During training in Morogoro I would always hear about these things called Siafu. They are ants which travel in big packs. If you see one then you better be sure that there are THOUSANDS on their way. All of the volunteers would talk about them and about how if they come into your house then you pretty much have to move out for a few days while they get rid of them for you. I also encountered these terrible beasts on my way to school pretty much every morning. Walking across the field to rebeccas house every morning there was a point where I would literally have to sprint because the ants would see my foot on the ground and run straight for it! Crazy things.

When I left morogoro I thought that that would be the end of Siafu in my life. Think again miss mery.

Last Friday (the… hum… 13th I think? Not sure) I left my house around 8 AM in the morning and I walked over to Igoda primary school to look at the beautiful library that is there. I spent the day watching the students (and I will post another post about this whole thing. Its awesome) and the peter and I came back to my house around 4 in the afternoon (peter and Christine came over to celebrate valentines day!) and as I walk into my court yard I hear my neighbor call my name from over my fence and I start to hear the terrible cry of my cat coming from inside my house. She just kept saying miss mery siafu! Siafu! It was then that I looked down at the ground next to my feet.

And there they were.

THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS OF SIAFU! Im not joking about that either. There are literally thousands. Maybe only one thousand… but that’s still a big number of ants! So I follow the little road that they made for themselves right into my house. I open the door and grab my cat. I was really scared neko wouldn’t be smart enough to get away… but he is a pretty sharp little cat J

Inside my house was much worse than the outside. They had pretty much made a little assembly line and were carrying all of nekos food out of the house. I actually am pretty impressed with the speed of the whole invasion. I was pretty much only gone for about 8 hours. They worked pretty fast to get the whole gang inside and working in that amount of time!

So I promptly ran over and grabbed my second master and he then ran and grabbed some students who fixed the whole thing for me! They didn’t even bat an eye when the little devils bit their feet and wouldn’t let go! They are dangerous like that. Those ants really don’t let go once they sink their teeth (and they have SHARP TEETH…. Ok… pinchers!).

Anyway, those boys did a great job! When peter and I got back from dinner the whole problem was solved and I was ant free… until Sunday.

Sunday the ants decided that they hadn’t finished what they had started and invaded my court yard once again. Blast it all! Sorry mom and dad I had to go on the phone so fast! I just didn’t want them to invade my house again.

And once again I burned them all. It was a little sad because the fire got a tad out of control and burned some of my pretty flowers… but im sure they will forgive me.

And then they came back into my garden again the next day! When I told the teachers that I had them again they all just laughed and they were like “well they like sugar. Are you sure your not dropping sugar on the ground?” Sorry teachers, my use of sugar is pretty much half that of ANY Tanzanian… and I certainly don’t go around sprinkling it on the ground. My only conclusion is that im just way too sweet and the saifu cant leave me alone.

Done and done :)

So I gotta little story for ya… the other day the fundi (the electrician) came over to fix my neighbors electricity. It just so happens that im the lucky one that has the electricity switch in my house! Haha. Everyone better be nice to me or I have the power to turn off THEIR power! Hahaha… no I wouldn’t really do that don’t you worry! Anyway, they (meaning all of my male teachers because 3 of them live together in one half of the house and another male teacher lives with his family in the other half of the house) and the fundi came over and played with switches, messed with wires and generally enjoyed playing with electricity. I enjoyed watching the whole thing… im not gonna lie. After a while the fundi left, my neighbors returned to their house and well all lived happily ever after with electricity…..

Well almost everyone.

The next week it started raining. And its now the rainy season so it literally pretty much rains every day for long periods of time. It was during one of these many raining periods when someone came to the teachers room and said “Miss Mery a girl named Given is looking for you. Something happened in your jiko”. Oh now this isn’t anything anyone wants to hear! So I promptly ran home to see what had happened. Apparently my new house girl was trying to use my electric stove and she grabbed the pot and the whole stove shocked her! She freaked out (like she should) and ran to get me from school. Well I touched the stove myself and it didn’t do anything. And then one of my students came over to talk and I told him about the stove and I said “oh but now its not doing it” and I reached over and grabbed the pot. It sent this HUGE electric shock down my arm. What! The electricity was off! I had no clue what was going on. But I let my student take off the pot because I sure as heck wasn’t planning on touching the thing!

And for the next two days everything was back to normal.

