A lot of people ask me what it is exactly I do over here as a Peace Corps Volunteer.  Some even have the guts to ask what my daily routine is.  When faced with this question point blank, I never know what to say, because each day is so different and affected by the most random events, and then at the end of a week, everything has somehow blurred together.  But not this time.  I decided to write down everything that I did last week, from Monday to Sunday. I’ll try to do this more often, seeing as the Meeshloaf I served up in 2009 was barely enough to satisfy a cockroach. Monday, January 25, 2010 Leave Mbeya town at 10am, arrive in Ilembo at 4pm after waiting in Mbalizi for a lorie truck to leave for a few hours. Luckily I was able to buy some kersone at wholesale cost before I left…5 liters for around 5000 shillings, this should fulfill my lantern and cooking needs for at least a month. I also travel in style with a debe of dagaa (large bucket full of dried fish so I can feed my dog, Raha). So things are smelling pretty good in the truck.  After getting into Ilembo I drop my bags off at Mbinde’s duka and go straight to a meeting with the OVC Committee to schedule the distribution of blankets, soap, notebooks, and school uniforms that will be given out in the next couple of weeks to about 100 of the most vulnerable children living in Ilembo, thanks to a grant approved by the Mary Ryan Foundation! (maryryanfoundation.org) The minutes were read from the last meeting and we go over the budget for building the out of school youth center, where there will be classrooms big enough to hold double the amount of students that are presently enrolled in the vocational program of sewing, carpentry, and masonry. The foundation has already been dug, and next Monday a trip has been planned for the chairman and the treasurer to go to town to purchase cement and to withdraw money from the account in order to pay for all of the bricks that will be used in building the classrooms. The meeting finishes at about 7pm, just when the heavy rain starts.  Luckily I intercept Skittles on the main road, who has my dog and an umbrella.  He and his friend walk me home and help carry my stuff.  It’s getting dark, so I light a candle and Skittles notices the Toy Story 100 piece puzzle on my table, and has no idea what it is.  So he starts working on the puzzle as I help explain that he should start with the outside border pieces first.  I’m pretty sure he doesn’t think that this will really end up looking like the picture on the box of buzz lightyear, woody, the potato heads, and various aliens.  But he gives it a shot anyway (see pic) and with a lot of determination is able to complete the frame.  I’m exhausted so I tell them I’m going to sleep and thank them for helping me get back in the rain.  I do a little work on my new netbook (I love this thing!!!) typing up a completion report for about an hour since I’m trying to close out the World AIDS Week Grant. About 10pm, I go to sleep. Tuesday, January 26, 2010 Wake up around 7, feed the dog, light the charcoal jiko so I can try out the coffee percolator that my sister Christy’s husband, Martin gave me.  I now have espresso, this is awesome!! I’m going to need some caffeine to get through today. Walk up the giant hill towards the market, greet everyone I see with the local “Mwagona!” “Heyaaaah” As you might remember, everyone here calls me Shali, it’s a name that’s very popular with the Umalila ladies, so they decided to give it to me because Michelle sounds too much like Mchele, which means dry rice, and Meesh was just not cool enough for them.  So as I’m walking up to meet with the OVC Committee for our first day of Most Vulnerable Children needs distribution visits, I hear “shali!!” “weh, shali, we!” (which means you, shali, you!) and literally shake everyone’s hand.  I stop by the Duka la Maziwa (the Milk Shop), and greet Joseph, the milkman, who is always smiling and happy to see Raha and I.  I grab a quick cup of maziwa mgando, which is almost like yogurt but more like some sour milk, but it tastes pretty good.  Then I continue walking on up the hill until I get to the sewing classroom, which is doubling as storage for all of the blankets, soap, notebooks, pens and uniforms we’ll be giving out.  Of course, Lorenci, my besti, is there on time at 10am.  I’ve mentioned him before..he’s 14, and orphan, is living with AIDS that he contracted from his mother at some point during the pregnancy, delivery, or while breastfeeding, and he’s a sewing student in the out of school youth vocational program.  And he’s just plain awesome.   The rest of the OVC Committee trickles in, and there’s about 5 of us that will go house to house delivering the goods today.  Our goal is to visit all the families of two subvillages, Mazigura and Madukani, about 35 kids in all.  These children were identified by the OVC Committee as living in a dangerous environment, and so we are trying to provide the basic items that these kids are unable to provide for themselves.  Most of them are living with the mother after the father had passed away, or living with elderly grandparents or aunts and uncles.  The living conditions were even worse than I had expected with certain families, but what we’re trying to do is provide them with materials that can keep them clean, warm, and supplies and clothes so that they can attend Primary School.  Primary school is free, but you need to have a uniform, shoes, notebooks and pens.  Some of these children had to drop out of school because they couldn’t afford these items.  The Mary Ryan Foundation has purchased Primary School Uniforms that were made by the out of school youth sewing students to give to those most in need; thereby helping the recipients and allowing the students to continue on with their program.  Other members of the community are also purchasing the uniforms, because they are offering them at a lower cost.  It’s kind of like a beauty school..same service, lower cost, because they’re still learning.  Only you never have to worry about the sewing students permanently ruining your hair.  After about 2 hours it starts to downpour, so all five of us hang out by the fire in the jikoni (kitchen, or place of the jiko) of one family’s house who we’ve just visited.  At about 1pm, we continue on the slippery sidepaths of Ilembo, and at one point I do a full on banana peel slip and fall right onto my ass.  Everyone laughs, including me, and I slowly get up and wipe all the mud off of me. This was one of my favorite kids who we visited. Evodi Mwile is in first grade, and is holding soap and looking at his very own new notebooks and pens that he’ll be able to use in school.   The orange rectangular sticks in these pictures are all soap, and the clear plastic wrapped items are blankets.  You can see in Evodi’s eyes how genuinely happy he is to have his own school supplies, and you can also see by his unwashed clothes that he was in dire need of soap as well.  All in all, we visited 34 kids in the two subvillages today.  After we did the home visits we had a meeting with the sewing and carpentry teachers to discuss goals for this new term and for the treasurer to meet with the teachers to talk about purchasing supplies for the school, like oil for the  machines and more thread.  After meeting with the teachers and students, I get home around 5pm and my friend Moshi, the clinical officer at the health center, comes over to hang out.  We’re going to be doing a seminar on STDs and HIV/AIDS this Thursday.  We did one last Thursday too, hopefully we can keep doing one per week.  I then make some mac n cheese that I had gotten from the US, along with some crystal light pink lemonade, and watch Mighty Ducks 1 and 2 on my computer…I can’t believe how long the battery lasts!  Also can’t believe how ridiculous the Mighty Ducks movies are… Wolf “The Dentist” Stansson, Charlie Conway’s innocence, and Coach Gordon Bombay’s dynamic character development.  I drift to sleep dreaming of the flying V.. Wednesday, January 27, 2010 8am- Meet with OVC committee to start day 2 of home visits.  We have to start early because there are 3 funerals today.  We arrive at the subvillage of Igwila and find conditions are worse here than the other two  yesterday.  It’s more isolated and farther from the road and market.  One family in particiular, the Zyolas, really needs immediate attention.  Enita Zyola should be in third grade, but dropped out of school because her mother could not afford to send her and her older sister at the same time. Her clothes are torn and she wears no shoes.  She’s taking care of her younger sister, Jenifa, while her mother travels to a nearby village to visit a relative.  Their father passed away several years ago. She will be able to return to school now because of the support of MRF and the work of the OVC Committee.  The Zyolas are a top priority for the OVC committee, and when they do corn and bean distribution, they will be first on the list.  Today, at least, each of the three children will have their own blanket which will hopefully keep them warm.  They will also have soap so they can wash themselves and their clothes.  -->Enita We visit 12 more kids before noon, with the rock solid mamas balancing everything on their heads as we hike up and down the slippery hills of Ilembo.  I return home around noon, and Asia Pachanga, a former secondary school Form I student who got pregnant last year and was kicked out of school, comes over with her newborn baby, Joseph.  She said she named him Joseph because that’s my father’s name.  I guess he made quite an impression on his visit over here! He was born on Christmas day, and when she came over last week my new PCV neighbor Adrienne was visiting and we sewed socks for Joseph, and Asia decorate a Christmas stocking with Joseph’s name and birth date with supplies sent by Dos and Matt in a Christmas package.     So Asia, a 16 year old orphan and new mother, comes over to play Mastermind (she loves this game and is really good at it), but then notices the Toy Story puzzle started by Skittles and decides to have a crack at it.  Asia is one of the most gifted students I’ve seen in Ilembo, but this whole jigsaw puzzle thing is new to her and so I give her a few hints.  Within a half hour, the puzzle is completed.  Asia tells me one of the funerals is for a girl a know, a third grade student who used to come play at my house.  I ask her to take me to her house so I can pay my respects to the family. 1pm – Go to the funeral of 9 year old Mage Baraka..She died suddenly last night for unknown reasons.  She had gone to school on Monday and Tuesday morning, then started to feel ill on Tuesday evening.  Her parents took her to the Health Center that night, but they said she would need to go to Mbeya town to the Referral Hospital.  They tried to find a ride, but her condition had worsened and they were unable to find transport so late at night.  At 5am, she passed away. The funeral, as most Tanzanian funerals are, was intense and incredibly sad.  First, we went to the house where all the women are wearing khangas and the men are standing outside.  The family is inside the kitchen by the fire with the body inside the open coffin.  People come in and cry out, scream, and mourn while saying their goodbyes to Mage.  Then the body is carried in the freshly constructed wooden coffin, and everyone RUNS to the burial site.  The villagers have been working hard this morning to make 3 coffins and dig 3 graves. Mage’s grave is set in a beautiful grove of banana trees, bamboo, and eucalyptus trees.  There is heavy thunder in the distance but the rain is miraculously holding out.  I started crying as the priest was speaking, not because of the words he was saying but because Mage’s mother and sister were crying so loudly they were screaming.  All the women are sitting on the ground with their legs straight out, while the men all stand crowded around the grave.  The coffin sits upon the mound of freshly dug up earth, and the priest stands next to it.  Typical of any Tanzanian event, there is even laughter coming from the men near the grave while the mother and sister and other relatives are wailing.  Tanzanians find it apprpriate to laugh even at the most somber times.  A few words are said about Mage, but what is most upsetting to me are watching her fellow students, all in uniform, squeezing into the crowd between the mamas and the babas.  I’ve seen primary students squished into so many audiences, but it was heartbreaking to see them do it at a funeral for one of their peers.  After the burial, which also included village announcements such as “Will whoever is stealing the corn please stop stealing the corn”, and “For those who haven’t yet contributed to the subvillage funeral committee please do so now”, gifts were laid on a khanga that is placed on top of the grave.  Some of the gifts were sugar, salt and 7,500 shillings in cash that had been collected on a shovel for Mage’s family.  From the burial site we return to Mage’s home, where dozens of mamas have been preparing Kande, the traditional funeral food.  It’s a pasty mixture of corn, ugali, and a few beans.  We all wash our hands and then dig into the communal bowls that are placed around the perimeter outside.  The kande burns my fingers but I continue to eat it so that I won’t be made fun of for not being immune to boiling temperatures on my skin.  Even when I eat thekande, the hot paste remains on my hands and I have to lick it off for the burning to stop.  Everyone asks me if I’ve eaten Kande yet, and laugh when I answer “yes, of course!”  I go to offer my condolences to Mage’s family.  The women are all sitting in the kitchen on grass mats on the floor.  Outside, the hundred or so women continue to talk and eat kande.  The howling sounds of mourning rise and subside with each new visitor who goes in to console the family.  I’ve been to many funerals in Ilembo before, but I hadn’t gone to one in a while and I had forgotten how comforting the sense of community is at an event like this.  Even more so than Anna’s funeral almost a year and a half ago, because now I actually could look around and see people I know and care about, not just faces in the crowd.  There was a calmness over everyone sitting in that grove, and I felt the grief that is the loss of a child from your community.  A child here is everyone’s child.  Mage used to come play at my house with a dozen other kids her age, and even though I never got to know her extremely well, I see her in every one of the smiling faces of the kids who continue to come and draw or color in books at my home.  I see many women from the widows group at the funeral, and they inform me that we will meet at 4pm at Mama Tuya’s house –the usual.  I go home and still feel very sad and exhausted and start to get a nasty headache, so I decide to take a 45 minute power nap. After debating staying in bed, at 4 I head up to Mama Tuya’s which is on the complete opposite side of Ilembo from me.  When i get there, I find that the rest of the mamas are tired and in the same mood as I am, and a few are resting inside.  I bring the rest of the money from the previous month’s apron sales, and they are excited because they will be able to buy pigs for their new pig project.  I have also brought the pattern for the toddler’s wrap around dress, and the widows immediately jump at the opportunity to learn a new design.  I suggest using two different kitenge patterns so that the dress can be reversible.  A two year old girl, Maria, is at the house and it’s decided she’ll be our model.  The mamas get busy tracing, cutting and sewing, and then the dress is put on Maria, who toddles around and looks adorable.  The widows are all laughing, because they’ve never seen a dress like this and are excited to have gotten a new pattern and a new project idea.  I get back home around 7, after buying an avocado and peanuts at the market.  I feed Raha and make some more crystal light.  Realize that I’m exhausted after the past two emotionally draining days.  Fire up the charcoal jiko, boil some water then decide to bake cinnamon rolls.  It takes about 2 hours, but it’s worth the work and wait.  I listen to some mix CDs on my cvs Jensen CD player and speakers, and sit and enjoy my slightly undercooked rolls. I save half the dough so I can bake them again tomorrow.  This is the second time I’ve made them and I’m feeling more comfortable with the recipe.  I doze off to sleep after reading essays from David Sedaris’ “When You Are Engulfed in Flames” that Shan sent with Linc and Kirsten when they came to visit, and read until the candle melts down.   Thursday, January 28, 2010 7am: Wake up and feed Raha.  It’s cold and rainy and I want to go back to sleep.  A teaching from the sewing schools comes by at 7:30 to greet me.  After that, I finish the Sedaris book, appropriately finishing with his essays about finding silly English phrases in Japan, such as “Eye Rash Tint” which is relatable due to the similar ridiculous ones that you can find in Tanzania with the common R and L mixups.  I’m waiting for Mama Nulu to come help with washing clothes, she was supposed to be here at 8.  I talk to my friend Greta on the phone who is in Iringa teaching at a Peace Corps training for the first year health and environment volunteers.  I start to clean up the house, and Mama Nulu comes at 10am, just when I’m planning on leaving for the Village Council meeting.  I hang around a bit and just give Mama Nulu my clothes to wash at her house and she can bring them buy tomorrow.  She does such a better job at washing clothes by hand than I do, and it’s been nice having her help.  Cheri and Richard Romano gave me some money when I came back for Christmas, and I’m using it to help Mama Nulu and her daughter go to Dar so that Nulu can get surgery on her hand.  After a severe burn incident in July in which her entire hand and back caught on fire when she stood too close to the fire in the kitchen, her hand became severly disfigured.  I took them to the hospital in September to get it looked at again and they said unless she got surgery to correct the bone disfiguration her fingers would grow backwards and she’d most likely have to get her arm amputated.  Nulu is only 3, so if she goes to Muhimbili Hospital in Dar she can get free treatment, but the cost of getting there and food during the stay is what makes this trip impossible without some help.  So in exchange for the money Mama Nulu is helping me around the house; which works out well for everyone.  My laundry frequency is now up to once a week as opposed to once every two months.  I walk up the hill with Mama Nulu and Nulu (pictured—>) and head to the Village Council meeting with the purpose of talking about the water situation in Ilembo. And that’s where I am now as I’m writing this by hand.  It’s after 12 and everyone is still rambling on about various village issues, mostly in Kimalila (local language).  There are the issues of farm thefts, secondary school classroom building, etc.. It’s a good time to write, because everyone thinks I’m taking notes but really I’m half listening because this meeting goes on forever.  The reason I’m here is because I met with the District Water Engineer and other water engineers when I was in town last weekend, and was able to get a map of the water stations that were built in the early 1980’s in Ilembo by the government.  All of them stopped working in the mid 1990’s and were built without any coordinator or consideration of the villagers. The pumps are reliant on a water tank and pump that is powered by a diesel generator.  Now, over twenty years later, the population has grown exponentially and none of these water stations are functioning.  Everyone gets their water from the rivers.  4000 people getting water from the river means it’s not clean or reliable.  So I got th engineer to come out here and talk to the Village Council.  He advised them to start a proper water committee and open an account and collect donations from the village.  Ilembo wants water from the mountain which is propelled by gravity.  The District engineers have already tested Ilembo and four other villages for the gravity water project.  The biggest obstacle towards completing the project is the lack of communication between the water committee and the district engineers.  So I’m trying to improve that communication and encouraging the Ilembo Water Committee to take initiative and be prepared.  12:45pm..they’re still talking about problems with building the secondary school classrooms.  Raha is laying down in the middle of the room and providing comic relief to everyone since most dogs are aggressive and afraid of people, while Raha just hangs out and licks everyone.  i hope this meeting starts to move along, because I’m doing a training later with my all star counterpart Nahasibu.  We did one last Thursday on Sexually Transmitted Infections and HIV. I paid for a liter of petrol to run the village councillor’s generator.  He has a beer hall that at night shows soccer games for paying customers, but now on Thursdays is a health education venue that shows educational videos and we facilitate discussions.  It’s a ghetto VHS player and TV but it gets the job done.  Moshi, the clinical officer, was able to answer a lot of questions about the biology of HIV/AIDS and how ARV therapy works.  The participants asked great questions and we ended up having about a 3 hour discussion about risk behavior and how we can avoid putting ourselves at risk to STIs and HIV.  Secondary school students, the widows group, out of school youth, teachers, and many other vilagers all attended.  There were about 70 people.  I think the videos are boring but since no one here ever gets to see anything on TV, they LOVE it!  It’s a relief to be able to show a movie and to have a counterpart who speaks the tribal language, because then the barriers of communication are broken down and  I’m sure that people have understood.   2pm- Do my part in the meeting and then head out to make advertisements about today’s seminar.  We’ll be doing male and female condom demonstrations on the wooden penis model and Nahasibu himself constructed.  Go to buy petrol for generator. On way I pass the Baptist church and see an mzungu, an Austrian woman named Gitte who works with SIL, translating the Bible and other literature into Kimalila.  They’re doing a seminar at the church today at tomorrow, so I invite Gitte, her husband Thomas and a British women, Jo, over to my house for dinner. 3pm- Wait for people to show up. Since I advertised it to start at 3 I expect that the majority of people will show up between 4:30 and 5.  This is the Tanzanian way.  In the meantime, Nahasibu is drawing on the flip chart pictures and instructions of how to use a male condom.  4:30pm- Majority of people have arrived, and we talk again about the types of STIs and their symptoms, and then we go back to prevention.  Nahasibu demonstrates putting a condom on the penis model and then we get volunteers to come up and do it.  Uzia, one of the girls who attended the girl’s empowerment conference last year and is a peer educator, came up and did it, teaching as she went.  After several hours of condoms and family planning education, we have to finish at 7pm because the Diwani Patrick, owner of the beer hall, has arrived and they need to turn on the soccer match.  So we all vow to try to show up earlier next week so that we can watch the video about a widow and her family who lose all their property because the husband didn’t write a will and so his family came after the mourning period and kicked the wife and her children out.  This happens a lot here, so we’re trying to get people to do living wills to try to prevent the loss of farms and homes with widow headed households.  7:15- Go to the market and buy a kilo of flour and 4 avocados so I can make tortillas and guacamole for my SIL Bible Translating friends.  I also still have that leftover cinnamon roll dough so we should be good.  I thought the Tanzanian staff were coming too so I bought soda.  Turns out they already had ordered food so the soda went untouched at my house.  Thomas, Gitte and Jo were really interesting people and it was fun hosting guests for dinner in my home.  They had brought some soups in packets so we had that and then enjoyed the guac and tortillas.  They had never seen an oven made with on a charcoal jiko so I think they were shocked when the cinnamon rolls came out and tasted delicious.  All in all, I was coming off as a pretty good host.  As long as they didn’t need to use my bathroom, I was in good shape. They left at 10pm, and I went straight to sleep. Friday, January 29, 2010 7am- Stephano, the chairperson of th OVC Committee, comes over and I help him organize the Most Vulnerable Children data in a book we received from the ministry of health and social welfare.  It’s pretty technical and not very user friendly, so we go back to using the Child Status Index that is easier to understand.. Basically you use a rubric to assess the needs in the various sectors of a child’s life: Education, health, shelter, food, legal, etc.  He goes on his way up to the market since it’s mnada day, or the day where everrrrryone in the Umalila region comes to buy and sell and just hang out.  I tend to try to avoid the mnada days, except to run up and buy pineapples and mangoes on the cheap, because there are usually a lot of drunk people and I hate it when drunk Tanzanians scream ‘MZUNGU’ and try to grab and talk to you.  So I designated today as a house cleaning day. 8am- Mama Nulu comes over and helps me clean out the weeds from my courtyard.  During the rainy season the weeds grow to be many feet high in just a matter of a few days.  It’s crazy.  So in order to navigate through my courtyard it helps to just take a jembe and clear everything out.  It’s raining while this is going on, and I give Mama Nulu and Nulu a taste of the leftover cinnamon rolls…great success!! 9am – Nahasibu comes over to plan out tomorrow—We were invited by a PLWHA Group (People Living with HIV/AIDS) in the neighboring village of Ruanda to come and do a seminar on Saturday.  I’m really looking forward to it because Ilembo has yet to start up its own group, and I’ve worked with the group from Ruanda in the past.  They are very motivated and have done a lot to reduce stigma in their village.  Ilembo is much bigger than Ruanda and as a result people are afraid to join a group for fear of being discriminated and stigmatized.  I’m hoping that before I leave there will be a PLWHA support group established in Ilembo.  We decide we’ll leave for Ruanda at 7am tomorrow and then walk the 2 hours it takes to get there. Rest of day – Cleaning, cooking, and organizing.  I take a hot bucket bath and then keep the charcoal going so I can boil a bunch of water and stock up on drinking water.  At least in the rainy season i can catch water in buckets outside…makes life so much easier!  I tackle cleaning the choo and outdoor area..there’s some termites that are building up castles on the wooden doors so I knock them down.  Start to organize stuff my parents had brought with them, like medicine and band aids, antibiotic ointment, throat lozenges, and other pain relief meds, because I’m going to be giving the PLWHA Group a first aid kit and training on how to use all the stuff in the kit, along with a Kiswahili translated version of Where There is No Doctor.  7pm – Bag up all the medicines and get ready for bed. It’s been a long week and tomorrow is going to be a long day as well. Saturday, January 30, 2010 6:30am- Wake up and get my stuff together.  I might try to hike from Ruanda to a neighboring PCV’s site in Tukuyu, so I bring my computer and other work to get done in town in case I get there. 7-8:15 – Waiting for Nahasibu to arrive.  He’s running late, so we’ll have to try to catch a lorie going towards Ruanda or else we’ll get there extremely late. 8:30- Nahasibu shows up, we start heading up the hill towards the lories.  Luckily, one is about to leave, so we hop on it and get to Ruanda within 15 minutes.  9am-3pm: Have a great seminar with the group.  Discuss STI’s, do male and female condom demonstrations and each member of the group has to stand up and teach the rest of them.  Talk about the importance of preventing infections when living with HIV, and do a training on First Aid and Home Based Care, stressing importance of protecting oneself and others when taking care of a patient. We’re fed ugali and chicken as the rain comes down at 1:30pm, then head to an outside pavillion where a TV and vcr has been procured, and I throw a thousand shillings towards some petrol.  We show a video called “Tuvunje Ukimya” or “let’s break the silence”, which follows the lives of three health care workers who are HIV positive.  It brings up good discussions of ARVs, stigma and discrimination, and the benefits of having a support group.  There are a few really great participants in the PLWHA Group, one of them being the mama who is wearing the sweet grizzly bear sweatshirt, reminds me of our old lax assistant coach, Brian, who always wore the wolf shirts:   male condom demo watching the video outside showing how to use a female condom correctly. Overall, it was a really productive day and I’m excited to work with the group again.  They are going to come to Ilembo for one of our Thursday seminars and try to motivate HIV positive people at Counseling and Treatment Clinic to start a group.  They are a great example of people living positively with HIV/AIDS and the benefits of adhering to ARV therapy. 3pm- Stand out on the road for 5 minutes to see if I can get a ride down the back road towards Tukuyu…. 3:05pm- Success! Daudi, the District Agricultural officer who came out to Ilembo to do a pig and chicken training for my groups, is in the car and there’s room.  They take me to Isangati where I then hop on the back of Lorie that goes down the mountain to Kiwira.  It takes only a couple of hours, and then I get on a dalla dalla going to Tukuyu and arrive at a new education volunteer, Andrew’s site.  There are about four of us from the nearby area and we play poker using bottle caps as chips.  We make three big pizzas and end up having a really relaxing night, complete with watching the movie Role Models on my computer.  This was a nice, light end to a pretty heavy day..But that’s the only way I can balance out stuff here. In the morning, I can be motivating a group of 15 people all living with HIV, and in the evening, I am able to unwind and play some poker.  I was glad that I was able to get a lift so late in the day.  Sunday, January 31, 2010 (new month’s eve!) 12pm- Head to Mbeya town so I can use the internet and type up these blogs.  I’ve also got to deliver some letters to Kihumbe Group so we can do another HIV testing day in Ilembo, and hopefully in Ruanda too.  4pm- Use the internet modem of a friend in town so I can skype for the first time on my computer!! I was able to see addy, luca and jonah playing operation and also talk to my mom and dad and to dos and matt about the possibility of them coming out here!. Although this is delaying me actually writing my blog I’m so excited to be able to see everyone on video.  10pm- Gchatting still ( i love having this modem and electricity) and writing the blog.  I’ve gotta head back to Ilembo tomorrow but hopefully I can be productive until I leave. Meeting with the water committee tomorrow and going to be visiting more orphans and vulnerable children on Wednesday in some of the other subvillages.  The foundation for the new youth center has already been dug, and Stephano and the treasurer, Suzana Bahati, are going to town on Monday to purchase cement. The pictures of the foundation and the future site of the school are below. Thanks to everyone who has helped the Mary Ryan Foundation.  These children now have access to opportunities that they would not have been able to have without your support!! Well, hope you enjoyed this week’s binge of Meeshloaf..I’ll try not to leave so much time between helpings. Miss and love you all! foundation for the new out of school and vulnerable children youth center

