To whom it may concern, (I guess that is you, since you are reading this) I have left TZ.

I quit Peace Corps.

I ETed (Early Terminated) around July 23rd.

I completed 22 months of my planned 27 months in TZ.

I am absolutely sure that I made the right choice.

It was a personal decision, and here are my reasons so that it’s perfectly clear.

Reason's to come back to America - 25th B-day. I like the idea of turning a quarter of a century old with my friends and family at home. - Summer Rather Than Winter. Coming home to Colorado in December was going to be a big climate kick in the pants. Think: Dar es Salaam to blizzards. Plus, the fall here is kinda pretty. - Help Parents To Move. In the buyers housing market my parents have shifted houses. When I heard this news I wanted to come home to help. This is probably the "seed", where I first even considered coming home. My parents aren’t young, and I’m unemployed and living at home. That means I can help organize the new place, and remove lots of clutter. - Maybe A Girl... and that's a private issue. Ask me for details if you want to know. Reasons to leave TZ - Just Starting A New Term. If I had started this term I would have stayed the whole time till December. I teach an optional class, I'm not worried about my kids in the national exam. - No Ongoing Projects. I have set up the lab, the network. Now it's coasting. This last term wasn’t going to be terribly exciting, just supervising the same lab time, and teaching the same lesson plans I taught last year. - I had planned to train my Counterpart teachers. I failed. They are too busy. The up-side of the other staffing issues at the school is that my CPs got promoted too fast. Now one's the bursar, the other is covering for the Academic master. There's no time anymore to teach them how to re-image the comps. - Half Again. Losing More Staff. Right now there are 10 teachers for 632 students. Soon, we loose 4 more. 6 for 632. over 100 per. It's a joke. And guess what... Other schools in TZ have it worse. I was lucky at this school. So, it was pretty clear. The whole equation was pointing at coming home. I waited and waited to have a moment where I stopped and said “No, I simply can’t leave now because…” But that didn’t come. And ever since I decided to come home, I felt better and better about the decision. I knew it was the best thing. But don’t worry too much. I think I’ll end up back in TZ another day.

Hilarious!

The nun next to me on the scandi bus is hiding her head under a kanga ad reading instructions for a pregnancy test! Ha!

What did you do in Iringa last night?

· Mswahili vs. Mkinga

· My Method of lighting a jiko (charcoal brazier)

Mswahili vs. Mkinga

Today i was at a duka checking for coffee and candles.

I greeted first in Swahili, and then in the local language, Kikinga. The bibi (grandmother) next to me says:

"Unajitahidi"

You are persevering [to learn Kikinga]

Huh?

I know one greeting and I'm persevering to pick up the whole language?

I wanted to tell her that I learnt the dozen or so words of kikinga that I do know in the first week I was at site. Since then, i have learned absolutely nothing new.

Kweli, sijitahidi bibi.

Grandma, really, I'm not trying a damn bit.

But they love to hear foreigners try, so i think the just naturally encourage it.

Then later in the conversation bibi makes the comparison:

Nyinyi waswahili, ... na sisi wakinga ....

You all Swahili people, ... and us Kikinga people ...

This grouping struck me as odd.

I'm talking with two Tanzanians, and they are calling me the mswahili (Swahili person).

The two Tanzanians claim to the local tribe, Kikinga.

I'm sure I'm reading too much into this, but at the moment I felt very proud.

I'm the mswahili.

Who's the most "swahili" between me and two bibis that grew up in the country?

Me.

They said so themselves.

So, it may seem mundane, but there’s some art and science that goes into small everyday stuff. For example, i was stuck the other day when a neighboring volunteer had a very different method of starting her charcoal cook fire. So, as a point of comparison here is my My Method of lighting a jiko (charcoal brazier)

· In a tin can soak small pieces of coal in kerosene.

· When starting to prepare the jiko, clean ash from last night. Too much ash prevents air flow, and air is the secret to a happy jiko.

· Insert one plum sized coal lump to the middle of the jiko.

· Stack larger pieces of dry coal around and on top. You should be able to still see the wet coal, and air holes. If you can't your starving the fire of air flow.

· light with match.

· adjust coals for proper air flow. This is tricky with irregularly shaped pieces of coal.

