany!!!! How fantastic!

- I get to wear pants on Thursdays and Sundays!! WOO HOO!

That’s pretty much it for now. I need to charge up my computer and hope that it doesn’t start melting the power converter like it did last time…The starts are totally BEAUTIFUL, I get to learn a whole new bunch of constellations and that is always fun. The most noticeable is the cross, which I have decided is actually a blood diamond, it’s kind of like the Big Dipper of Afrika.

Well, I love and miss you all and I hope that you enjoy the journal : ) Keep in touch and know that you are all in my heart, here in Tanzania !

Home-stay Week 1

I woke up this morning to a rooster crowing, the sound of water being transferred from one bucket to the next, my neighbors singing and Mama Kabendela frying something in the kitchen- strange how these are becoming familiar sounds. No lies, I kind of dig it.

Well, this week started off more rough then the road to the Menzese Council Building (FYI, it’s a pretty damn bumpy road). After being placed at my home stay on Monday night and going into total “Holy Shit” overdrive, I had a fantastically huge mental breakdown on Tuesday night when I got home and I was basically alone in a huge house in the middle of Afrika. Wednesday was not much better, at least the evening, I came home from school and sat in my house while Myuma (the house girl) quietly snuck around. On Thursday I told the home stay coordinator that I HAD to move or I was going to lose my mind…well that didn’t work out as planned, not even close. He told me that there was no where for me to go, so they thought that instead they would just give me a bike, that way I could explore Mensese and make friends.

I must take a second here to insert a “lesson learned” here: Okay- a bike!?!?! Come on now, how the hell is that going to solve my problems??? Especially when I live in the side of a huge hill? Well, guess what, all of my initial thoughts were totally wrong. Somehow, someway, what I really did need was a bike. It’s not like I have rode it that much, but knowing that I can ride it makes me feel better, knowing that I can try and go somewhere is a great feeling (until I think about the horrible drivers, the sandy road and a million Tanzanians yelling MUZUNGU! haha) Really though, I totally have come to the conclusion that what is really best is probably not what you have your heart set on, even if you are Oh So Sure.

Since Thursday life in my new Tanzania mansion has been fabulous. I love Sarah, Meesh, Laura and Mary, my classmates. We are all struggling together in our Kiswahili class with Neema, who is very sweet and nice but we’re all having communication problems and “lack of a lesson plan” problems. Basically this week we, as a class, have sat around and asked how to say totally random things, gone to K Town Hotel for Chai and chapatie, asked more random questions, gone to K Town Hotel for pilau (brown rice), ndizi (bananas), and beans, then walked around Kilosa being totally random, gone back to class for an hour and then it’s time to go home…it’s great fun, but probably not a great way to speed learn Kiswahili. I would say that it is shagalabagala (Kiswahili for disorderly…it’s true!!) After class on Friday we all went and played futball, Frisbee and Duck, Duck, Goose with a field full of kids it was absolutely fantastic. All of the kids yell MEESHE and MARGARETIE (because every name and word must end in a vowel) and love so much that we go and play with them. Oh man, it is great.

Today the whole 48 of us got together for group training and some more vaccinations (oh yeah, so far I’ve gotten vaccinated for Yellow fever, Hep. A, Hep.B, Typhoid Fever, Rabies 1 & 2, and the flu- I’m not getting sick). It was really refreshing to see the whole group again and have the chance to chat with some of the good friends that I have made that now live far away from me. Everyone’s home stay is SO different! When I was walking home tonight a group of like 20 watoto (kids) ran up to me and yelled Muzungu!!! (which means white person, it’s not really derogatory) and they all started hugging me and touching my hair and grabbing my hands and they asked me in Kiswahili where I was going and I told them so they all decided to escort me all the way up to my gate, all the while holding my hands, touching my hair, playing with my rings, counting in English and Kiswahili and trying so hard to interrogate me when I just kept saying Sijaelewa (I don’t understand!)….it was totally the best ever walk home. Oh man, Afrika, it’s a beautiful place, after you get used to pooping in a pit latrine, eating rice at every meal, and never seeing cement/pavement…only this earthy brown dusty sand.