*peace corps life with a tanzanian dog If a Tanzanian were to read a Kiswahili translated version of Marley & Me, he or she would probably think that it was a fictional tale…something that could have never happened to a human being on this earth. Maybe they would have elevated it to a story as tangible as Harry Potter, or Jurassic Park*. After being here for a year and a half and knowing the extremely different views that Tanzanians and Americans hold toward pets, one day in August, I impulsively “bought” a puppy from a neighbor in my village. (they asked for 1000 shillings for her, which is less than a dollar) When asked why I did this by some of my friends in the village, my response was simply, “cuz she’s sooooo cute!!” They usually ignored that, assuming I was joking, and skipped straight to the matter of “When she’s big and vicious, can you give her to me so she can guard my house?” This request still happens anytime someone new sees my dog with me, they ask for her, in an almost kiswahili Borat way of “how muchhhh?? i liiiikeee-a-very-muchhh!!” I’ve had my cat, Pilipili, for over a year, but never really got comfortable (aka loved) him. After he came of age and took an unannounced three week long journey to sew his seed with the entire female cat population in Ilembo, I could never look at him the same. His teeth are incredibly sharp, he’s huge, and has terrifying ninja-like moves at night that scare the crap out of me. I’ll just be trying to make guacamole by candlelight and BOOM! Lights out, and before I know it he’s already climbed halfway up my body, chasing down the avocado that’s in my hand. Pili pili did a good job at keeping the rats at bay, and to him, I was like an open house that had free food and drink; a place he could pop back into when the nights were too cold, or if the hunting and love searching weren’t going so well. He thought he was the best thing that could’ve happened to any pet owner. So you can imagine his surprise when he returns one night to find a puppy, smaller than himself, asleep in my lap, being showered with more attention in just a few minutes than he was given in the past year. As Raha tried to initiate a friendship by smelling Pilipili’s buttocks, Pilipili took offense and within milliseconds lept into his ultra-scary hiss and pounce mode. When it came time to feed them, I feared the worst. They both eat the exact same food – dagaa – tiny little dried fish, along with ugali or rice –and, as I’d feared, things got really ugly. Hissing and barking and other sounds of imminent death or at least serious injury occurred at each feeding time, and I though I might have to choose one over the other. Of course, I already knew I’d choose the puppy I’d had for 6 hours over the cat I’d had for a year. I’m a dog person. I guess things could have turned out differently if I were allowed to keep the little abondoned kittens I found in our shed when I was in 4th grade on Tinkerhill Road. But, due to my brother Frank’s “allergies” (read: My mother HATES cats), after I nursed them back to health and got them used to humans, I was forced to give them away. About a year later, we got Binker, the lovable, excitable chocolate lab (may she rest in peace in Perryville, Maryland) from the Amish farm, and the rest is history. Anyway, to make a long story short, Raha, whose name means “joy” or “happiness”, was allowed to sleep in my bed the first night while Pilipili didn’t enjoy that luxury until the third month. Since I returned from visiting the states for two and a half weeks, however, I have not seen Pilipili with my own eyes..I’ve only heard tales from the secondary students who live in the hostel across the valley that he came by to beg for some ugali and that he was looking rather strong and fierce (in kiswahli = kali), so I have to assume that he’s doing well and is happy as a wandering bachelor. My house is suffering the consequences of his absence, however, as I now hear the rats running over everything at night and in the morning see their little droppings that they somehow release with such precision. One even sat upon the edge of a 1.5 liter water bottle cap, which is about less than an inch in diameter. Needless to say, I’m beginning to miss the perks of having a cat, but have no regrets whatsoever about getting a dog. Raha follows me everywhere and that creates simultaneously the most terrifying combination for small children and the most entertaining for adults in Ilembo: white person walking with a dog. Most of the kids who are of primary school age love playing with Raha, and they always ask where she is and constantly yell her name, trying to get her to chase them. It’s hard trying to explain to Tanzanians that most dogs in American homes are allowed to sleep inside and are viewed as protectors AND friends..most of them just think I’m crazy…my counterparts Nahasibu and Stephano have been good sports, though, and let Raha jump up on them and play with her whenever they see her. Then of course there’s Sikitu, more commonly known as Skittles, who takes care of Raha when I’m gone. Skittles is a student in the OVC sewing program and does a great job looking after her, although I don’t know how much longer either of us can keep Raha from joining some of these gangs of dogs I see walking around Ilembo at dusk, constantly looking for new young recruits. I hear them at night sometimes, not so much barking but shrieking as they’re most likely fighting another gang of dogs. I think she’ll be street smart though and stay neutral since at least she’s getting fed at home. The rest of the dogs need to work for it. Raha’s hobbies include: chasing chickens, chasing goats, chasing children, eating cow feces, retrieving jaw bones of cows or goats and bringing them back to the house, eating dagaa and avocados, tearing up toilet paper, interrupting health seminars and community theatre performances, and barking at birds.