· if air/fuel mixture is just right, you'll get a shooting flame like a blow torch.

· If not, readjust coals. The flame should not create soot.

· Perform all steps out doors in case it does soot. The soot gets everywhere.

· Kerosene starter coal should burn for 5-10 minutes.

· After fan with plate or dustpan.

Mystery of the chimney

There exists another common way of lighting jikos. It involves using a paint can as a chimney. I've seen it many times and it works. I just can't figure out how it works.

So I put forward this problem for people more adept at Jiko Thermodynamics than myself.

Chimney construction: empty paint can with top and bottom removed.

Lighting the jiko proceeds similarly, except perhaps they will sprinkle some kerosene on top of a dry bed of coals rather than the soaking method i prefer.

Chimney is set over the coals so that flame comes up in the middle.

I repeat, it is very effective at lighting jikos. I simply don't have a paint can to experiment with myself.

The Quandry of the chimney:

It doesn't add heat.

It doesn't increase total air intake. All air comes from a small door built onto the bottom of the jiko.

So how does it work?

Theories:

The chimney smooths the air flow from top to bottom for smooth combustion. Wind might disrupt this.

But then, as soon as the gas is combusting above, the bed of coals, there will be little return on any improvements here.

Check a candle. It's hottest above because the convection heat is rising from the candle.

I was pessimistically forecasting the future of Tanzania today.

The country is doomed.

Right now Africa is a dumping ground of old electronics, 2nd hand clothes crappy music, and used cars. These goods suppress any possibility for Tanzania to ever develop these industries in country. American factories produce plenty of clothes for America, and then the scraps get dumped off by the shipping container at Dar. Then the only work for TZns to do is to sell that stuff in various parts of the country.

The computers come here. Send your 2nd hand computer to Africa. Help them learn computer skills. But these models are old, slow outdated and have no replacement parts. Only foreign software. Will they ever learn modern tech skills? Or are they going to be trapped 10 years behind because that’s the hardware we can dump into their market and force them to use?

We just piss our consumerism wastes on Africa.

Reading East African history. The Bantu expansion into East Africa settled around 1000AD. They are a young culture. They were barely starting the agriculture revolution when Arab dhows and Portuguese warships rolled up. Then this situation just propagates, and now Africa sits at the dumpster end of the information revolution.

AIDS. It’s interesting that AIDS affects rich and educated people more. When that get a good job they can buy a few whores and catch the disease, and travel more to spread it. Rampant AIDS. 15%-20% in Makete. The disease will continue to wear down any sort of educated work force in this country. Engineers, nurses, teachers. The smarties die away, and the peasants remain.

The semi-polygamist, African culture wasn’t ready for Aids. Yet, by luck, Western cultures had attitudes and better health care that allows for prevention and protection from AIDS.

They lose. These Bantus are good people, but they’re too late. There is no Renaissance coming here.

So, the country is pissed on with out dated technology and all other wasted production that didn’t sell in 1st world markets, AIDS eats their human capital away. The outlook seems to be for a country full of dumb peasants, ripe for Neo-Colonial corporations to sweep in and devour the resources, and exploit a labor force that works for $1 a day.

That’s how things look. But I’m in a bad mood today, so don’t pay too much attention to me.

I will never leave site again. The road was crap a week ago. Since then there have been only steady driving rains. There will be no visit to Njombe until at least May. Which ain’t so bad. I think later on in your service you appreciate being at site more.

Astronomy report:

It’s 8:30pm ish.

Orion is sinking off on the western horizon. Auriga, Gemini, Canis Major, all very visible. I want to learn more of the constellations at the south celestial pole, but they are small, dim constellations named after boring objects like compasses, triangles, and sails.

I am now eating boiled rice, with sliced onions and cardamom.

See for yourself what a power house the local language, Kikinga, is:

- Does not yet have a bible translation.

- Only printed Kikinga I have seen was a very homemade calendar from the group that is working on the bible translation.

- Not institutionalized anywhere. Schools or government. Nowhere except nowhere.

- Only peasants who farm potatoes in this high altitude corner of Tanzania speak this language.

Therefore, I have officially given up any desire to learn Kikinga. Plus, it’s a bitch to pronounce, and Swahili is so easy.

