Since I’m no longer in Tanzania, I’ve migrated to a new weblog. Fair warning that it is by no means in its final state.
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I promised music and here it is: the current iteration of my ‘Summary’ mix and what happens when I’m bored with a microphone.
Listening to music on the plane, staring (sparingly) out the too-bright window. Two successive endless landscapes in different color palettes, first the red-tan of the Sahara, dunes in graceful curves that tell you that the birthplace of Arabic looked like this, too. No signs of humans. Then the reflective ripples of the Mediterranean, sun bright, [...]
So since there was little feedback on the what-should-I-do issue here’s another, easier question: what media (books, music, tv, movies, internet phenomena) from the past two years should I seek out? What was your favorite book? Favorite album?
I sold my camera last week; selling my computer today. It’s all Kindle all the time from here on out. Which is to say, I’ll post more when I’m home. I have assorted music all lined up.
My homecoming looming e’er closer (November 2nd—mark your calendars!) I’ve been considering more and more the sort of work I might be interested in when I get back, and have come to the non-conclusion that I don’t really know. So I thought I’d put it to you, O anonymous readership: do you have any ideas [...]
It’s a strange twilight time for me–half the time I feel that I’ll be home unspeakably soon; the other half, I feel that it’s unbelievably far away. In the first mindset, I spend a contented afternoon figuring out exactly what camera and computer I’ll buy when I get home (a Canon SX200 and a System76 [...]
“Goats, goats, and more goats!” sings Bret, who likes to make up songs as we walk. We’re on our way to climb a mountain we’ve aspired to for the past two years. Bret unexpectedly knocked on my door this morning as I was psyching myself up for my classes. After the necessary pleasantries (mostly involving [...]
Sitting cross-legged on a table near the saddle hut on Mt. Meru, where we wll spend our second night, I can see The Mountain. The mountain that is the only one people think of if you say you went trekking in Tanzania, the one that everyone else up here with us seem to be training [...]
This is the coldest part of the year, but it doesn’t seem as cold as it was last year. It doesn’t seem as anything as it was last year, really–it rained less (or so I thought); I’m less afraid of teaching, but less motivated too (as if that were possible); I keep more to myself, [...]
“You know what word I haven’t used since I got here?” asked Bret musingly as we made our way back down the mountain. “What?” I said, paying more attention to placing my feet securely than to the conversation. Where we were walking, foliage often blocked our view of the ground, so this was a somewhat [...]
Yesterday’s trip to Mbeya ranks among the better travel stories I’ve garnered from my time here, although (surprisingly) not among the worst trips.
Jess was taking girls to a girls’ conference she had organized with a bunch of other PCVs, and Bret and I were tagging along. Because Jess would be responsible for these five kids, [...]
I upend the cat onto my lap; he lies there contentedly, upside-down, all four legs and his tail grouped together. I watch as he starts to wash his paws, hold his tail for him so he can clean it properly. Sometimes he misses and cleans my fingers instead. Sometimes he stops and just looks up [...]
I get on the coaster around 8 A.M.; we leave Njombe city limits around 8.45. A coaster isn’t the quickest way to travel, stopping as they do at every middle-of-nowhere bus stand to pick up and drop off passengers, but I’m in no hurry. I love this drive.
To my left are the Kibena tea fields, [...]
I wake up cold. I put on three layers of clothing, cold; eat breakfast, cold. I miss my morning class because I can’t bring myself to leave the nest of blankets I’ve made, wrapped around myself, still shivering at the core of them. Hands wrapped around a cup of tea.
I think I’m sick. I hope [...]
It’s 3 PM, a time that would normally find the mountains illuminated with glowing afternoon sun, the brightest part of the day. It looks like twilight. A huge clap of thunder shuts off the lights.
The rains are running a little late this year.
Down in the valley I can see the silver wall of rain, completely [...]
Back from town, break is like an unbroken string of Saturdays, leisurely and pleasant and at times dauntingly empty. It’s early afternoon on Friday and I’m back in bed, sitting up and reading. A cat curls up by my feet adorably, and I obligingly adore him. I’m a fool for my cats: they wake me [...]