Sooooo let's just get this out of the way. It's been a while. It's been a long time. It's actually gotten to the point where it's awkward even talking about how much I've not been cookin up some Meeshloaf. You might be angry, you might be hungry, you might be asking yourself what the bucket has meesh been up to? It feels good to say this. I feel better. I think we can do this. I think I can do my best to sum up what I've been up to the last six months. Maybe pictures can do a better job. Bottom line, as the Will Ferrell/Chris Kattan parody duo of Air Supply said, "We're back. In a big way."

Not that I'm going to ignore the events of the past six months, but I think that the best place to start would be with the most recent activities and then going backwards. I just got back from Dar es Salaam for the VAC (volunteery advisory council) meeting with Peace Corps staff. I stuck around Dar after the meeting to go to the US Embassy for a 4th of July celebration (which was actually on the 5th of July) This event was really really fun but strange, since it felt like I was back in America. I had yet to visit the embassy, but basically we were outside on the lawn and they had a barbeque, a water dunk tank, bean bag toss, kids running around, US marines as bartenders, and at the end of the night there were fireworks. Real fireworks, which must have scared the crap out of Tanzanians outside the gates of the embassy who aren't accustomed to large explosions of light in the sky in the beginning of July. Most of the people that were there live in or around Dar, far from where I'm posted, so it was shocking to see the number of American families that live in Tanzania! After leaving that little bubble of Americans in the Embassy, literally minutes later I was on a ferry headed towards Mikadi Beach (a stretch of peninsula not far from the city, but a completely less crowded, less sweaty, less hectic atmosphere), elbow to elbow with all Tanzanians, standing next to cars, bajajis (tuk tuks), motorcycles, all thrown together on the same platform, making sure that no one was secretly pickpocketing me. Strangely, I felt more comfortable on the crowded ferry with Tanzanians than I did surrounded by the Americans living in Dar who were having rapid conversations like I used to hear and partake in while living in DC...trying to network for jobs, casually but purposefully dropping names of VIPs, which school they were sending their kids to, generally being careful about what they were saying...all social customs and topics that I had not been used to in a while.

It was during this trip to Dar, however, that I found Diet Faygo Root Beer in a store right in downtown posta area. I was shocked! How had this Detroit company managed to extend its market all the way to Tanzania? Who was buying and let alone drinking it?? There is no root beer in Tanzania. There's barely diet soda in Tanzania..let alone a diet brand of soda that no one drinks in this part of the world. I didn't understand, and still don't. Maybe it's better not to think about such deep perplexing issues such as this. Also, I think it's important at this time to say that there are no soda fountains in this country. I've tried to look for them, but have yet to find it. I love drinking soda in bottles (especially when going to towns that have electricity and having cold sodas), but thing I miss from the states is a giant refillable cup of fountain soda with ice cubes. When my parents came they watched in awe (or horror) at the joy I got from just eating ice with other PCVs at the nicer place they were staying. As I sat there eating ice from the plain glass of ice cubes, it was like that cereal commercial with the crunchy raisin bran or whatever it was...my parents were saying things, and I just nodded, crunching the ice, not really listening, just basking in the glory of electricity and frozen filtered water.

Before going to Dar for the VAC meeting, I ran a week long Girls Empowerment Camp in Mbeya with 6 other volunteers. It was a great success, with about 65 girls participating from all over the region of Mbeya. We got some of the media to come since the place where we had the camp, Mbeya Instititute of Science and Technology, donated their hostel and all facilities, so that they could get some good press and hopefully be motivated to host more conferences like this in the future. Everything went really well with the participants and the PCVs who were facilitating the seminar. We learned a lot about what worked well during the week and what we would do differently next time. There's a ton of great pictures from the camp that I will try to post later, or send a CD back to my brother Frank to upload onto this blog, but all in all it was by far the coolest thing I've done in country thus far. The main goal of the camp was to train girls from each school to be peer educators, so that when they return, they can share what they learned with other kids in the schools, and help dispel myths and reduce stigma towards HIV/AIDS in the communities. One of the most interesting sessions we did was about myth vs. fact of HIV/AIDS. We did condom demonstrations, including one of the PCVs blowing up a condom to show that no air could pass through, since many of the girls believed that there were holes in condoms (some even thought that other countries made condoms with holes in them and gave them to Tanzanians for free in order to try and spread the disease) We were able to have some really good discussions and even though it was difficult at times following the discussion and mediating it (since it was all in Kiswahili), we all ended up on the same page and I think the girls were satisfied with the answers they got. Another main goal of the camp was goal setting and looking at career options for women in Tanzania. We had two female engineers from MIST come and help the girls plan out short term and long term goals, and to talk about the wide variety of jobs they could have if they continued their education. Many girls in Tanzania do not do well in science and math. Actually, most students male and female do not even pass their math exams at the end of secondary school. The girls were so excited to see two women who were actual engineers, one in computer engineering and the other in civil engineering. Each one of them made their own journals (the idea of journaling, creative writing, or writing down your thoughts was completely new and foreign to most of them) in which they were encouraged to write down how they felt at the beginning and end of each day, and what they had learned. One thing that became clear was that they all LOVED learning about computers and getting to use them. The computer lab at MIST could seat all of the girls and they each learned how to use the START menu to find Microsoft Office, and start a new word document. They each wrote out sentences and stories on the computer and learned how to save them. If I am able to link Ilembo with an alternative energy source, I really want to try and find computers that can be donated to the school. It's such a marketable skill and there are many jobs available for Tanzanians with even basic computer skills, like data entry related to health information...in the next couple of years Tanzania is going to try to digitize their health info, so it would be a great field to train young people in now so that they can be ready for it.

Warning to men who don't like talking about periods: the next paragraph deals with talking about periods, aka, menstrruuuation

One of my sister Christy's friends, Heidi, sent me the description of a project she had done with women in Tanzania related to reproductive health dealing with sewing your own menstrual pads and also making cycle beads. This project went over really well at the camp. Each girl sewed her own menstrual pad and made cycle beads. Cycle beads help with knowing which days in a girls' menstrual cycle she is most likely or least likely to become pregnant. Since most of these girls at the camp had just gotten their period for the first time within a year or two (and some had yet to get it), the calendar method is not as reliable but it was a good way to initiate discussion about how they feel when they have their period, physiology and where the blood comes from, and what supplies they use during that time. It was really interesting and it was the first time many had ever spoken about their period at all. Many had said they were not warned about getting their period (like in the movie Blue Lagoon with Brooke Shields), so they thought they were sick and were afraid to tell anyone. Sewing menstrual pads is such a great project idea because many of the girls do not use sanitary methods because they cannot afford pads that are sold at the dukas, and therefore they are more likely to get infections or miss school if they are too embarassed that they might leak through their clothes. After translating Heidi's lesson into Kiswahili, we gave it to every girl at the camp so that she can teach other women in her village how to sew these pads too.