Until once again Im at school and im walking back from a class and a student runs up and says “miss mery a girl named given is looking for you!” I was like oh brother what happened this time. So I ran home again and I walked in the door. Apparently this time my WHOLE KITCHEN WAS ELECTRIFIED! Given tried to pick up the pot sitting on the floor of the kitchen and a huge shock went up her arm, then she tried to grab the sugar from the table and an even bigger shock ran up her arm. She freaked out again and literally was so scared that she couldn’t even walk into the kitchen. Poor girl. So I went and talked to my second master (and my duplex neighbor) and they called a fundi right away to come fix it. Apparently while they were fixing my neighbors electricity they exposed a wire just outside my kitchen. And with all of the rain the wire was sending shocks into my kitchen. Dude. Im glad they fixed it. For a bit I was like…how utterly ironic would it be if I got electrocuted in Tanzania when I thought that I wasn’t going to have electricity in the first place!

And yeah. That’s my story. Neato

I hope you enjoyed it and that your enjoying your life! Love you all

So I have had many complaints that people cant imagine where I live and what im doing. So here is a “day in the life of Meredith” email. Karibu maishi sana. (welcome my life very… but that’s the direct translation. Basically everyone says Karibu to everything… like welcome to my life, welcome to my house, welcome to the day, welcome to the “insert whatever word you want to put here”).

And many people don’t know that I still haven’t started teaching yet. In fact, I don’t start teaching until the 19th. Maybe. Hopefully that’s when I will start! And by hopefully I mean, IM REALLY NERVOUS. But I want something today all day, so yeah having students around would be fun!

But now that I think about it, lets start from the beginning, shall we? We first flew into dar, hung out there for a few days, and then headed to morogoro for training. PICTURES HERE

Then we lived in this wonderful world called Mji Mpya (PICTURES HERE) and I lived with a wonderful host family called the Nyaki’s (PICTURES). They were neat. And every week I got to hang out with a wonderful/crazy group of people called my training class (Pictures… at your own risk! Hahaha just kidding!).

Half way through our training we went on a safari to makumi national park. We got to see lots of animals running around… yeah like Twiga (giraffe. But its one of my most favorite words in Swahili!) and zebras just chillin together. It was really cool. But no lions, that was a sad day. (Pictures)

Right before we left for our sites we went to hang out with a volunteer and to see how they lived. Stephanie, Emily and I all went to the big land of Kilimajaro (which actually means the blessed mountain. I thought that was neat when I found that out!). We walked to a waterfall. It was beautiful. (Pictures here!)

The mountains in the background of this is Kenya!!!!

and the big giant itself!

Then we went to dar for our site announcements. To look at everyones fear click here! And then back to morogoro to hang out with our host families again for the last time and to be Sworn in as official Peace Corps Volunteers! Yippee! (pictures here!)

And that now leads us to my life in Mufindi. Now for the day in my life right this second… Well here it goes:

6:45 wake up to chickens, people walking around outside my house, or just because I cant sleep anymore.

7:30 I get out of bed. The first few weeks I had people hodi at my door (that’s basically the knock of Tanzania. You just stand outside the house and yell “HODI” so that they know your there) at like 6:30. and I refused to get up before 7:30. I thought I was setting a good standard. Jenny has people hodi her at like 5 in the morning. CRAZINESS.

7:30-8:30 or 9ish. Eat breakfast/read my book

9-12ish I read, clean the house, wash clothes… yeah pretty much try to do things around the house at this point

12-1:30 cook lunch and eat lunch

afternoon time: read my book again, walk around the school, talk to the neighbors, walk to the mission, walk to the dukas (which a bascically stores where you can buy things… but don’t think walmart… lets think more like gas station? Yeah but sometimes the gas stations might be better than the dukas here. But still the dukas are nice J )

5ish start to cook dinner!!!

Eat dinner around 8

8-until im tired: read, write, chill, watch a movie, listen to music

and then my day starts all over again at around 6:45ish the next morning.

Now that’s what you call a “normal” day. But to be honest I have been on the go so much lately that it doesn’t feel like that’s a normal day. My “abnormal” days normally consist of walking to peters house (7 miles away) walking to jenny and geoffs (4 miles away) and hanging out with them. When I go to peters we normally just talk and hang out. The walk to his house is very pretty…. Long but pretty! Jenny and Geoff’s is normally a different story. We hang out with the orphans, play with the monkey, walk around fox farms, visit people around the community. Yeah very random things!

So I have some pictures so that people will know what everything looks like!!! Here it goes! Click here!

In this picture if you look carefully you can see both my school and the mission. The mission is the top hill with red roofs. my school is on the lower hill with the white buildings. Ah home sweet home!

Well I actually hope that this works… because last time I tried to do this it didn’t work. Sadly! So wish me luck!!!!