Well, before I hit it for the night I just thought that I would add a couple if funny/crazy things that have happened thus far, just to keep us all smiling.

~Tonight at dinner it was just Myuma and myself (Mama was at a party). Myuma and I are having a really hard time conversing but it’s great fun to try and we usually just end up laughing at each other. She is this beautiful girl/women who basically does all of the work at the house- I have SO much respect for her, it’s crazy. She is 15 and she is here all daying and I don’t think she ever leaves…anyway, tonight at dinner I had a hard boiled egg with my chakula (food) and I cracked it to peel it and it was totally impossible to peel so I was working it, tiny piece by piece, seriously it took at least 7 minutes and the whole time Myuma is just looking at me and laughing her ass off. Oh it was great, particularly because we can’t even talk to each other so I just laugh at myself and speak in English while she laughs and tries to help in Kiswahili. The whole rest of the dinner she would periodically look at my pitiful pile of egg shell crumbs and bust out in spontaneous laughter…

~ We have an mlinzi (watchman) at my house and the 2nd night I was here he was outside so we tried to have a conversation. He was telling me all of these words and I was trying to ask him questions and it was just really him bantering the crap out of me. Well, he started walking around the house and after a few minutes he come back with his flippin’ bow and arrow and proceeds to tell me the words to bow and arrow and then gets ready, like he is about to shoot something/someone and stops and looks at me and laughs and put it down they charades a man being shot in the head…it was totally classic : )

June 23rd, 2008

Let me just start this story by saying that I had no intention of getting drunk, really this is all sheer innocence!

So, today, Monday was pretty much just like everyday last week. I got up this morning and took my bucket bath- a fantastic way to bathe that I suggest for everyone, even those who have running water. After that I got dressed and came out of my room to drink coffee and eat breakfast by myself (Cultural note: Tanzanians do not eat breakfast and they think it’s crazy that Americans eat food right after they get up, I agree with the Tanzanians but my Mama doesn’t understand so she always has food for me in the morning…oh well, I tried!) After eating breakfast I usually brush my teeth and hit the road. This morning I think that all of my neighbors were mad at me because they did not greet me as I walked down the road…why are they mad? Who knows. Am I being hypersensitive? Probably. I didn’t really mind, I just decided to Shikamoo and Hujambo and Mambo them instead of waiting for them to say hello to me and everyone responded, so maybe they were not mad, but just testing my Kiswahili skills…

School was pretty casual, as it has been. Neema, my teacher is so beautiful and funny, but she is having a hard time translating from Kiswahili to English and the 5 of us are obviously having a hard time translating from English to Kiswahili…it’s just a funny situation. At about 10am Mama Vicky, a Tanzanian who has been working with PC for a while and teaching Kiswahili, came to our classroom to observe, but we were on our way to Chai so she came with us and drank Chai and ate some rolls at K Town Hotel-our home away from home. When we got back we learned some more and then played “Kiti Joto” AKA “Hot Seat” which was funny and difficult and it took a long time. After Mama Vicky left we just hung out while Neema growled at us, a norm in our little Tanzanian farmhouse classroom, then we decided it was time to go back to K Town for lunch. Sowa (okay), so we order the SAME thing EVERY time we go to K Town, which has been Tuesday through Friday of last week and today and EVERY time Neema and the waitress have a little argument about the price of the food, it’s crazy- dude we all get the same thing! (Cultural note #2: Tanzanians don’t ever write anything down so when you get food you have no idea what the bill might really be…at this point I just have to laugh because it’s not worth getting crazy over)

After lunch everyone was tired so we all took a mini nap and then learned a little more and then told Neema that we were finished for the day. After that we worked on the song that we are going to sing tomorrow for Menzese A,B & C local government leaders…yes, that’s right we are singing a made up song in Kiswahili about the Menzeses to a group of old men and women who REFUSED to smile at all the last time that we met them…basically, I can’t wait, it willl be GRAND. Meesh even busted out her rhythm eggs! After singing our song for Mama Chacha, who friggin’ loved it, we decided to celebrate our song writing skills and all have a beer (or two). Whilst at the bar/outdoor café we successfully made friends with the Messiah man who tends to 5 cows everyday, the waitress Amelia who is totally adorable, the other Messiah man who is always sitting in the courtyard by the latrines and I personally made friends with about 8 kids while I was walking home- again, they decided to walk me up to my gate.