Okay, period discussion is over.

Obviously, at the end of the camp we had an OLYMPICS day (complete with a relay race and tug of war similar to the one we did in training last year) and a talent show. The girls were so competitive with both the sports and the talent show, so it was hard giving the "you did your best speech" at the end to my girls who didn't win, even though their skit and song was by far the best from the group (not biased at all). I brought 9 girls from Ilembo, 5 from secondary school and 4 from Primary school. They were incredible. I was shocked at how well they participated and how creative they were...it made me so excited to work with them and their new peer education groups once they start up the second term of school next week. I'm trying to figure out a way to use a recording studio in mbeya, Iringa or Dar that some Tanzanian musicians I know have talked about so that they can make CD's and tapes and we can sell them or give them out to buses. They pump out beautiful songs about HIV/AIDS, life in their village, friendship, god, and almost anything in the blink of an eye. And they always have perfect harmony thanks to predetermined vocal placements that I'm pretty sure are given the minute they come out of the womb. 'Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. Mwampamba on your beautiful baby girl, she's 7 lbs, 20 inches, and an alto.'

I've gotta leave this internet soon but before the Girls Camp, my parents, Joe and Sheila, came to visit me in what will be known as the greatest Santoro African adventure in history. It was during their visit that my father and i killed two chickens in my courtyard and then cooked and ate them. It was during this adventure that Joe and Sheila saw how useful buckets are at every second of the day. It was also during this time that my mother danced with my widows group after eating ugali, bean leaves, spinach, pumpkin leaves, and being presented with homemade baskets. Her dancing skills (the side to side step and clap move worked really well here) impressed all of the women, who still ask where she learned to dance like that and if I can dance as well as her. I told them there was no way my skills compared to Sheila's, the former aerobics instructor. My dad, at this same party with my friends in the village, sang Fields of Athen Rye like he has done on so many other occassions, but I dont think any of them were as quite as memorable as this one. They sat at the meza kuu (head table) at world family day in my village, got Tanzanian kitenge clothing custom made for them in less than a day, and spoke in front of the catholic church and got a standing ovation. They were treated like movie stars and everyone in Ilembo is still asking about them, greeting them, and hoping they will come back again so that they can give them more food and soda. After the village, we went up north to Ngorogoro Crater, Serengeti, and Lake Manyara park for an amazing safari where I got to have a real vacation without worrying about travel, food, or anything and we all just got to relax and try to find animals. We saw everything! Black rhino, cheetahs, leopard, lions, and the migration of the wildebeests. My dad, by the end of the 4 days in the 4x4, had perfected his narrator voice on his new video camera...most used phrase... 'it's just....incredible' or 'very cool' while concentrating on steadying the digital zoom. Our guide, Hamza, was rewarded for his superior animal spotting with a Pittsburgh Steelers baseball hat that really went well with his yellow Zara tours shirt. To top it off, we ended up in Zanzibar until the day my parents flew home. The food in Zanzibar was incredible, and I got to have a massage and sushi on my birthday which was fresh and tasty and it felt like I was worlds away from the village I had been in just days before. So, in short, it was the best vacation I think any of us had ever had (who would have thought me, sheila and joe, veteran trio travelers of the Pennsylvania Turnpike from '98-'03, would be doing a safari in the Serengeti???), and my parents did it all without a hitch..they were incredible and I hope they inspire more people to come out and visit, it really meant a lot to me and of course to all of my friends in the village.

I'll have to dig deeper in my brain to remember things from before my parents came, because that took up a lot of memory space. Maybe I'll just post a picture montage instead. Spread the word. Dinner's ready, and everyone's invited to have some more Meeshloaf.....BOOM.

SIX SUPERBOWL CHAMPIONSHIP VICTORIES....GO STEELERS!!!!! It was a difficult and slightly terrifying couple of hours for me and those around me since I was unable to watch the game, but I want you all to know that I was wearing my Hines Ward jersey when I traveled from Dar through Johannesburg and into Lesotho, and the first evening of the conference. The morning after the game, or actually just a few hours from when it ended in Africa time, I saw highlights on CNN World News and I think I am okay with admitting that I cried a single tear when Santonio Holmes made that incredible TD reception. Moving on before I get too excited/start missing the Pour House even more, for what I have been lacking in words lately I will desperately try to make up by posting pictures. This has been a challenge for me, but seeing as I am around electricity and internet for a couple of hours I am giving it another shot.

And now.....Introducing Mary Ryan Foundation's Class of 2013 (the inaugural class):

Mwisho Luwela, Litiel Kiwoyela, Elisha Luwole, Mwakasita Saimon, Diana Nsahani, John Mwawa, Asia Pachanga, Afeli Juma, Willy Yella, Ebby Mwile, Shila Zakaria, Jeremia Elia, Tabitha Jackson, and Tabia Kaseka.

Many thanks to those of you who have donated to the Mary Ryan Foundation (http://www.maryryanfoundation.org) I know the MRF and the kids of Ilembo will appreciate your ongoing support..there is a lot of work to be done and it really is a unique chance to help an extremely underserved population in Tanzania. Again, I am working as a liaison between Community Based Organizations in Ilembo and the Mary Ryan Foundation, and the money is never going into my personal account, which is good, because it would be hard to do volunteer work if everyone in the village thought I had an endless supply of money. By giving the CBO's and OVC groups different resources to partner with, I hope that these kinds of support programs for vulnerable children could continue for a long time. All of these children are between the ages of 14 and 17 years old, and are living in an extremely difficult home environment. Most of the kids' parents have passed away, so they either live with a grandparent or in some cases a friend of the family or an older sister. When visiting them at their homes, it was such a wake up call as most of them slept in the uninsulated 'kitchens', which means on a straw mat on the dirt floor. It gets pretty cold in Ilembo at night, so seeing these sleeping conditions at their homes, along with the fact that women cook over a smoky fire almost all hours of the day made it not surprising that one of the most common diseases in Ilembo are upper respiratory infections and pneumonia. All of them passed their Standard 7 exams, which means that they are extremely bright because the majority of the Std 7 students do not pass, and therefore do not get the opportunity to go to school. (I am working to start up an OVC committee in Ilembo that would target helping the recent out of school youth who failed their exams, and getting an apprenticeship program going with these kids and the "fundis" in the village, so that the children can learn a skill of their choosing, such as sewing, making furniture, raising livestock, as well as teaching them different income generating skills like making batik, baking different foods that they could sell at the market, and bio intensive gardening/permaculture.

Each of the children above have written letters of introduction in Kiswahili, which I will be working with them to translate into English. In the meantime, I think it would be really cool if we started a Pen Pal program between you all and these kids (and eventually adding more kids if many of you show interest) If you would like to have a pen pal, simply comment on this blog and say that you would like to start writing letters, and I will "assign" you a child. If you are a teacher and would like your group of students to do this, then let me know and we can arrange something with the Coverell worldwide penpal service. This LoafLetters (too much?) thing would be a smaller group and it would be really cool for the first letter to enclose a picture and a letter of introduction, and I would incorporate the Pen Pal into the life skills session. So start commenting and getting your name out there if you'd like to get involved, it's a pretty easy, fun, and inexpensive way to make the day to day life of a child more exciting!

..and now I will try to post some photos of these kids and their caretakers...

...that didn't work so I am uploading some pictures to Picasa.. the batiks in the pictures are ones that we did during In-Service Training in Iringa with our counterparts..it was really fun and everyone came up with some pretty cool designs..mine is the red and yellow one that has the sun with a circle around it. There are also pictures of us doing permaculture gardening with our counterparts from IST, under the instruction of Peter Jensen aka King of Compost! He Some of the other pictures are from the HIV/AIDS and ICT conference in Lesotho. It was a really great time and I am so lucky to have gone..it was like a mini america! We stayed at an actual hotel, and I had cereal and orange juice and was incredibly excited. Besides the superficial parts that were a nice treat, I learned a lot about ICT and the activities and practices that are going on in other countries and in Tanzania. With everything from cell phone programs that health workers could use to send patient data to district hospitals (which would greatly help the PLWHA's that are awaiting ARV treatment), to anyone with a cell phone being able to text to a program to get information on the nearest Counseling and Treatment center or anonymously ask questions about a variety of health topics, these types of programs are getting started up across the region and Peace Corps volunteers could play a huge role in helping with the capacity building and training of local counterparts to use these programs to help the people in their community. So a lot of ideas were sparked and I'm excited to see how I can integrate the information from this conference with what I have already been doing...I am going to do a project to get just one computer and enough solar power to charge it so that I can start to teach basic computer skills related to health to a few people from the community (and start to transfer data from paper into digital so that it can be shared more easily with the higher levels that are actually providing the support for people with HIV and OVC's. At first I wasn't even considering this but in Lesotho they gave a lot of examples of health clinics in low resource areas where NGO's were able to assist them in setting up with solar power and basic skills training, so it seems like no matter where you are now it's getting easier to find ways to connect even the most rural areas. I hope the picasa album works... Miss you guys a lot, thanks for all the packages and letters, I can't tell you how much I love them. Well I guess I can tell you. I like them a lot..a wholleeee lot. But please visit the Mary Ryan Foundation website and also explore the other blogs of volunteers in Peace Corps, you can get them from the main peace corps website.. everyone is fired up from this In Service Training in Iringa and I know a lot of people from my training group are going to be doing some amazing things. Myself and two other female volunteers from my region are hopefully going to be writing a grant for a Girls' Empowerment Camp in June where we would select a group of young women to do life skills, HIV/AIDS awareness, teaching income generating projects/marketable skills, sports, and just all around good camp fun. Thanks for all your support....GO STEELERS

Okay, it's been an incredibly long time since you've had some meeshloaf..and there are many excuses that involve lack of electricity, time, computers freezing, and downright just avoiding it. But tell your hungry stomachs that everything is going to be okay. Here is just something to whet your appetite so that I can catch you all up on the last 3.5 (wow) months. First thing's first. Please go to the MARY RYAN FOUNDATION website http://www.maryryanfoundation.org My brother Frank (some of you may remember him from his semi-famous swim team magnet from 1992 that was on the fridge and then copy and pasted into the Mt. Lebanon yearbook in 2002) has started this non-profit, along with other family and friends, and the purpose is to raise money to support the OVC's (orphans and vulnerable children) of Ilembo village. I am working with students in the primary and secondary schools, as well as the out of school youth, and villagers to form a committee so that we can identify who needs help immediately and what kind (food, clothing, legal, health, etc) I will be a liasion between the MRF and groups of Ilembo such as the Secondary School, the OVC committee, and others. Please go check out the website and there will be lots of more pictures and stories to come..soon they will be accepting tax deductible donations online. I am heading to Lesotho (dot country inside south africa) for a regional conference dealing with ICT and HIV/AIDS...can't wait to fill you all in. in the meantime.... HERE WE GO STEELERS, HERE WE GO!!!!

Literally 2 hours after the erection update was up (heh heh), my phone was stolen. Read on for a tale of mob justice. From Mbeya town, I took the dalla dalla to Mbalizi town, where I would switch to either a bus or a lorie truck that takes me home to Ilembo. Since I was carrying a bunch of things that I had gotten in Mbeya, I wanted to make it to the bus that leaves at 2. I arrived in Mbalizi at 12:45, and got off the dalla dalla and was carrying a box on my head, a backpack, and a plastic bag. I had just received a text message so I knew I had my phone just after getting off the dalla. My phone was in my little eagle creek purse that I keep close watch of because it has all that important stuff in it. When I got off at the dalla dalla stand, some guy offered to carry one of my bags. I have gotten to know a few people in Mbalizi and some people from my village are there sometimes, but I didn’t know this guy and he took my plastic bag from me and carried it for about a minute until I insisted that I was fine carrying it to the bus. He asked for 500 shillings and I said no, and so he put the plastic bag down and as I reached down to grab it (I later realized) he reached and grabbed my phone out of the eagle creek bag. Right afterwards I ran into two people from my village and they helped carry my bags. About 5 minutes later I was at the bus stand about to buy a ticket when I opened my money purse and saw my phone wasn’t there. I had someone call it and it wasn’t ringing. If I had voicemail this would have been one of those straight-to-voicemail situations. Bad sign. Somehow I immediately remembered the guy from the dalla stand and dropped my stuff and sprinted like a crazy person back to the standi. Luckily, I am the only white person in Mbalizi and as if I didn’t stand out enough I was carrying a box on my head, so people remembered me. I busted out frantic Kiswahili saying “Did you see where that guy went?” “He stole my phone!” “Thief!” “help!” The people, had in fact, seen where the guy went and they said he had ran “that way” and that I should go to the police. My stomach sank, I started doing the math in my head of the cost of replacing the phone and how annoying it would be to get a new number and to try to find all the numbers I had lost.