Most action with a TZn so far. First 3 hours of today’s ride back was spent in some guys armpit. At a certain point you tune out the BO, the uncomfortable seat, loud Swahili religious music, and you get some sleep.

I slept a little.

Three quarters through the trip Mr. Armpit got off the bus. But no reprieve. It’s a big travel day, the day after Easter. Plus, the regular full size bus is not running. I'm on a tiny dala-dala today.

Bus gets re packed. A big mama is right over me (did I mention I’m in a bitch seat near the aisle and door?)

Bus continues to get packed in until she’s right on top of me with her boobs in my face. Then we go off down the rough dirt road in a bus with no shocks. There’s no where to move. Just enjoy the big bouncy random bus boobies in your face.

Strangely, my browsing habits have improved by restricting my internet connectivity. I have bi-monthly internet access or I can pay by the kilobyte to read web pages on my phone via GPRS at sub dial up speed.

Especially when I go to Njombe bi-monthly, I can sit at a computer for 2-3 hours and check email and surf. But because its every other week, I have to make a list to remind me what to do. This really improves what I do.

In America, I might check my email 4 times a day. Now my frequency is once every 14 days. I think this is important. My surfing frequency is now much lower. And the result is better. I look for useful things for my computer lab. I communicate with the people I care about. And research stuff on Wikipedia voraciously. When I had too much internet access, I listened to radio and downloaded too much music for my ipod. I ignored people close to me because I believed I could email them when ever something important came up.

The rainy season isn’t over, but the nights are clearer. Last night I woke around 2am and went out to look at stars.

Big Dipper (Ursa Major) – Upside down in the north. Ursa Minor isn’t visible.

Leo – Identified above the big dipper. Maybe a planet inside.

Virgo – First time I have ever seen my zodiac. She’s pretty. Smooth curves. Looks like a Tau. Consulting my handy glow-in-the-dark star guide I know that the main star is called Spica.

Scorpius – Upside down in the East. Libra hidden by moon.

Hydra – The long serpent in the sky. Starts around Canis Major and wraps over Leo and Virgo

Crater – The cup. Attached to hydra. That damn serpent is stealing the booze.

Corvus – The crow. Nearby to Virgo. Squarish shape.

This is a cute picture a student drew in my lab using Window’s basic Paint program. Andrew Mwembe is a small, quiet, smart boy in his sophomore year.Some comments around this picture:- Notice the spelling "derivery tube". I see, and hear, this mistake a hundred times a day. Rs and Ls are indistinguishable to most Tanzanians.- Do appreciate that a student would spend his valuable computer lab time to draw, in exacting detail, a diagram from a chemistry text book.- Sadly, this IS the kind off question they get on national exams."Draw and label apparatus for producing oxygen from potassium chlorate, or be forced out of school and remain a poor peasant farmer for your remaining years. Please write clearly and in black ink."- "Education is vital for development". I agree with this. But I doubt how effective the TZ education system is at educating Tanzanians for developing Tanzania. For example, industries that might require such chemical knowledge of extracting oxygen are only in their infant stages here. Some 75% of TZns are subsistence farmers. See my other post “Moving Forward”.Still I’m proud of Mr. Mwembe’s fierce determination. I have high hopes for him.

TZ is an all cash economy. In most stores you see a sign.

Hatukopeshi - "we do not loan".

The issue of getting change constantly annoys me. Image a land that has never been graced by a cash register. For a cash register to work, it must be filled with cash, duh. No one has that much cash here. So when you pay for a 500 shilling soda with a 10,000 shilling note, expect to wait 5-10 minutes while your vendor runs around the soko checking to see if anyone can make change on those big bucks.

There are no checks. This place is light years from a fluid credit card system.

Its cash in hand or you are SOL.

Also, there is no identity here in the form of birth certificates or driver’s licenses. People can disappear. There’s nothing to pin you as a person, a legally responsible identity. Hence, loaning must be difficult. How do you collect on people who’s only identity is the name they use in a certain village?

No loans, no checking, no credit cards.

Also, it is interesting to see Africa leap frogging certain technologies like land line telephones. The place has already gone straight to cell phones.

America plowed through, developing each incremental technology, now Africa can pick and choose what works from that line of technological development.