Cultural note #3: When drinking beer in Tanzania be careful. One beer is ½ a liter and One liter of beer is kind of a lot after not eating for a while and walking around in the Afrikan sun- you will defiantly feel good.

So, I got home pretty early, I would say around 6 30 and Mama’s secret lover man was over. He is this really nice guy who drives her car for her because she gets scared of it and he lives just down the street. (I’m not sure if I mentioned this but Mama K is a widow, her husband actually died in some car/motorcycle related accident 9 years ago). I can’t recall the car drivers name, but he is really nice and he can speak English so we chatted it up for a minute and then suddenly WHAM Mama comes in the room with another beer for me. Sowa (okay), I can drink beer, but I was already buzzed and feeling ready for some dinner and then some homework and then bed, so after beer #3 I got up to work on some homework before dinner annnnnnnd I passed out. (Not before finding Myuma ,the house girl and telling her “Nilikumis!,” “I missed you!” which made her smile SO much and the she hugged me, which I love) Haha. By the way, I am already tired all of the time because I am still adjusting so I wasn’t that surprised when I woke up in a cold sweat. I was kind of shocked to see that it was 12:30 and nobody woke me up for dinner! So, here I sit now, eating a Power Bar wondering, how in the world did I end up drinking today,that wasn’t supposed to happen! Oh wait, I’m in Afrika, anything goes and “time is the servant and tool of the people” (according to our book).

Oh how I love it! Well life is good/great/nzuri and I am so happy that I am here, even with all of the insane cultural and language changes, it all takes time. Pole, pole- which means slowly, slowly- is my new motto, along with Hakauna Shida- no problems- and SHAGALABAGALA- which mean CHAOS….

Please write me because I would love to hear from everyone!

Well well, I am finally in Afrika and I only have a few minutes to write about my crazy, beautiful, and kind of hard journey thus far.

Where to being!?!?!?!

I guess I should start from where I find myself in this moment. I am living in a town called Kilosa, it's pretty big in comparitive standards, but it's really just a tiny little town by American standards. Anyway, I live in the same neightborhood as 4 other PCTs who I have class with 6 days a week and they are fabulous. My home stay is a lot less then the fabulous then I had expected because I don't have a family I really just have a rich mama who doesn't come home until late at night and leaves me to sit all evening with my worries...something had to change about that situation and I tried to get a new host family today, but due to some language difficulities and cultural misunderstanding I just ended up with a bike...hahahaha! Oh, how I love it.

Other then that the whole group of trainees in my "intake" is 48 strong and we were with each other for a week before they split us all up- needless to say everyone is having a lot of seperation anxiety about the whole thing and everyone is looking forward to a huge group meeting on Saturday : )

Everyone who came with us is so totally amazing and I am totally meeting some of the best, open hearted, strong minded people ever- with a few exceptions.

There is SO much here that is just totally out of my previous reign of thought, like who would have thought that just because I am a woman I have to wear a skirt everyday..? Who would have thought that it's okay to scratch your crotch at lunch but its not okay to blow your nose at the dinner table? Who would have thought that a person who lives in a village in Tanzania has been to Japan...!?!?! Not I.

To sum everything up so far I would have to say that my expectations of what this beautiful country would be like have been totally throw out of the window. My expectations for what being a PCV would be like are also totally gone. What I have learned is that flexibility is the key...at least so far, and most importantly, LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL EVERYWHERE! : )

(I also now know that I did not need a bigger knife)

Peace and love, PLEASE WRITE ME!!!