I was in that emotional purgatory of laughing yet wanting to cry in the Mbalizi police station when Inspector Jumanne walked in. (Jumanne is the word for Tuesday) So Inspector Tuesday walks in and I literally had the exact conversation that I had during a simulation in training where we practiced bargaining at the market, talking with village leaders, and explaining a fake crime to police. He was pretty sympathetic, but I started getting worried when he was inquiring more about my personal life than the crime that had just been committed, so I tried to steer the conversation back by saying, “Soo what do we do now? There are plenty of people out there who saw him.” That’s when Inspector Tuesday and I hit the streets and tried to find people who would ‘cooperate’. He literally did a wave of his hand to two groups of people on the corner, and they rounded up more people, and so on and so on, and then he said that they were going to find the man, because if the police went, the guy would get scared and run away. We then went back to the police station, where he suggested I just “wait it out”, like it was one of those afternoon thunderstorms that will come and go and then it gets really sunny and nice out. Which is pretty much what happened.

In less than an hour, a group of 50 people had found this thief and brought him to the station. My phone was miraculously recovered and returned to me in perfect condition. I was amazed. Tanzanians hate thieves and it apparently is not uncommon for mobs of people to beat up, kill, or burn thieves they catch so I was at least grateful that this man was brought to the station and he still had all of his fingers and was not on fire, but I felt really badly thinking about what might lie ahead for him. I had to face him immediately afterwards to identify him and the policeman was slapping him in the face. I thanked the police for helping me, filed a report, and since the bus left late, I got on it at 2:30, my cell phone safely stored inside my bra.

I love learning new languages. I also love listening to foreign peoples’ English accents. The first one I became familiar with was German in 8th grade, which really drew me in with its great songs, the best one of course being “Ich woll ich war ein Lebkuchen mann, oh JA!” (“I wish I were a Gingerbread Man, oh YES!”) I have never met a German person who has actually heard of this song, but the point is that it was catchy and made you more comfortable with the language. Plus it’s just awesome..the thought of being a gingerbread man, that is.

The next was a little bit of Czech while studying abroad in Prague. Czech peoples’ English accents were great because the v’s would be pronounced like w’s. (read: The willage was wary big) This was always a lot of fun, as was saying "Ahojjj" pirate style as the informal "hey".

The Greek vocabulary I learned while bartending on the pirate boat was pretty much limited to “do you want ice in your drink?” or “ good morning, psomas” (psomas = breadman, the local hero at Ios Bakery which was frequented by hundreds of hungry drunk people looking for greasy croissants between the hours of 5-7am.

Kiswahili is rapidly rising on the language likability scale. This is due largely in part to current political climate in America, most specifically the Presidential election between Obama and McCain. Why, you silently ask yourself? Well, the Tanzanian English accent pronounces R’s like L’s and vice verse. (kind of like Kim Jong Il in Team America... 'I'm so ronery..') In fact, the two letters are pronounced so much alike that many Tanzanians will spell Kiswahili and English words with the letters mixed up since they sound so much alike. With that being said, here is a common conversation that can take place between myself (me) and a Tanzanian (tz)

TZ: So, there is a very big erection coming up between Obama and McCain in America in November?

Me: Yes, all the Americans are very excited about the erection. It’s probably the biggest erection we’ve seen in years…much bigger than Bill Clinton’s successful erections.

TZ: Are you going to be able to participate in the erection?

Me: Yes, thanks to the internet and technology these days, it’s easy for anyone to have a hand in the erection. In fact, I think more people will take part in the erection this year than any other erection in history!

TZ: But during Bush’s two erections, were people really happy with the outcome?

Me: Not really, it ended up creating quite a big mess.

Yeah, so pretty much any election conversation brings a smile to my face. Tanzanians are all really excited about Obama and I love their no BS approach and direct way of asking who I support and why. Oh, and I am actually going to be able to participate in the election. I mailed in my absentee ballot application about 3 weeks ago, so assuming Delaware County board of erections follows through, I’ll be able to vote.

Village life is going really well. My tribal nickname is Shali (sounds like Shari, too), which is a common Kimalila name for a woman. I love it, people just yell "We, Shaliiiii!" wherever I go and I go shake their hand (the handshake is the shake, squeeze, shake, snap method..i hope to add a video of it later for full effect) Apparently Shila is the name for a man, so when I say that my mother is named Sheila, that often causes some laughter or confusion..as if someone had named a daughter Bob or something. I did not leave site at all, even for the day, for over two weeks. I’m getting in a little bit of a routine, but no day is ever completely the same. It continues to amaze me how the people here have close to nothing, but will offer you everything they have in a heartbeat. When you have a guest, you are expected to offer them something. They LOVE inviting me into their homes to eat ugali for lunch and to just talk or sit awkwardly. One woman braided my hair into four braids, people in my village were ecstatic and started asking me if people in America braided their hair too. I said yes, but sometimes a little different (picturing little girls with french braids in equestrian clubs riding horses or something) I've been trying to keep chai, bananas or random things in my house so the people who visit me don't leave empty handed. When I first got to site I wasn't cooking because I didn't have anything to cook in, but now every night I've been trying out different styles of the same food. As shannon fitzgerald would say, "The things you're doing with bananas is delightful". Bananas have come in handy, because you can eat them plain, cook the plaintain ones like potatoes, and the sweet ones with some peanuts and sugar for dessert. Getting the jiko lit was an arduous task at first but now it's a lot easier, and I'm starting to use firewood more especially with boiling water because it gets hot a lot faster. Rice and ugali are the staple filler foods, but luckily for me there are a lot of vegetables around here so I don't have to rely on just starch. In my village I can usually get tomatoes, onions and fish on most days, along with some sort of vegetable. So I normally just fry some onions, add some chopped tomatoes and any kind of spices around to make a sauce. Then add the greens and you have your little veggie sauce mixture to go with the rice. Crushed red pepper is used in every meal (thanks to the wonderful alberto's packets sent by dc's finest) Instead of pot holders, I use thick sticks to go under the rim of the sufuria and lift and move charcoals that way too. Baking is even possible--I made brownies! I bought some cocoa powder and did the same type of baking method that my mama taught me in homestay. Always have to crack eggs in a separate bowl from the mixture, though, because there are lots of fertilized eggs that can pop up and a little dead bird just doesn't make baked goods taste that great. I'm usually eating dinner around 9pm and then play the guitar or continue to knit this scarf that grows bigger with every row..it's like the blob, I don't know how to stop it and I'm not sure if I want to!

Since for the first three months we're just supposed to meet as many people as possible and get to know the village before we start actual projects, every day I just walk from the school or health center or peoples' homes. It's actually pretty exhausting but paying off pretty well because I'm realizing I can understand more and more things when I go to village meetings or to the different churches. Went to the Baptist church last week, it was great--they have a choir for OVC's and play the ngomba (drums). I’ve had several meetings in the vitongoji, or hamlets, or sub-villages that are technically a part of Ilembo but more isolated from health and education services. These meetings consist of myself and a teacher, Joseph, from the secondary school who is interested in teaching life skills and gender analysis/community development, and we facilitate/ask questions and the villagers do most of the discussing. Or at least that’s theoretically what could be happening. I have found a couple people who I think would be good committed counterparts, but for now doing these meetings and using PACA tools (participatory analysis for community action) is a good way to find out what villagers in different areas, genders, and ages think are the biggest problems in the community and how their daily activities differ. For example, the women and men are both working in the farms from 7am-2pm, but the women are also choting water, carrying babies on their backs while they work, and preparing the meals while the men pumzika, or rest. The women in the village so far have been kind of afraid to talk about what they think are the biggest problems in the village (many have told me after the meeting that they want to learn about family planning, which I am working with the health center to create a health library and weekly mamas group meetings there. The consistent answer for both men and women as the top health problems in the area are that there are lots of orphans due to HIV/AIDS and that many PLWHA’s cannot afford the trip to town to receive ARV treatment. The doctor at the health center is trained to administer ARV's so I think that later on we should be able to bring the ARV's to Ilembo health center and that way soooo many people would be able to walk here and receive treatment. I have a feeling that it could take a while, but when I have mentioned the possibility to people who are HIV+ but not taking ARV's, they were really excited and said that they would definitely come to receive treatment. Thanks to everyone's interest in supporting the orphans here!! I am trying to get a web site together, but the first step here is to actually mobilize a group and community volunteers who can be trained to counsel and work with them. The money would go to school fees, notebooks, and uniforms so that at least they can stay in school, and then later doing life skills training, girls' empowerment, and permaculture. There is a lot of space next to the primary school that during the rainy season should be able to catch plenty of water and if the kids themselves started a garden and maintained it well, they could really have great access to a ton of vegetables and not just eat ugali.

This amazing nurse from Hawaii and founder of a really really small (herself + 2 other people) but cool group called Every Child, Every Village (Everychildeveryvillage.org) is leaving in a few months and gave me 6 copies of a Kiswahili version of Where There is No Doctor. She has been doing projects with kindergarten classrooms where herself and volunteer artists and some local artists do educational painting in the classrooms. The finished products are incredible, I want to post some pictures later but the main point of her project is to not just have kids learning through memorization alone. There are paintings that can allow them to practice counting or identifying colors, animals, body parts and letters. And the greatest part is that it makes the classroom look so so much better and a more effective learning tool for young kids, since most aren’t lucky enough to have a whole bunch of books to practice with at home. I hope to start a project like this since there are plenty of empty walls and there could be so much potential to do a more health related model or ones geared towards different age groups..like one in the health center area and one in the primary and secondary schools. Some of the kids in the village have already demonstrated talents for drawing, acting (graduation party skits) and even gymnastics.

Oh yeah, graduation parties. Graduation parties of all sorts were had over the past 2 weeks. The first party I went to was thrown by TYCS, a group of Christian students. Apparently my mzungu status makes me an automatic member of the High Table, or Meza Kuu, along with the headmaster, village leaders, teachers, and guests from out of town.

During our swearing in ceremony in Kilosa, we were the ones graduating and I remember being so jealous of the guests of honor at the Meza Kuu drinking sodas or bottled water during the several hour long ceremony, and then being the first ones to eat. As I stood in the line with my host family and about a hundred other people, I remember feeling envious of the Meza Kuu, their hands greasy with chicken meat, scraping up the last remains of the mchicha/tomato/onion sauce with heapfuls of rice or pilau (spiced up rice), well before I was even within reach of a plate. Now that I have experienced the Meza Kuu, I realize that my envy was justified and I felt really badly being treated so well as a guest, but the good thing was that sitting at the Meza Kuu offered a great view of the gymnastics or "acrobats" section. The gymnastics performance during one of the graduation parties literally came out of nowhere. The form3 students were doing back handsprings, back flips,diving through bike rims and they even had a ring of fire which reminded me of Old School, but fortunately and remarkably no one was injured like Frank Ricard. (KEEP YOUR COMPOSURE!!!) The ceremonies were so much fun though, lots of dancing and people wanting to take pictures with the mzungu. Tanzanians don't look into the camera when pictures are being taken. In fact, they will be smiling every second of the day but when a photo is taken, it is time to be serious and stare into the eyes of the person with whom you are being photographed, or just stare blankly off into the distance. At first I was smiling in every picture but now I am starting to like the idea of this non-conventional picture pose.

So thanks to those who have gone through the painful process of placing an international phone call or sending letters and packages, it’s so fun to be able to talk to friends and family many miles away as I walk past goats/pigs getting slaughtered (scariest sound EVER), chickens trying to run into my house and cows with intimidating horns. It is incredible that cell phone service is available in incredibly remote parts of the country. I was able to charge my computer while in town so I hope to be able to type as I go and then upload entries whenever I come in every couple of weeks. My house is starting to feel like home (Kelley Price: Making a House a Home) thanks to the addition of furniture (wooden couch and chairs and table) that a fundi in my village made..it's nice having guests over now because we all have a place to sit.

I’m pretty sleep deprived right now so I’m just going to say good night and I hope that the excitement of this big elrection has enough stamina to last until the first Tuesday in November.

I can only wish that the rats that lived with me could cook like that little lovable cartoon chef of a rat. Instead, they are offering the spices of feces and urine which unfortunately don't go well with my rice. So, to put it nicely, I fed them a form of poison that ultimately resulted in their death. This is the only time i'm going to use the poison, though..I've got a kitten coming my way in a couple of weeks from the secondmaster, so we'll let nature take it's course after that.