Same will be true for checking.

It's all ready disappearing in America.

Here they will never carry check books.

Kenya should look at a map.Every time I do, I think:If Kenya pushes its southern border 50 miles into Tanzania it could own Mt. Kilimanjaro.While they are at it, they can take Moshi and Arusha; highly developed tourist hub cities serving the main mountain.Then why not take the Serengeti too?What then Tanzania? What’s you claim to fame?The news today writes itself:- TZ: prime minister is fired in energy contract scandal. New PM appointed live.- India: Kidney harvesting doctor taken into custody.- US: Neck and neck race between Hilary and Obama. Tornado kills 50 somewhere or other.The news casters are beaming.They are really doing their jobs.Today they have jobs to do.They don’t have to dish out peas and call it honey baked ham.Today the hams fall from the sky.

- Al-Jazeera - Mefloquin Dream- Mama Julie- New HouseYou can watch Al-Jazeera anywhere in TZ. A lot of homes have satellite dishes that pick up “free to air” stations for East Africa, and India. I must admit I’m impressed. I was expecting some crazy guy in a turban shouting madly with a megaphone. I was wrong. Really Al-Jazeera is a modern news station. Everything like CNN. The slick animations, news rooms, and casters speaking fluent English. Very professional. If you put Al-Jazeera up against Fox News (as long as you’re outside of the American box) Fox looks like a joke. Yet, in America it was so easy to believe that Fox is tolerable, and Al-Jazeera is extremists Muslims broadcasting from terrorist camps in Iran. Crazy dream. Thanks Mefloquin!I’m at a cocktail party touring the house of a hot new artist.He tells me: “Draw theological lines on your walls and see how that makes you feel.” Mama JulieI’m not sure if I’ve mentioned her. There is no choice. I have to mention her. Mama Julie is the best cook in town. Mama Julie used to have a kitchen right across the street from the school. Before that, she cooked for Doctors Without Borders in my town. They had a house rented for the staff and Mama Julie was the private cook.She is an oasis of cooking in the desert of rice and ugali that is Tanzanian cuisine. Mushroom stir-fry, over stuffed sambusas, Spanish omelets, and fresh mango and avocado juice. And cheese. She makes her own cheese!Now she has moved down the street into the kitchen of the Lutheran guest house. It’s a better location. There is no bus stand in town, but it is in the area where the bus stand would be.Now when I go, I’m hardly ever the only customer. I was blown away to see three tables with customers yesterday! For a mgahawa in this town that’s big business. I’m glad for her.Also, last weekend I moved into my new house.- More student noise. 7am up till 7pm- Better star gazing location, but it’s still the rainy season and cloudy every night.- Excellent view of the valley.

New pics are up of Xmas and New Years.

Head over to:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gravitythread/

Some pics are public, some are for friends and fam only. If you want to see more you need a Flickr account and request to make me a contact.

Karibuni!

Best of MSCBeautiful GirlsDar es Salaam: Disappointing. MSC was useful to see people in the head office. There were lots of new faces. Djondo gone, Pat takes over. Karen is new. Jean Luc left. Asia new secretary to the Proden. I saw Eleizer for the 2nd time ever. Dar is freaking far away. It takes me two days to get here. I only see these people as contacts in my yahoo mail inbox. Now I can imagine some of their faces. Beautiful Girls I feel that in Peace Corps I'm around beautiful girls like I never was before in my life. For Example - Spews and PC girls I was a geek in high school, and I still am. In high school I didn’t hang out with the pretty girls. Studying engineering at college wasn’t that much different. However, here on the frontier, you've got nurses and environmentalists, and computer geeks all spreading the syphilization. You can see how the staff composition might improve my scenery. Another Example: It just so happens that a Norwegian Soccer team is in Dar this week. Ok, I don’t actually think they are a soccer team, but you get the idea. They are 20 amazing tall, blonde drop dead gorgeous Norwegian girls with sexy accents and tube tops. That, my friend, is something I just didn’t see back in the Engineering building at CU. Dar es Salaam is a bit disappointing: - Peace Corps Kenya, evacuated due to the political unrest, is under quarantine in some beach resort instead of hanging out with us grunts. - Lack of good clubs. What’s up Dar? 4 million people and you don’t have a decent club in the city center? - PCV mob watching DVDs in the lounge. Kinda lame. Is this how we utilize our time after not being all together since June 2007?- The restaurants of Dar are the only redeeming feature.