Well im going to go now but I love all of you very very very much. I miss you.

Love mere

This is my class room that we sat in for the past 8 weeks! linda is on the left, rebecca is in the middle and our teacher "Big Boy" is on the right. Tim and Eddie are not in the picture... im sure they were doing push ups behind me while i was taking the picture :)

this is the view from my school! i get to see this mountian everyday. The internet place that i am using right now is at the foot of this mountian...

I just wanted to give a shout out to my newest brother in law... happy (semi late) birthday!

And with that, i should also beg for forgiveness from my biggest sister Allison because not only did i forgot to call her on her birthday, but i also forgot to even acknowledge it. feel free to beat me up when i get home in two years.

love you all!

mere

So I promised to tell you all about making dinner for my host family! Well lets just say that EVERYTHING is different here. No stoves, no ovens, no way of regulating temperature except for taking out coals or putting coals into the jiko that we have. Soo…. Yeah lets just say im not the best cook when im in America and I have all the modern conveniences… hahaha. So just keep that in mind while you are thinking about me cooking in Tanzania. Alright, so a few weeks ago my group got together and we made guacamole. Oh my gosh best thing in the whole world! We had a few mishaps along the way. Like one of the avocados we were sold wasn’t really ripe yet, and the chips that we bought at the store weren’t potato chips… they were cassava chips. But you know it turned out all fine and dandy :) So making guac put me in a cooking mood and I went back to my family and told them that I wanted to cook for them. They were SO excited. They asked me what I liked to eat in American and I told them pizza! Most defiantly pizza… wonderful full of cheese… oh so great. Anyway, they told me that I HAD to make pizza for them. Wonderful “american” food. So my momma asked me what I needed and I set out on the wonderful journey of making pizza from complete scrach. Yeah that’s right, the dough, the sauce, everything. It totally helps that we have a great cook book that pretty much told me what to do. But still. Keep in mind where I am. Africa. So the night before I am going to cook my momma comes and shows me that she bought everything that I was going to need for tomorrow! Yippee! And then I started to get nervous because I really have NO clue what im doing. The day that I cook I come home and want to get started right away! I then remembered that we didn’t have a fridge and so the cheese had been sitting out all day. So I opened it and tasted it. It was alright, not the best that I have ever had but it didn’t seem bad. Hahah but apparently my host siblings have NEVER HAD CHEESE BEFORE! Yeah that’s a shocker. So I had my sister try it and she totally hated the cheese. But I had already started to make the dough so you know what… I just went with it. Not a huge deal. So I continue to cook and everything is actually going wonderful! When it comes to “bake” the pizza we just improvised by putting a cover over the pan and put some coals on top! A wonderful, not completely terrible oven! Hahaha then we get to the table. And I give everyone a piece of the pizza. I served myself last and then just dug in. honestly, for my very first try making pizza and making it with things that I have never used before im not gonna lie… it was pretty good! Then I look up and I see everyone just looking at me. My momma was saying “mary this is good” and my host brother and our house boy were both really enjoying it. But my host sister and my two host girl cousins had the worst look I have ever seen on their faces! Hahahaha it was honestly so funny. I just burst out laughing and said “hampendi?” (you don’t like?) and they all smiled and just said “nzuri” (meaning good) but I could totally tell. They hated every second of putting that pizza in their mouths. Hahaha. So then the next day my momma asks me to cook spaghetti for the family. Well I was going to make that from scrach as well but they bought noodles so basically they just wanted me to heat up the noodles for them. But I decided to cook sauce because the pizza came out so good and because the girls hated it, I wanted to show them that I could make something that they would like. But I got really carried away when I started and I totally messed everything up and I put WAY too much garlic into it. Needless to say it was SO GROSS. I tried to have my momma not put it on the table (they pretty much cooked an entire other meal as well so they didn’t need my gross sauce) but she said that it couldn’t be that bad and put it on the table. No one really took any except my host brother. He put TONS on his spaghetti and then took a huge bit. And I thought he was going to throw up! Hahahaha I just burst out laughing and was like I know I tried to tell you! So needless to say that my host sisters still think that I cant really cook. Hahaha oh well. My momma is wonderful and even though it sucked she still was all smiles and encouraging. But after everything, if I can make a pretty dang good pizza in the middle of Africa im thinking that I should just open a pizza shop when I get back. Im just that good :) Ps. One thing that I LOVE about my host momma is how happy she is when I start speaking Swahili. you can totally tell that she asks me a question just so that I can try to answer her in my not quite complete Swahili. Im quite sure that she doesn’t really care about the answer half the time. Because her face is semi-serious when she asks the question and the moment that I start to break out the Swahili you can see the smile start to curve around her mouth and by the time im done with what im was trying to say she has a full blown smile. It really makes me want to keep talking :)

First and foremost... i am still around!