   Well, it's really almost here. 4 days until this girl gets on a jet plane taking her to the brief and hopefully wondrous next "event" in life . I would seriously love to say that I really understand what in the world that statement means, but lets be real, how can this even make sense to me right now? Have I really been spending the last few weeks saying goodbye to everything and everyone that I know so that I can hop on a plane and live in a hut for 2+ years? Okay, yeah I have, but do I really have any idea what this means?Honestly, no. Maybe I should review the facts and get to the bottom of this insanity.

FACTS:1-In 4 days, I am going to Tanzania for 27 months2-I am in the Peace Corps3-I want to try to do something worthwhile with some part of my life4-I am going to miss my life right now5-Beyond next week, I really have no life in MI6-I am ridiculously excited7-I am scared (mostly of getting sick)8-I still have a lot to do before I go9-I will never feel like I said goodbye to everyone10-My take on the world will never be the same11-I am going to be "other" for the 1st time in my life12-I still can't really speak Kiswahili 13-I enjoy all human interaction too much for that to matter14-I need a bigger knife

  So, this is a short list of the facts I can think of on the fly. This isn't really helping me realize that this is about to happen VERY soon. I guess that it's not that big of a deal because in just a few short days my African Adventure will commence, and I will be fastened into a jet plane headed to Washington DC, eating pretzels, drinking diet pop and thinking, "Well, here goes..."

This is my address until late August. Please send me mail! 

Margaret Bidigare/ PCTPeace Corps Training SitePO Box 9123 Dar es Salaam, Tanzania Africa

When sending mailwrite the address in red inkput something Latin on it (i.e. di pia facta vident) why? mail thought to be religious is less likely to be tampered withmake sure to write Air Mail or Par Avon on itIf you send me something between now and when I leave it will probably get there right around the same time that I do. I am guessing that mail will take about three weeks...! 

17 more days and counting!

Amor y Paz

The arrival of my Peace Corps staging package, my pac, my "security wallet" (basically a modern day fanny pack to be tucked into the front of my pants!), and my very last electric and gas bills can mean only one thing. My pre-departure countdown begins today. I leave in 25 days for Washington, D.C. where I will meet fellow Tanzanian Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) and we will go through "staging." Basically 12 hours of a review of everything I should know, plus a little more for fun, and a pit stop state side for any and all who have decided at the very last second that they would be much more comfortable staying on American soil.

25 days seems like a really long time at this very moment. Yes, I still have A LOT more that I need to do to prepare myself, but I just want to leave. The longer I linger the more this urge to BUST OUT grows. Yes, I am nervous. Yes, I am scared, Yes, I am worried, excited, unsure, anxious, yes, yes, yes! But the longer I remain here stuck in this terrible stage I call "All Talk and No Action," the more I just want to go. A friend of mine told me once that she's from a family of beavers because they are always doing something; visiting friends, cooking, building something, crafting a trinket, just something. Well, I am a beaver too, and this beaver is about to gnaw down the dam if the show doesn't get on the road soon. 

Aside from being mentally ready to go, a big part of the reason why I want to get the heck out of here is simply that I am sick of talking to people who have nothing good to say about the Peace Corps, about Africa, about anything. Today I was told that the Peace Corps is just a cover up government agency that actually just feeds into the CIA. Apparently in my near future I will be spying on Islamic persons in Paris. My tolerance for the naive has reached it's threshold, and mama beaver is about to blow wood chip chunks. That is really all that I can say in response to this claim. Please know that I will never work for the CIA. This job will be the only US government affiliated position that I ever hold. 

25 more days, and I got my pac today! (F.Y.I. a pac is just an extra large back pack that is used for serious camping or hiking) It is huge and I cannot wait to fill it up with all sorts of useful trinkets. Oh the smell of packing a new bag with new goodies whilst moving down a new path in life. Ah, I love it, so fresh and alarmingly plastic-y...I guess more then the smell of my pac will be alarming in the next 27 months : )

Peace and love