I feel not human. I feel like an information processing machine. Being off the map and severed from communication for weeks only intensifies this feeling. I was bred, groomed, trained, and brought up in every way to process information and to use a computer. To process news article, numbers and lists and to imagine how it all fits together and how to tweak twist and turn it so that you see it in a new way and can extract more meaning, more insight, more information. And here in Tanzania, that heritage of mine stands out. I feel like a pure bred bulldog on the streets to run with mutts and mongrels who have no breeding, no pedigree. Me and my ancestors were groomed for one thing only. My strong jaws for the death grip on a bull’s throat, and my short, stubby, wheezy nose so that I can breath, buried in a jugular, as so much blood gushes out that it would choke anyone else. But look at the mongrels. What bulls can they slay? Really, what can they do at all? Well, they can do a lot that I can’t. They are jacks of all trades. They do a little bit of everything, but no one thing as well as I can do. In my little computer lab at school, I am in an arena, my arena. I slay bulls all day long; it’s who I am and what I do. Outside my arena, on the streets, I’m worthless, but I manage to survive somehow. I can’t barter; I’m too shy to disagree with someone even when I know they are ripping me off. I can’t farm. I know nothing of the seasons here, or the soil, when to plant and harvest, or how to dig the furrows for planting. I can’t mend clothes. So they fall apart. Washing clothes is a chore. My knuckles go raw from washing by hand and the soapy water stings badly. I cook like a child. Rice or spaghetti every night. I visit others to get a good meal. Yet, my neighbors do it all. And then they stumble on simple arithmetic, negative numbers, or holding a computer mouse the right way. Humans can learn to do most anything. Ask Jared Diamond, the secret of America is specialization. A first world economy doesn’t need a jack of all trades. It has 10 specialists to do 10 distinct jobs. The jack is under qualified for all. We’re specialized, groomed, bred, and trained into highly manufactured, highly artificial parts that plug into defined spaces of this bigger, vastly incomprehensible machine. The assembly line mentality is the blood of America. It’s our strength. Yet, you must remember that all parts depend on all other parts. Think of Just In Time shipping and stores that keeps no inventories. This is also our weakness. In a Just In Time world what will happen when that UPS truck never comes?

My Village has: One post office One bank One high school with 20 computers Zero internet cafes in a 100 km radius One bus heading east to Njombe One bus heading west to Mbeya Maybe a dozen private cars One hospital One ambulance Zero traffic lights I’d guess about 8000 people living in the town limits. Countless goats and chickens. Many many acres of surrounding corn and potatoes fields.

My friend Melia said: It's disappointing. you go off and have a revolution. And when you get back, everything is just the same.

1) Heated homes!! 2) I was given $2000 of credit with the greatest of ease. Really just cause I’m an American, freshly graduated from college. There is no credit system in Tz. You see no credit cards readers outside of Dar. ATMs perhaps. But only a top of the line hotel will have such a device. Who has credit cards? There aren't even checking accounts... 3) The look of Americans: Pallid, jowly, fat and pale skin. I find it unattractive.

I like Tanzania because my nights often consist of the following:

Reading

Staring at stars

Watching lightning storms on the horizon

Talking with my neighbor

Having Mefloquin dreams

Electricity is out. Thanks Tanesco! (Tanzania Electricity Supply Company) Nothing makes a computer teacher productive like having no electricity.

I repeat:

Some TZ women are beautiful. Some look like black dudes in dresses.

Particularly frightening is the Fe-Beard.

Some women wear nasty sparse curly chin beards. I think it is a sign of status among women. I don’t know for sure. I’m too ashamed to ask a mama w/ a beard what its purpose is...

Seeing how TZns treat their own country is sometimes depressing.

An example:

The main highway of the country runs from Dar es Salaam on the Coast inland to Mbeya and on into Zambia. In the middle it passes through Mikumi National Park. Driving along this section is like doing a high-speed safari.

At the far end of Mikumi is the biggest, most modern rest stop in the whole country.

It is called Al-Jazeera’s.