My phone’s alarm woke me from a strange dream at 4.40. I dressed and left quietly, carrying a flashlight in one hand and an umbrella, doing double duty as a walking stick, in the other. Out of the house I stopped and turned off the flashlight, awed by the stars. I always manage to forget [...]
We hummed, sang, and whistled “Bad Romance” all weekend: a friend of Jess’s (well, a friend of all of ours, but particularly of Jess’s) came to visit, and brought with her a “Popular in America” mix. I’ve really grown to like pop, American and otherwise, while I’ve been here. Not sure why.
I caught the minibus [...]
We’re sitting inside Mama Ismael’s booth at the market. The rain is solid but not devastating. I wouldn’t want to walk in it in my thin cotton shirt, but it wouldn’t drench me immediately.
She’s telling me about how she had strange dreams, how she overslept. She dreamt that thieves stole into her house and took [...]
When I was home, one question I got from just about everyone was “so do you think in Swahili now?” It seems pretty basic, but it really got me thinking, because I don’t think in any language at all, really. Since then I’ve had a few conversations about how various people’s thought processes work. Kit [...]
There was another storm tonight over Lake Nyasa (do you all call it Lake Malawi? I can’t remember). I could see the lightning flashing from my bedroom window, lower than the last storm, half-hidden behind the mountains.
It’s almost March. The crocuses have started to bloom in our front yard, my mother told me on the [...]
Bret said the rain started at 4 A.M. It was still raining hard–but not pouring–when I woke up at 4.30. The car was supposed to leave at 5 so we were out before 5, waiting along the road in the shelter of the post office. And wait we did. We waited like champs, and waited [...]
Mama Ismael’s daughter Maria failed her Form II exams. What this actually means is unclear–before two years ago it would have meant repeat the year or drop out; two years ago the government decided to essentially invalidate all Form II results and let everyone continue to Form III; but they may or may not have [...]
They tell you, when you join the Peace Corps, that you’ll have more free time than you’ve ever had in your life. Coming out of 16+ straight years of school, you figure that can hardly not be the case. After all, Peace Corps won’t have homework, right?
You have no idea what they mean until you’re [...]
Music has always been important to me, something that I strongly associate with specific times of my life. Listen to Elvis Costello’s album ‘My Aim Is True’ and I find myself driving my beloved yellow Volvo station wagon along the windy mountain roads surrounding State College, PA; ‘Kojak Variety’ finds me a bit later that [...]
Since I woke up this morning, my shoulders and left arm have felt strange, as though someone took them apart and wasn’t quite sure how to put them back together. My shoulders ache; my arm twinges strangely when it’s in perfectly normal positions. I have no idea why.
The weather has been apathetic lately. Walking home [...]
“That car’s windshield looks like a Jackson Pollock painting made entirely of mud,” I said to Bret towards the beginning of our second day of travel, as we bumped along the pot-holed dirt road towards Makete. “That does not bode well for our trip.”
“I think you’ll really enjoy the mud patch before Tandala,” he [...]
Back in Tanzania since Sunday, I have a week in Dar es Salaam for my class’s Mid-Service Conference (which is exactly what it sounds like) before I head back to Makete.
So tonight we all had dinner together at the Badminton Institute, an Indian restaurant downtown. We’d planned to arrive at 6 but did so [...]
Heading to the airport for an epic journey featuring a day-long layover at Heathrow in about an hour. Thank you to everyone who made this an excellent vacation. A more detailed post may or may not be forthcoming.
I got home three days ago, and it’s almost like I never left. I get flashes of “…wait, that’s not right”: looking right instead of left when I cross the street; a doubletake when I reflexively poured myself a glass of tapwater; astonishment at the cleanness–no dust! no mud!; the feeling that I should know [...]
So I’m home! I’ll be around until January 8th. Drop me a line if you’ll be in DC or Philly!
Sitting with my friend at her duka in the afternoon, her daughter brings food and we move behind the counter to eat it. As we eat the ugali and beans with our hands I flash back to the trip I tagged along on with my father, when we went to Zambia. In Livingstone, the town [...]
I notice a strange sepia light coming through the curtains, so I pull them aside and look out on the most beautiful evening I’ve seen here, which is saying quite a lot. It’s like a Lisa Frank landscape come to life, but subtle and natural and minus the unicorns and dolphins. Each cardinal direction has [...]