I'm trying to attach a picture of one of the orphans, Anna, in my village. There are apparently many many orphans and whenever I ask where they live, people just respond in the local language by saying "they exist." This has made my search a little difficult, but thanks to the headmaster of the primary school I have a good start..many of the children's parents died when they were only 2-5 years old, and they are living with bibis, babus or aunts that barely have enough food and money to take care of their own kids, let alone to send the orphaned children to primary school. So I am trying to start a group for the orphans and their caretakers..eventually hoping to do sustainable projects but for right now I am trying to find sponsors (like you guys) to help those who are finishing up primary school secure funds to go to secondary school. (Primary school is free, but secondary school isn't) Otherwise, being an out of school orphan puts you in pretty much the highest risk category there is for a kid in Tanzania to get pregnant, STI's, HIV or all of hte above. So let me know if you are interesting in sponsoring an orphan, just so I can get an idea..I think there are about 30-40 in my village. This is a short entry but just wanted to throw in a pic of my house (its the one in the center there in between all those trees) I am going to try and upload more since this one worked, maybe I'll be back next week for some quality photo upload time. Glad to hear the Steelers are 2-0, and thanks to those who have already written letters to my new home..I got them pretty quickly! (Jenee, mom and pat oswald...thank you!) Alright this is rambling so I'm gonna go and try to find some more orphans. Bye bye!

Processing is a term that Peace Corps liked to use during training after we had a session or an activity that was worth discussing. It usually involved a flip chart, markers, and maybe some "I felt" statements. Believe it or not, even you may have "processed" something once or twice or many times in your life under the guise of remedial terms like "recapping" or "reviewing" or "talking about". Most specifically, a lot of processing was done during college on Saturday and Sunday mornings after a fun night out. This type of processing was best served hungover. Now that you may or may not know what "processing" is, it is time for me to start the process of processing my first week at site.

During my first week at Ilembo, I:

Went to a funeralWitnessed the delivery of twins (circleeeee of liiiifeeee)Learned how to knit from a how-to-knit book from the 1970's. Played Shania Twain's "You're Still The One" on the guitar upon arrival at site at 11:30pm for my headmaster, village executive officer, and site supervisor. I'm glad that this song has been in my repetoire for almost 10 years and could be useful finally.Had a mouse jump out of my box of granola bars and run over my hand.Ate two consecutive twin hard boiled eggsSaw a thief get tried in the village courtHelped over 800 kids in remote villages near mine get vaccinated for measles and take vitamin A and mebendazole as part of a national campaign for vaccination sponsored by unicef and WHO. There was a great deal of off-roading in ambulances and hundreds of screaming, crying terrified children. The fear of getting shots is universal. One kid actually hit me and a health center staff member on the head in hopes of escaping.

Painted two walls of a room in my house a color called "Apricoat"

Made a water filter.

Accidentally went to a CCM (the ruling party) meeting and played the TZ version of UNO, "last cardi" with them.Played soccer on the top of a mountainDrank approximately 30 bottles of Pepsi that people in the villages kept on force feeding me.Bathed once. It's really cold and I have to chote watRode on a Lorie truck to town (takes about 3.5 hours including dalla dalla) next to a woman who was 9 months pregnantMade mac n' cheese.Learned some of the tribal language Kimalila.Made at least 15 kids cry because they have never seen a white person.

So, yeah. Pretty standard first week moving in stuff. A little bit about Ilembo: It takes about an hour from Mbeya town to Mbalizi by dalla dalla, then 2.5 hours by truck or bus to Ilembo. I'm only about a 10-15 minute walk from my house to where the bus comes. It's a bumpy dusty ride but the scenery is absolutely gorgeous. It's like lord of the rings (lots of rolling green mountains), but no midgets. Almost everyone in my village is a farmer, and there is no electricity in the village at all. The health center has a generator and a few people have solar panels, but for the most part it's incredibly dark at night and you can see a million stars. (BIOBAY style!) By day, the weather is so nice and great for going hiking and walking around introducing myself to everyone. When I first got to site, I was the last person to get dropped off in my region by my Village Executive Officer (VEO) and site supervisor, whose name is Danston and who I like to call Ted Danston. He actually looks a lot like Jamie Foxx. Anyway, it was dark the whole ride to my site and I was basically dropped off in refugee fashion. I showed up, there was a lantern in my home, a bed, a jiko charcoal stove outside, and a table and some chairs. That's it. It was about 11:30pm when I got there, and they asked if I was okay to spend the night there or if I wanted to go to a neighbor's house. I said I was fine, and following the refugee delivery format they told me to stay put and they'd come check on me in the morning. This was of course after Ted Danston asked me to play a song on the guitar, which is when good old Shania Twain came in handy. Somehow I slept pretty well and got a taste of the noises of the house..I'm on top of a small hill that's a part of a valley, so there's a lot of wind that blows through but I really love my view and the area around my house. I'm very close to the secondary school and my next door neighbor is a teacher at the primary school who has an adorable 2 year old daughter named Gloria. Everyone in Ilembo is very religious, and I am strategically placing the mass cards and medals that people gave me before leaving the US in my home because there are many people who are Catholic and are ecstatic when I say that I was raised Catholic as well. Most of the kids here have been spared the influence of American pop culture, so I received a lot of blank stares when I tried to play the Shakira or 50 Cent card upon meeting some of the students. I'll have to brush up on some gospel tunes. There is a man in the village who is a pastor at the baptist church, but also owns a hardware shop and makes and plays electric guitars! He has rigged this interesting battery powered amp system and I don't know how to translate "jam out" I have said that we should teach one another songs and he could be a part of Blue Band. My house does not have any electricity or running water or ceilings. It's brick on the outside, cement walls and a tin roof. When you walk in the front door, there's a room that will eventually have a place to sit and hang out, and then there is my bedroom on the left. There's about a 10 foot hallway with a room on each side, and then a door that goes to the courtyard. My choo, kitchen and bafu (shower) are all outside, but I'm really happy I have an enclosed courtyard. The nearest water sources are a well and a natural spring, only about a 5 minute walk from my house. Thankfully, when any of the students see me leave the house with buckets, they run and grab them from me and carry them on their heads for me. I will learn how to do this, but since I have to go up and down a pretty steep hill to get the water, it's not the ideal place to practice, so I welcome the help. Some of the other volunteers have been swamped with people coming to their house and cooking and cleaning for them, but I feel lucky because the people of Ilembo are so friendly and excited about me being there (and also a little confused), but they haven't been overbearing (except with sodas!) and many come by my house to talk or just see what I am doing, but no one has been too forceful or invasive. Kids just come knock on my door and I let them in and give them trail mix and peanuts since that is all the food that I have in my house thus far. On Fridays, there's a huge market that for every other day of the week is completely empty, but every Friday people from all over the area come and it's absolute dusty chaos. I just withdrew money from my bank yesterday and so now I am able to pay for some furniture to be made and to buy things on market day, which I'm excited about because I'm looking forward to making the place feel more like home. This has been rambling, but hey, that's processing for you. Hope to be able to come back in a couple of weeks to use internet, and also sorry if you are trying to call me and not able to reach me...the service is usually good but since my solar charger adapter for my phone is broken, I can't keep my phone on all the time. if you are trying to call, maybe send a text and then I will text back when I have it on. Hope everyone had great finale to summer last weekend and I expect Steelers updates on Sundays now! New address:Ilembo Secondary SchoolPO Box 1731MbeyaTanzania

After a long anticipated site announcement, I'm headed to the small village of Ilembo, about 70km (or a 2 hour truck or Lorie ride) from the large town of Mbeya. I'm really close to the border of Malawi and Zambia, and am really really excited to see my new house. I'll be close to the primary and secondary schools, as well as the health center..according to the description, all seem to be within a kilometer of my house. Tomorrow I move out of my homestay, which is very bitter sweet since I've had such a great time with them and my CBT group. All of us trainees are moving to MATI (the agricultural school where we meet every week) and then we have our swearing in ceremony on Wednesday. After that, I feel like it could take a couple of weeks to get all 46 of us installed into our villages. This year they're doing something new, which is Peace Corps vehicles are taking us as far as our banking towns, then current volunteers in the region and the VEO (village executive officer) are meeting us and taking us to our houses. It'll be really interesting to move all of my stuff around, which has accumulated greatly since arriving thanks to the dozens of books and buckets I've picked up in these past couple of months.

Hope everyone's doing well back home...this is my new address (or so I think) although letters and packages still will be received at the dar es salaam PO box, but i won't be able to get them until i go back to dar again which probably won't be for a while.

Ilembo Secondary School

P.O. Box 1731

Mbeya

Tanzania

If you are sending me a package, please write Peace Corps Volunteer under my name so I don't have to pay the $30 fee to receive it which apparently is what happens in the post training life. I should still be able to get cell phone service, but there might be a chance that my number will change if CelTel doesn't work there..I'll letcha know! It's been great talking to people who have called and I've been getting some of your texts too! A fellow trainee's mom, (Kate!) called when a bunch of us were together during shadow week, and it was really cool passing around the phone and talking to her as if it was like we were back in the states just saying hey to Joe and Sheila, Alane Hnath, Jenny Losego or Janet Sodini or the Dorans or PKB. So feel free to call and I plan on writing a great deal of letters once I get to site because I will not have electricity or running water. I don't know that much about Ilembo or Mbeya yet except that the climate is nice (gets decently cold but never very hot) and that there is a lot of great fruits and food in the region. Feel free to google and wiki research (a la Perryville) and send me interesting fun facts (Jack, I think this is your area of expertise).

My site is new, which means I'm not replacing anyone and I'm pretty excited about it. Myself and 4 other trainees are getting sent to Mbeya region, and most of them are new sites. As of right now I think the closest volunteer to me is 4 hours away, but that might be different once I get there and see where the current volunteers are..Mbeya seems to be a region where they're trying to start more sites and place new people, so there's lots of room for creativity which I am happy about. I'm pretty excited to demonstrate and teach permaculture, which is pretty much gardening on steroids and for those who really need it to be able to live without worrying about food, especially PLWHAs. This guy Peter Jensen (great name) came and did a great presentation on it and we got out there trying these new digging techniques and finding out different ways to catch and control water...all stuff that I never thought I'd be that excited about but he showed us actual examples of how it has helped Tanzanian families and it is pretty easy to teach, so I'm looking forward to starting a garden at the school or health center in addition to one in my yard.

In my site description, it says that these are the current community groups: Goat keeping, fish keeping, mama mkubwa NGO (big sister NGO), Timber group, and also the health center is trying to get an HIV/AIDS prevention training going, so it seems like a wide variety of stuff going on.

Also, when I was in Dar (which was such a huge change from being in the village) I got to see DARK KNIGHT!!! Our arrival coincided with the opening weekend here and I saw it on "The Biggest Screen in East Africa" which is what was actually written under the doors of the movie theatre as you walked in. In addition and more importantly, I bought a guitar in Dar once I found out I was moving pretty far out there and definitely not having electricity. Let's hope that bad boy makes it to Ilembo in one piece.

Miss you all a lot, not sure when I'll be on next but please write me and I'll write you a candlelit letter back from MBEYAAAAAAA! Enjoy the rest of your summers!

I'm on the move! It's currently shadow week and I am staying with a current volunteer in the southern highlands, near the town of Njombe. It took a 10 hour bus ride to get to Njombe and then another hour and a half really small bus ride to her village. On the smaller bus, there are these nimble men who can scale the sides of the bus much like spiderman. I was just riding and then saw a shadow outside the window directly to my left that turned out to be a man who was just climbing around, making sure the bags were staying on top. The scenery is gorgeous out here, and the weather is actually pretty cold..kind of like late winter weather. This has resulted in a lack of sweating, which myself and I'm sure those around me appreciate greatly. Another important fact is that Njombe has cheese, and lots of it! I guess I should have put this before cheese, but the president of Tanzania actually visited her small village the day before I arrived, which everyone was pretty excited about. The girl I am shadowing is an education volunteer named Laura, and she teaches math at the local school. Her house doesn't have electricity or running water, but it is brand new and she keeps it in really great condition. Myself, Linnea (a fellow trainee) and Laura all thankfully love cheese and baking so we were able to make some delicious food, including a mexican night where I made guacamole, Linnea made salsa, and Laura made some sort of cheese dip that was pretty much like fondue. It was so good and a nice change from rice and beans. You might also have noticed I was finally able to upload a couple photos (how observant of you). These are some pretty great ones from the safari at Mikumi. Thanks to the awesome zoom on my camera (thanks DGI!), I was able to get some pretty amazing pictures. I wish I could do mass uploads but it seems that the java script is still the enemy of all the computers in Tanzania so far, so I can only do a few at a time. I'm heading to Dar on Sunday and will find out my site announcement on Tuesday..so I'm really looking forward to finding out where I'll be for the next couple of years, and then for all of you guys who want to come visit, we can start planning some trips. Did Brett Favre really get traded? Also, HERE WE GO STEELERS, HERE WE GO!! I'd appreciate a text after the pre-season game so I can know exactly how many more touchdowns we scored than the Eagles. Feels great to have a break from homestay and get to see some more parts of the country...getting really excited to move to site. Hope everyone's doing well!!