Buses full of passengers pull in and out every minute. People pile off their buses and run into a large white tiled food court like you’d see in any American mall.

This is the only place in the country that the fast food mentality has been fully embraced.

People shell out the money or pre-cooked pre packaged meals on Styrofoam trays wrapped in cellophane. Inside are meals like chipsi and chicken. It includes plastic fork, and ketchup packet. You take you Al-Jazeera's Happy Meal to go and load back on to the bus and peel away, beginning the ascent into the Tanzanian Highlands.

People spend the next 2-3km eating this delicious Tanzanian fare.

Then the chipsi are gone and only the Styrofoam, cellophane, empty packets and plastic utensils remain. These are promptly consolidated into trash balls and hurled with efficient glee from open windows onto the road side bordering the pristine rain forests filled with monkeys and baboons.

Troops of baboons scatter as the bus passes, then crowd back in on this wake of half-edible trash being dumped from the bus like its going out of style.

And often enough, a baboon licking salt and tomato paste from a Styrofoam dish doesn’t scatter fast enough. The next bus catches him and squirts his guts from his skin like a toothpaste tube under a hammer.

Facts: 80-85% of Tanzanians are subsistence farmers.

The country of Tanzania’s claims to fame:

Kilimanjaro and Serengeti - Tourism

#1 exporter of cloves and sisal - Agriculture

I repeat again:

Tanzania will not leap into the first world by making a bad photocopy of 1st world knowledge onto 3rd world students.

My prediction:

TZ will be a poor country of poor peasants for another 50-100yrs.

Speaking with Mhule and Madyedye:

What opportunities are there for the form 4 students who don’t continue to A level & college? (those who fail)

The answer I got: None

Where will they go? Back to the family farm.

Mzee Sanga:

Nyrere’s goals: education for self reliance, school farms.

These days there are no school farms.

Madyedye: 3rd president of TZ split agriculture off to be a college subject.

Levels of education in TZ

Primary School

O level Secondary School

A Level Secondary School

College

I heard once that the drop out at each level is about 4/5.

All students do primary

20% do secondary

4% A level

1% College

So, for a country 4/5 full of farmers, that country educates less than 1% in farming and agriculture.

Mzee Sanga:

Ask any of the business owners how they got started. They will all tell you that they were first farmers. That’s how they got rich. Afterward the opened their shops. Agriculture is the wealth of Tanzania.

Ask the students in your school what they want to be. They’ll tell you teacher, nurse, doctor, lawyer. None will mention farming. But most of then are headed there without much preparation.

Students at the primary and secondary levels should learn:

History

Kiswahili

Basic Arithmetic

Agriculture

They should not be learning:

Physics – circuit analysis

Abstract math – parabolas and polynomials

Computer – computer programming

Chemistry – electron configuration diagrams

Biology – kingdom, phylum and class of species they have never seen

As this all applies to Peace Corps:

Send science teachers home

Bring environmental Volunteers into schools and classrooms to teach agriculture techniques and science.

But we lowly Volunteers have no say in the syllabus. And all teachers are expected to teach directly from that syllabus to prepare them for the do-or-die national exams.

And so things go. Maybe forward, maybe not.

Electricity vs. Umeme

The electricity is out again.

Umeme umekatikwa tena.

Chicken vs. kuku

Let’s slaughter that chicken for dinner.

Tuchinje yule kuku kwa chakula cha jioni.

Senior citizen vs. mzee

Senior citizens have the power to curse naughty children.

Wazee wana nguvu kufanya uchawi joo ya watoto watundu.

Matters vs. mambo

What’s up?

Mambo vipi?

The tragedy of Peace Corps is making amazing friends with other volunteers, and then to only see them a short half dozen times before you leave.

For your enjoyment, a little sampler of some of the names of students at my school.

The crazy local language name I can't pronounce:

Tulatsiongella Pilla

Funny to translate / oops:

Sikudhani Ptero

Sikujua

Imagine naming your child “I didn’t know”.

English words as names:

Happiness Faraja

Memory Abel

Names I will give my children one day:

Lunalawe Sanga

Riziki Kasta

Short list of the really useful things that I brought to TZ.

Sleeping bagCanvas laundry bagDigicam - HP M417Good hiking boots