Walking back to my house this evening, I noticed a kid at the tap in the back, filling a bucket with water. As a rule this would be par for the course here, but today it made me unutterably happy: the water had been out for more than a week, and on the walk home [...]
Tickets have been purchased for my visit home this winter. I’ll be coming in to DC the evening of December 15 and leaving the evening of January 8. I’ll be in DC for much of that time, hopefully spending the days around New Year’s in Philly, and a weekend sometime in Delaware.
Lakini–but or though. More like though, since it’s usually tacked onto the end of a sentence.
Pole–Accurately described by a friend as “like sorry, but better.” An expression of sympathy, for anything from dropping an orange or tripping to the death of a family member.
Sana–very. Pole sana–very sorry.
Kumbe–”Like surprise, but better.” Tanzanians don’t use it sarcastically, [...]
This afternoon Mama Ismael told me that I was coming with her to visit a bereaved friend in the evening; having nothing better to do, I agreed. She came by to pick me up a short while before it got dark and we walked over. After saying “pole” (sorry) a lot when we arrived, the [...]
The ocean is Dutch Blue. I painted it today.
Inspired by the previous resident of Linda’s house, and the fact that my cats are slowly shredding all the paper maps I have, I’m painting a world map on my living-room wall. I took down the small map I’d had up, overlaid a grid (10 squares down, [...]
Things here proceed as usual. September 17 was our one-year anniversary in country. Looking back, if I look at the experience overall it seems like much less time, but if I review events in my head I realize that rather a lot has fit into that year.
Also, there are a few more pictures up on [...]
Classes are over for the foreseeable future: midterms, then break. Later this week Bret and I are going to retry the hike that almost killed me a few months ago. I have hope, though: no mud this time (although there are dust and sun); I think I’m in better shape; and I’ll be carrying less. [...]
It’s the season of clear blue skies. In the mornings there are often clouds in the valleys, sometimes clouds in the sky, but they former are gone by a few hours after sunrise, the latter by noon. In the afternoons the sun shines cold and bright and clear.
It’s the season of no rain. The [...]
Tingatinga (who I now think is a boy cat like Pol) stands on my blanketed legs, mews a tiny disconsolate mew. I put down my book and pet him for a moment, talk to him, and he moves up to sit on my stomach and looks at me, then curls up in front of my [...]
This week has actually been pretty great. Moderately monotonous work requiring small amounts of thinking, just like I like it, setting up the lab; minimal teaching (handed back last term’s exams, gave out candy to those who did well, went over answers). The only real teaching I’ve done is of my fellow teachers, who requested [...]
Quick question for those of you [non-family] who want to see me while I’m home this winter: would New Year’s in Philly or its environs work well? I was thinking I’d be here in Tanzania for New Year’s but it turns out my training doesn’t start until the 11th, and going back to site and [...]
I get home to frantic cats, desperate for food and attention, in that order. I attend to the food right away and they’re occupied for a good two minutes before they start following me around as I settle into the house, rubbing up against my legs and mewing plaintively. Unpacking toiletries, I notice that they’ve [...]
Annie has been on nine types of transportation in this country (plane, taxi, boat, Land Rover/Landcruiser, lumber lorry, pick-up, bus, coaster, dala-dala), the last six of them modes of transportation locals used. “You travel a lot,” she told me, clarifying that she meant that we travel for a long time rather than frequently.
And it’s true: [...]
We woke at 4.15 so we could get good seats on the 5 A.M. bus. We were out the door by 4.30, but unfortunately so was Ting, slipping out while we were distracted, so we spent the next half hour chasing her around the outside of the house with flashlights, thankful that it wasn’t the [...]
Right now I’m back in Morogoro for the first time since training, in the shadow of the Uluguru Mountains. It’s strange–but good–to see my homestay family again (I’m staying with them), to walk the same streets I walked when I was learning Swahili, talking to the same people. It’s good to be back, and my [...]
Snippets:
Hanging out at the market on Sunday afternoon, a few friends there are in hysterics over my description of what I imagine my cats are saying to me at various points in the day. Half of the humor is my bizarre personification of these animals that most Tanzanians are afraid of, half is probably my [...]
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