Let’s travel back in time to a Saturday night, circa 1994. The sinfully late hour of 8pm is approaching at a snail’s pace. You are in the awkward can’t-be-categorized age range of 8-12. Like most things at this point in your life, nothing is made to fit you just right and you feel like nobody can or wants to understand you. Your job of babysitting or cutting lawns was enough to go to the movies once every couple of weeks and buy some cheese fries or a snicker’s ice cream bar at the YMCA pool snack bar. There was only one perfect solution in this goldilocks dilemma of weekend evening entertainment, and that was Nickelodeon’s brainchild, SNICK. Ever heard of it? If not, you might want to just not read this post or waste a few minutes on wikipedia and then feel good about the fact that you just learned about something new that you’ll be way too embarrassed to mention in public, or even within the comforts of your own home or mind. One image comes to mind: The Couch (was it pink, peach, orange? Ahh they liked to keep us enthralled from the start) amidst a plain black background, just waiting to tell the awkward pre teens that everything was going to be okay. As my older siblings and parents went out to parties to rejoice with friends, family, or loved ones, I watched them drive away with their perms I so desperately wanted (thank you mom for deceiving me with our hairdresser and friend, Sharon Strezlecki by saying that I had to legally be 12 in order to get a perm at Sharon’s and that we were too loyal to her business to go anywhere else). My parents would wish me a good night, but in the back of their heads they were counting down the years until I could get my learner’s permit and be the family’s designated driver. Until then, it was known that I couldn’t really contribute to the family in any substantial way. Luckily, Gram lived with us and since my parents cleverly told both of us individually that we were in charge of the other, the balance of power was stable. We’d each make little decisions/demands that we would claim would be in the best interest of the other. When diabetic Gram wanted the regular mint chocolate chip ice cream, I suggested the sugar-free Edy’s cookies and cream because “I liked that flavor better.” I had a different strategy when it came to SNICK. I knew Gram’s “I’m just gonna rest my eyes” nap stage would approach at about the same time every night…around 7:45. On Saturday nights if she and I were alone, I would make sure to play about 10 rounds of the keep it up balloon game. If it was right after a birthday party, the slightly drained helium balloons were great because they took such a long time before it could ever hit the ground. Whether it was me running around in circles throwing the balloon in front of her so that she could get it every time, or whether it was because of her insulin levels, that nap came around like clockwork so the problem of “bedtime” or arguing what to watch on TV never arose. There were many shows that encompassed SNICK. ‘All That’ was like a pre-teen SNL that actually popped out some C and D listers like Amanda Bynes, Keenan and Kel, and the one very large woman who recently had a cameo as ‘that’ cheerleader in Dodgeball who fell on the guy’s face during tryouts. Then there was “The Secret Life of Alex Mack”, the telling tale of a coming of age woman, Alex Mack, who could inexplicably turn into a metallic puddle of mysterious magical liquid. Even though she could transform between stages of matter in seconds, she was still just that girl next door going through the same struggle to be accepted in middle school. The star, Larissa Olenick, hasn’t been seen since the movie “10 Things I Hate About You” (may you rest in peace, Heath Ledger). Then there was “Are you Afraid of the Dark?” The thing about this show was that, despite what you might have admitted out loud at soccer practice, it was actually a pretty scary show. The introduction itself (the leprechaun, the creaky attic) was terrifying and the whole campfire ending with the dust being thrown into the fire…wow I am getting chills just thinking about it. I know some people (me) would watch AYAOTD with one eye ready to be covered just in case something crazy happened. After all, this was before the FCC put out those ratings…we had no idea what could happen! I think if AYAOTD were to be re-released today, it would fall under the TV-14 or dare I say…TV-MA category. I don’t know..I guess we never will. Soooo I had a point and everything but apparently I needed to get those feelings about SNICK out there in the open. I feel so exposed, but I also feel ready to move on with my life. It feels nice. Anyway the SNICK/Training in Kilosa, Tanzania parallel came into play when some people started asking me if it was scary at night here or what creepy noises I heard, thus ALMOST asking the question “are you afraid of the dark? Also, training is a lot like middle school and being in that awkward stage again since there are a lot of rules, you can’t drive, and you can’t always understand what people are saying. After being here for a little over a month, I am still loving it and am very happy with how much Kiswahili I am picking up and the wide variety of topics on which we are being taught/trained. Each week 2 different Peace Corps Volunteers (PCV) currently serving come to training to talk to each of the groups to see how everything’s going and answer any and all questions that we might have. Their official title is PCVOTW (Peace Corps Volunteer of the Week). I love the obsession with acronyms the peace corps has, because back in the days of g-chatting every day all day, it was always fun to just list a random set of 4 or 5 letters and see how many different acronyms you could come up with. Jack Gaynor and Tim Naylor had a great aptitude and skill for this incredibly difficult and mentally rewarding brain exercise. Saturday I had a test on Health terms and the Tanzanian Health system, and the first section was just a list of 15 acronyms that we had to decipher. I actually knew most of them, but when I didn’t it was fun to make them up. For example, one was CHAC which apparently has to do with home based aids care, but I wrote Community Health Action Committee. Just sounds great doesn’t it? I wonder if any of the made up ones that people came up with will replace the real one because it is a level of cleverness they have never seen before. Last Sunday my host mama taught myself and the 4 other girls in my group how to make chocolate cake! The ingredients were a tub of the “blue band” margarine butter that is ubiquitous in this town, some sugar (sukari), flour (unga), vanilla (no translation) and yeast (?) and cocoa powder. The tricky part was actually cooking it since there are no ovens, but what basically happened is the pan was heated on the charcoal stove outside for a while, then a thin coating of oil was poured into coat the pan, and then a large flat try was put on top of the pan with the batter in it, and the charcoals were moved to the top tray pan, so it created a convection oven type deal. It worked out really well and was a fun Sunday treat. Since there are a bunch of coconuts around, I’m thinking the cake could be spiced up by mashing up some peanuts in a mortar and pestle and trying to make a chocolate peanut butter icing with coconut shavings that normally get wasted since most families just use the milk from the coconut shavings after draining it out. Besides the very nutritious chocolate cake, we had a whole morning last week during which 4 of the health groups, led by one of our medical officers, Edith, cooked a traditional Tanzanian lunch of rice, ugali, beans (maharage), beef (nyama), mchicha, karambachi salad (tomatoes, onions, deliciousness), chapati, and I led an entire hot sauce movement where we made enough PiliPili to feed all 30 people. Edith wanted us to make sure we knew how to boil water and clean our vegetables (we soaked them in bleach) so that we could avoid getting the lovely diarrhea that makes its way around these parts pretty frequently. I don’t think anyone got too sick after that meal though, so that was encouraging. The next day, however, I was brought by my teacher to a random place in town that specialized in making “kitimoto” (literal translation: hot seat….real translation…pork) Seeing as my send off party in Perryville involved an entire pig roast, I could not turn down this opportunity. After Neema, my teacher, took myself and Mary, the only other non-vegetarian from my group (the rest ate lunch far away this day) to the kitimoto place, I began to wonder if I should actually go through with it. There were just grills and 2 men behind them with fresh pig meat hanging behind them. It was less than a dollar for a half kilo and about 1.50 for a half kilo of meat grilled with tomatoes, onions, and the like. Since we eat the same thing everyday, I was excited for the variety but they forgot our order and my stomach was getting hungrier by the second. Right as they were bringing out our plate of so much pig meat, my teacher got a call saying we needed to go to a meeting with a local NGO at that very moment. We ate for a couple minutes, since time in Tanzania is completely different from that in the US. Here, they say “time is the servant and tool of the people.” Apparently it is not uncommon at all for meetings to start 2-4 hours after the original time. Even still, since we are Americans, we didn’t want to let a little bit of dark meat prevent us from getting to this meeting that were already late to. So, the kitomoto people were kind enough to wrap the heap of pork in newspaper and put it in a plastic bag. And yes, we brought this bag of meat to the meeting and tried not to offend the Muslim women who were on the board of the NGO called WAHUJA. Their organization is really great—it’s a mamas group that started out with 27 members back in 2004, but now only 7 women remain because you have to pay fees to support the orphans and sick in the community and the members could not afford it. In a couple weeks we are going to visit PLWHAs (people living with HIV/AIDS) in the area and hopefully get to see what some of the challenges this particular NGO faces (outside of the obvious funding) and see if there is anything we can do to help. I was surprised to find out at the meeting that my Host Mama is a member of WAHUJA..I was so proud to see her up there! Some of the women can’t even tell their husbands that they are doing this or else he would get mad and demand that they keep the money. My mama’s case isn’t like that, but now my language skills are okay enough to ask her about it and I’m looking forward to visiting people at home or in the hospital with her. Red White and Blueloaf---belated 4th of july edition The internet was not doing so well this week, but let me just say that we had a FIELD DAY 2008. Yes, that’s right. 6 teams of 11 people, Americans and Tanzanians all mixed together. It was really nice of them to let us do this. I of course volunteered to help decide events and teams and such. After all, it was only a year ago that Field Day 2007 occurred, only under much many different circumstances in Washington, dc. Here, I had the day before at lunch to figure this out, but all worked out well. We had a RELAY RACE in which you had a raw egg in your hand the whole time that you passed off from partner to partner, and the first person had to spin around 6 times dizzy bat style, then put on 2 kangas and a hat, throw a Frisbee to their teammate on the other side, and then run backwards with a bucket with a huge water bottle inside of it, pass the egg to the next teammate, and so forth. The very last person to run to the other side had to do an egg toss to the first person on the other side. At this point, most people’s eggs were half broken in their hand but the rule was that if your egg broke on the toss you had to do 10 kicks of the can can, which one group did and looked fannntastic. Most of the Tanzanian staff (some were 70+ years old) had never seen a relay race, and they LOVED it and want to repeat field day every other Friday, if possible. After the relay race, we did a team rotation of 20 minute soccer, volleyball, and ultimate Frisbee games. Ultimate Frisbee is now another favorite of the Tanzanians..our team won all 3 games and completely dominated in Frisbee..we were passing like crazy and it was pretty incredible to see people pick up the game so fast. Even for those people who didn’t want to play in any of the sports after the relay, it was a really nice day outside just to relax and take a break from class and regular training for an afternoon. We also had to sing the star spangled banner at the request of the Tanzanian staff, some of whom knew all the words. The finale: TUG O’ WAR…pretty much the most perfect ending to a tug of war I have ever seen. Since there are only about 11 guys in our program, the first tug of war was Tanzanian men vs. American men. After all the anticipation and build up, the rope BROKE within 2 seconds. It really was such a wonderful ending to a ridiculous day. I heard some great 4th of July stories from some of you but I hope that everyone had a great time..let me know how you’re doing! People are getting mail here so definitely write me letters. It’s pretty fun to get them. Mary Beth and Frank Monastero win the award for first letter received and it only took about 12 days. Thank you guys! P.O. Box 9123 Dar es Salaam Tanzania Keep your Pets close, but your sense of Detachment to African Pets Closer Also, wanted to save some bad news for last: remember Pili Pili, the adorable little kitten that lived here with my family? Well, about 10 days ago, pilipili got eaten by the neighbor’s dog, whose name is SIMBA. Simba is now on the death list… Niedermeyer…DEAD…. Simba…DEAD! Haha the best/worst part about the story is how I found out. I came home from school one day and said “wapi pilipili?” and the kids just started laughing and said one of maybe 3 english words that they know “haha pilipili DEAD!!!” over and over again. I still have pictures of pilipili on my camera and they will be posted, so I just wanted to prepare you for that. Lots of PCVs have pets at their sites so this was a good lesson to learn now..not to get too attached to pets in Africa. Also, a couple nights later, one of our guard dogs, Peggy, was stabbed in the ribs with some sort of knife. It wasn’t a good week to be a pet in the Kondo family. We have no idea who did it but Peggy is a trooper and seems to be doing fine. Anytime your pet starts acting up, just kindly tell them that at least they’re not getting eaten or stabbed and they should start behaving.

I go to Mikumi National park this weekend which is a trip that we organized and we get to go see all the safari animals that you think about when you hear Africa, so everybody go watch the lion king and I will let you know how it compares and if there are any young adult sambas. Love and miss you all!