Im really sorry that it has taken me so long to actually post a blog but the internet is kind of hard for me to get to. Plus, once im here it sometimes takes up to 30 minutes to load! lameo. hahaha.

I am doing really great here so far! The training as been wonderful and my host family really has been helping me a TON! We just took our language exams and apparently im at the intermediate mid level... which is the level that we need to go out into our villages! yippee! But i still feel like i dont know anything, and i get really flustered if people say things that i dont know. but i guess that all goes with learning... it will just take some time!

I did get a cell phone!!! the number is +255 783646507. I dont know if the cell phone situation was the same when you were in uganda, but basically here it costs me a rediclous amount to call people... but its free to get calls, so i guess it evens out.

we move to our sites in a little over a month. That makes me REALLY excited and REALLY freaked out at the same time. on one hand i would love to have my own house, cook the foods that i want, not have to speak a language all the time that i dont know... but then on the other hand WHAT THE HECK AM I GOING TO DO BY MYSELF! hahaha i like the host family being around so i ahve people to talk to :) i guess ill have to make friends in my village fast!

Ill try catch all of the blogs up later once i have a computer that has a usb port... hopefully that can happen soon!!!

Mere

Well last night it finally happened, I handed my Aggie Ring over to my mom for safe keeping for the next two years. For all of my fellow Aggies out there, you understand how big of a deal that is! And, if you’re not an Aggie… just know it’s a big deal. I contemplated bringing it with me. I want it to be a world traveler, but then again, I want to have it for the rest of my life also (:

Im sitting in the airport as we speak writing this wonderful blog post. I’m currently heading to DC for the weekend before I start my training in Phili. Last night wasn’t too terrible. Other than the massive list of things going through my head that I needed to do before I left the house at 6:00am. Some of them are still left half finished for my wonderful mom to finish for me (aka packing all of my clothes).

Dadda please read this part carefully:

IF YOU THROW AWAY ALL OF MY STUFF ILL BE VERY SAD!

Momma, please don’t let that happen!!! (:

I got to the airport today and my bag was 52 lbs. DANG IT! There is a 50lb limit. The lady was nice though and let me do it anyway J I tried really hard to make a wonderful packing list and pack everything right… but that all went to crap once I actually started packing. It’s a lot more difficult than I thought that it would be. I mean really I just kept looking at everything going, “I seriously think I over packed but then again I know I’m not packing enough” and I already know that I forgot to pack things (aka my freaking bike helmet! Ill have to do something about that…). Oh well, I have 3 days before training… ill have to repack again anyway.

My last few days in Texas were wonderful. My last visit to college station was great! Everything I could have asked for. Wait, scratch that, I could have done without waiting to eat dinner for 2 hours! But I mean, we DID get free appetizers because of it. Gosh, I guess that’s what I get for going to my rival restaurant to eat. We should have driven to san an to go to salt grass. Hahaha. I still agree that we should call them and tell them they ruined my last night in America (all lies) and see what they would do (:

Then hanging out with the rents is always nice. They had to put up with me stuck in my room asking them to come look to see if I forgot anything. And with my inability to sleep so I would watch star trek in the weee hours of the night (I guess I can admit it now… yes, I am a closet treky. My parents transformed me when I was little, and I cant get away from it!).

Yeah, pretty random post. Hopefully ill actually post it since there isn’t internet in this airport… a glimpse into my future you might say?

Love you all.

Ps. The man sitting next to me is awesome. Awesomely hilarious! He keeps singing songs and making noises. But songs that remind me of Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street… haha.

Drumroll please..........

Hello friends and family and Welcome to my very first long awaited blog post. Maybe not long awaited for all of you, but I have been thinking about starting this blog for the past year and a half! Ever since i started thinking about joining the PC i have read hundreds of blogs about peoples experiences. Yes. i didnt have much to do at work :)

Well it is offically one week till I leave for DC to visit my siblings before i go to phili for staging. That means one week to go to college station, clean my room, work on swahili and pack. hum... i know what your thinking... but down worry, its all going to happen!

Anyway, im going to make this short and sweet. I just want to let you all know that i am so excited about my experience and that i am so greatful for everyones support thus far! Ill be posting my address for the first 10 weeks in a few days. And remember: Any letters, care packages and surprise visits are always welcome!

Peace out home slices....