Wow. Ants. One small ant = weak. Thousands of ants = powerful. I thought i was just being paranoid yesterday morning at about 6am when i got up to use the choo and returned and i put my foot up to the window and saw a couple ants crawling on it. Then i waved my flashlight around the room and saw that thousands of tiny ants were covering nearly every square inch (or centimenter i guess) of cement floor, and had created quite a trail along the perimeter of the wall. I started yelling and did the typical "ahhhheughhhhghghg" and ran outside of my room and just yelled "WADUDU" which means insects right into my sisters' face. I was shaking every inch of my body and literally had "Ants...in my pants." She ran and grabbed a heavenly can of bug spray aka straight up poison (not fda regulated..ahhh breathe it in) which she sprayed all over the floor. I then swept the thousands of ants out of my room after allowing time for them to cease living and then washed all of my clothes. At least it was a Sunday which meant I had no school and really had nothing better to do.

There was no clear source of this en masse ant movement, so I think the only reason was that I had literally just hours before spoken to my parents on the phone while in my room and when they asked about the bugs I said that there were actually more bugs in my place in DC and had a nice little chuckle. The ants must have started organizing their forces at that moment so as not to be shown up by the district of columbia.

I tried to post some pictures but it didn't work again...sooo you'll have to just settle for my cell phone number, which i just purchased. I can send and receive text messages most of the time which is pretty cool. Feel free to send me some love!

+255 (country code) 078 395 1912

Happy new month's eve!

I'm sure many of you at this point are lying awake at night wondering...HOW in the world does one make Meeshloaf? It is certainly one of those questions that great minds have struggled to figure out for centuries.

Let me put your mind at ease by providing a very simple recipe. Here are some of the ingredients, and as always, please add as much crushed red pepper as you desire.

1 malnourished kitten named Pili Pili (which means hot peppers)

30-162 chickens (kukus)

7-10 children, with at least 3 sisters (dada) and 4 brothers (kaka)

1 large cow (n'gombe)

2 'guard' dogs named Bobby and Peggy (mbwa)... important sidenote: these dogs are cute but are so scrawny they make Lola look like the hulk, i think people just have the dogs to protect from other peoples' scrawny dogs.

Approx. 15-23 buckets in varying colors of red, blue and green (these are useful for bathing, cooking, and washing clothes, although usually not all in the same bucket)

3 charcoal stoves

10 lbs of rice

1 mosquito net

1 Mama

1 Baba

1 Kanga for casual wear (google it)

1 Choo (pronounced Cho) aka hole in the ground toilet.

1 Solar backpack

1 Kiswahili-English dictionary

3 liters of Safari, Serengheti, Tusker, Kilimanjaro, or any of the other awesomely named Tanzanian beers. (kilimanjaro is also the main brand for the huge bottled waters..i wonder if this confusion has lead to any poor decisions on the part of visitors)

The internet here is, much like most of the Peace Corps trainees' digestive systems: fickle. I might be able to read your emails but not respond to them. My last posting was pretty giddy, but it was after my first 2 days of being a student again so I guess you could say I was like a little schoolgirl again. The primary schoolkids here are great at laugh at me and the other trainees a lot when we try to greet them, but the way I handle this is by whipping out the FRISBEE and throwing it to them. (MVP of the packing list so far is hands down the frisbee, so thank you Mr. Benjamin Detofsky for that last minute addition)

Most of these kids look about 5 years younger than they actually are, which has resulted in a FANTASTIC Tanzanian doppleganger of Gary Coleman whose real name is Ali. He's 7 years old but as tall as a 3 year old. (so about as tall as gary coleman) Ali is incredibly athletic, and like most of the kids here, became semi-professional at frisbee in about 10 minutes.

My host family is hilarious. They love to laugh a lot and smile, and so do I, so even if we don't know what the other one is laughing or smiling about, we really don't care--the first night I was there we broke the ice of awkwardness and transcended cultural boundaries when one of my younger brothers who is about 15 asked me to sing a Shakira song. "Meeshie--sing. Shakira!" I feigned shyness and then of course started singing "my hips don't lie" in a Robert Goulet voice about 30 seconds later. Every night since I sing another American song and the 7-10 kids that maybe live there, maybe just hang around sometimes, all sing along. My short wave radio picks up a a lot of stations, and when I help out with the cooking after school I bring it outside and we all sing songs and the best part about them not being able to speak much english is that i can sing in the tune but make up words and everyone is happy.

Special shout out to the ladies of Duberstein Group for my amazing camera...I have taken a few pictures which I tried to post and hopefully show up on here..my host family loves it when I take pictures of them, especially my mama!! She got all excited and then posed next to her pink mosquito net which matched her dress at the time. My Baba works for the District Council Government and my mama runs a Duka, or shop, in town that allows her to sport the latest village fashions. No one in my family really speaks english but this has allowed me to practice the Swahili I'm learning every day a whole lot. I go to Kiswahili class from 8am until 5pm, but we have a daily chai break at 10 and lunch at 2, which breaks up the day pretty nicely. It's pretty exhausting but also a lot of fun exercising the language part of the brain again, and I'm really happy with how the language learning is going. As it did with both German and Czech, singing songs is helping me the most. In fact, myself and the 4 other women in my training group wrote a song in Kiswahili and actually sang it in front of the Local Ward Government council (translate: 6 village leaders in a classroom who deadpanned us until the end of hte song when they smiled and clapped..it was a good test of personal will and yet another experience of looking ridiculous in a foreign country) My favorite part about training is that it is done by Tanzanians and not americans in the Peace Corps. We met the country director and staff when we first arrived, but since then have been in the hands of the tanzanian staff members and now our host families, who feed us so much and will do anything for you (if you can translate it!) Also cool is how 3/4 of the villagers in my village of Manzese-A are Muslim, but there are Christians and Muslims living side by side and really peacefully..no one is really that strict in either case, but people just get along great here and lots of Masai come into the village and use walking sticks, own cows, and have really cool gaged earlobes. Most of the conversations get more complicated than the initial how are you and where are you from, so that is when the song singing comes in handy.

I'll try to get back on here in a week. bye byeeee!!

Well hello there! I have learned about a dozen new greetings in Swahili, but so far my favorite is "Mambo?!" which is an informal "hey" or "what's up" and then you respond back "Poa" (cool) or "Safi" (clean) or "Freshie" (fresh). Since the internet in Kilosa town is scarce, let me just say that Tanzania has been amazing thus far. It took about a day to get to Dar es Salaam, but it was pretty much a blur and we were welcomed in very warmly by everyone at the Msimbazi Centre Wednesday night in the city. We stayed there for 3 nights and got introduced to the country staff and received our sweet medical kits. (The chew it yourself pepto tablets have already come in handy) At this point I still knew no Swahili and was pretty confused when everyone greets you and says hey Mzungu!! and you have nothing to say back. On Saturday we got on a bus and went a few hours to Morogoro, the 5th biggest city in Tanzania. No high rises or anything, but a gorgeous town settled at the base of a mountain, and we got to do some intensive language classes and then pretty much relaxed and enjoyed the training site at St. Thomas center before we headed off to roughing it for the next 2 years! Monday we left for Kilosa, which is where I am now. I am staying in a village called Manzese and living with Mr. and Mrs. Kapeya Kondo. I really like my family a lot and although they do not speak much English (Baba, or the father, can speak a few words), the many kids that either live there or just hang around ( I can't tell which yet) are great teachers and like looking through my books and showing me things and teaching me new words. The smallest child, Harifa, is only 5 and I gave him a ball to play with yesterday and he loves me now and I can understand some of the things he says since he speaks in simple sentences. The family dynamic is incredible...my sisters definitely do most of the grunt work around the house, but I have helped out with some of the cooking already and have been eating great meals since I got here! Rice and beans are the norm, but there are lots of meat and fish and potatoes in stew form, so there is pretty much something for everyone to eat. There are a bunch of vegetarians in the peace corps group but they seem to be doing well.

Mzungu Meeshloaf. The word Mzungu is great. It's not an insult, but some people get annoyed by it. Picture about 30 kids screaming MZUNGU at me and then running to hug me as I walk home up the mountain. they all smile and say HOW ARE YOUUU? The kids say it to any white person they see, but the word actually means "one who walks in circles" because way back when many Africans thought the same white man was walking in circles through all the villages in the country because they had never seen a foreigner before. I'm running out of internet time here but I''m going to try to write more tomorrow and post some pictures of my family!

love and miss you all!

kwa heri!

meeeeesh

p.s. everyone here calls me MEESHIE and i love it. take care!

So I'm not sure how long I'll be able to keep up the meeshloaf/meatloaf metaphors (sorry to ruin the surprise if you didn't pick up on the connection), but I'm hoping I'll have enough up my sleeve to last for the 27 month duration of my time volunteering in Tanzania. Plus, it entertains me to think about how much it might annoy some people after the initial "aww, I miss that Meesh and her wacky sense of humor" phase wears off.

First thing's first. I would like to take the space to acknowledge the well known Olympic Gold Medalist in speed skating, Joey Cheek....not for contributing all of his winnings to needy kids in Darfur, but for utilizing his creativity and knack for useless word combinations to come up with the term MEESHLOAF last summer while dining in the fine kitchen of 1453 Harvard Street...where dreams are made and then squandered due to excessive napping caused by the lack of light. I will miss that place. So yes, in July 2007, the word Meeshloaf was born, and despite all the other profound and remotely relevant titles I could have named my blog, I came back to this and decided it was the most appropriate fit for me...and for you, my avid readers I left behind. Plus, Meatloaf is just plain delicious, and also the singer of "Paradise By the Dashboard Light", a Santoro family favorite.

Cutting to the chase...it is 1:48am and in typical me fashion I am getting this blog up literally less than 5 hours before I need to check out of the hotel and begin the trek to Tanzania. For those of you who don't know or have short term memory loss, I am leaving the country to serve as a Health Education Peace Corps Volunteer in Tanzania for over two years. I don't really have the time at this moment to give you the textbook definition of what I'll be doing, but I promise to keep you updated as I'm doing it as frequently as possible.

Here's what I know:

1. I am currently sitting in a Holiday Inn lobby in Washington, DC where for the past two days I have gone to pre-departure training, which rekindled my love of ice breakers and impromptu group skits.

2. I have to check out at 5:30am and go to a government clinic to get some immunizations and start taking anti-malaria pills. The first thing that comes to mind when someone tells me they're shipping me off to a government clinic is pretty much a hatch scene from LOST, circa Claire's abduction by The Others in Season 2.

3. I fly out of Dulles at 3:30pm. We land in Frankfurt Wednesday morning deutsch time, then head to Zurich. From Zurich, we fly to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and arrive around 8pm.

4. My mailing address from June 11 until August 20 will be:

My name

P.O. Box 9123

Dar es Salaam

Tanzania

....aaaaand apparently it might actually get there. we will see what happens, but please be adventurous and try because I would love to receive actual written mail and do not want to have to write myself fake letters so that the other campers think I'm cool. (read: Danica from Wonder Years' character in the 1990 made for TV movie, Camp Cucamonga) http://www.netflix.com/Movie/Camp_Cucamonga/60035492

5. I will most likely not be able to get in touch for at least a week once I land, but i WILL be purchasing a cell phone so I'll be sure to put that number up once I have it. And you will have to call me, since it would most likely cost a small fortune for me to make an international call.

6. Once I land, myself and the 48 other people in my training class (we are all either health or environment trainees) head out to about 300Km outside of the big city of Dar es Salaam (henceforth shall be known as just Dar), to a district called Morogoro. We will stay at a hotel for 2 nights and get more shots and initial survival language training, until we go to the small town of Kilosa nearby and move in with our Host Families and new homes where we will be living for 10 weeks during Pre-Service Training (PST...does not mean pacific standard time, but that would be cool) So I will be living in Kilosa until August 20, at which point I will hopefully be sworn in as a volunteer and then assigned to the site where I will call home for 2 years.

7. I'm going to learn Swahili. Or Kiswahili. Or at least find out when I should say the Ki and when I can leave it out.

As you probably guessed, I'm feeling extremely excited but the slaphappiness is starting to simmer down as I realize my wake up call is for 4:40am, and it is now 2:15. I can't thank you all enough for the wonderful goodbyes and send-off parties. I appreciate all of your encouragement, advice, words of caution, and just plain old love that was heavily present along the east coast this past month. I'm really lucky to have friends and family that would put their livers and hearts through so much distress, just for the sake of a long farewell. It was truly inspiring.

The next serving of Meeshloaf (ha ha) might not be for a while, so grab a snack, check often and tell others, because at the dinner table of the world wide web, there's always an extra plate.