It’s an easy day at Tortilla Flats. The expats speak in a charming Orange County drawl while sipping Imperials. The tourists, happily day-drunk, munch on mountains of nachos. The surfers bob up and down in a consistent surf. The locals are policemen on bicycles, shirtless shop keepers, and five year olds tending their surf boards. Pura vida whispers in the ocean breeze as a long-haired dude moseys to the bar, orders a whiskey, and says to no one in particular “hair of the dog”.

I break off a piece of tortilla and toss it down to the straggly mut whose been at my side since I arrived in Domincal two days earlier. Everyone in this tiny Costa Rican surf paradise seems to have a canine side kick. Mine came with my room. Her name is Gamma.

Gamma arrived on the beach one day, bright eyed and tail-less. She was received by the resident muts with neutrality; she’s neither alpha nor beta. Straight away she teamed up with Tits McGee, a medium sized, golden haired teenager whose nipples hang like ornaments on the low branches of a Christmas tree. Tits needs friends. She’s the kinda dog the other bitches roll their eyes at. Poor Tits is constantly dodging efforts of the beach muts, attempting a quick mount beneath the coconut palms. Gamma isn’t much of a wing woman.

Lucy is a cowardly Pitbull who hides behind the bar in a cupboard that may have at one time been a bread box. Lucy has been bred for excellence in aggression and trained for total submission. She’s the beach beta. Her owner looks in her direction and she runs for the cupboard. The small surf dogs sniff her tail and she rolls belly up. Like many girls on the beach, Lucy has no idea what power she holds.

At sunset the beach gets crowded. Two German Sheppards herd a hunky California beach boy, jogging Hasselhoff style into the surf. The Sheppards (and I) watch contently from the shore while he catches a few waves.

Free agents scavenge the garbage cans, while a lab hangs back with a group of children playing in the sea foam. Across the way a shaggy stranger paws about in the turtle nesting area. A tall blonde alpha and two dark Chihuahuas taunt tits. Gamma has settled close by. She takes it all in, happy to be ignored.

Happy to be ignoredis the general vibe in Domincal. It’s a sleepy town, the kind of place where you could fall asleep in a hammock and wake up three months later with dreadlocks, a pick-up truck, and a dog.

My friend Victoria with Tits McGee (on left), and Gamma (on right).

*This is a belated post from my trip to Costa Rica last November.

Living in a foreign country for an undetermined amount of time forces you to prioritize. In the absence of permanence there is compromise. What do I need? What can I live without? How much do I invest in my life here? This can be a positive, it helps you simplify and identify what’s important to you. Fifty pairs of shoes I can live without, a constant source of reading material is non-negotiable. This transient lifestyle is more challenging in other areas of life. For me, the most difficult area of compromise is in personal relationships. The social landscape of Dar es Salaam is unique. While there are more than three million people living in Dar, I, along with most people I know, mainly socialize in a small community comprised of educated Tanzanians and ex-pats (short for ex-patriot). The ex-pats come from all over the world, every nationality has a small residential representation, many of whom live in an area known as “the peninsula”. The peninsula is separate from the crowded streets of the rest of Dar es Salaam, and is surrounded on three sides by beautiful views of the Indian Ocean. The diplomats live in the fancy houses that are ridiculously expensive, yet fit within the budget of the various foreign embassies and aid agencies. They are mostly families doing a few years in Dar, then moving on to the next station. Throughout the nicer areas of Dar apartment buildings are shooting up. These over-priced shared spaces are filled with well paid female aid workers, business men, and a variety of characters with unique stories. Beyond the pail young savvy ex-pats live in shared houses in gentrification-friendly neighborhoods where the real estate is cheap and so is the beer. Because of the transient nature of the ex-pat community there are all sorts of unique living situations, mine for example: I enjoy a beautiful house on the ocean just off the peninsula, and share with a wonderful American woman and her daughter, it was meant to be temporary, but then I stayed. While I would like to count myself amongst the young and savvy, by living in a big beautiful house on the edge of the peninsula I have given up a certain amount of ex-pat cred. I’m neither here nor there, I exist in a sort of in-between state. This is true of my timeline in Dar. Typical Dar timelines are as follows: The short-termer. Interns, students, volunteers, and development workers all fall into this category. They’re mainly females in their 20s. Short-termers have an air of excitement and adventure about them. They enjoy a funky social world with lots of beach time, and a sweet life in America waiting for them at the end of three-months. Surfs up! The long-termers. This group is a bit more diverse and includes entrepreneurs and others with business interests in Tanzania; white Africans who have made Tanzania their home; teachers; volunteers who came to Tanzania for a few months and wound up staying; and other randoms. Many long-termers socialize within a circle of other long-termers. It can be emotionally exhausting to be connecting with people and then saying good-bye over and over. On the other hand, many of the long-term men enjoy the company of the short-term girls. The in-betweeners . In-betweeners are an assortment of professionals that are in Tanzania for an undetermined amount of time (myself included). In the beginning, they take advantage of every social activity available. Dar is a friend-conducive environment. When you’re a young ex-pat you already have something in common with most people you meet: you’re away from home, doing something somewhat exotic. You bond over the quirks of Dar. You spend the first several months balancing work and a demanding social calendar. You make many friends, who then start to leave. You begin to see why friends of yours who have been here longer are jaded. Your social circle becomes a blend of short-term, long-term, and in-betweeners, which can be challenging to navigate. Relationships in Dar are difficult because of something we all know, but no one says: this is temporary. There is a steady influx of young ex-pats who are fun, interesting, young people. You meet them at the bar, soccer practice, embassy karaoke, reading on the beach, etc. When you meet someone at a bar, within the first five minutes you will know where they’re from, why they’re here, and most importantly, when they are leaving. Because that’s the thing: as steady as the influx is, there is an equal outflow. Dar’s a revolving door, you never know who might be coming or going. It’s important to have a local support group in what can be a stressful environment, but the revolving door can complicate things. Is it worth investing in a friendship with someone who may be out of your life next month? A common solution to this is superficial relationships—exchanging pleasantries amongst large groups of friends who you hang out with every weekend. These relationships are an easy way to keep people at an arm’s length. You enjoy their company until they’re gone (which they will be, eventually). No harm no foul, but, ultimately no depth. While it’s great to have a large group of weekend friends, these relationships are based on low-expectations, which, among other things, lend itself to an unfortunate atmosphere of accepted flakiness which is rampant in Dar. As I said in the beginning, this transient lifestyle forces you to identify what’s important to you. Relationships, I have learned, are not something I’m willing to compromise on. And so, as with all investments, it becomes necessary to accept the risks, in this case, the possibility that a good friend may up and leave. In some ways that gives the relationship, in its temporal state more value. It allows you to let your barriers down and experience life in this crazy ex-pat world more fully. Beyond a support system, you gain perspective, humor, someone to share the cost of a late night taxi, and someone who in ten years you can call up and say remember that time in Tanzania… I’ve learned to fully embrace my experiences here, not matter how long it lasts. We can enjoy the beauty of a sunset, even though we know it’s temporary; what’s more, that sun will rise again.

There’s a rugby tournament in Dar today. I’ve been encouraged to show up because I’m a girl, and according to rules and regulations “every team must have at least one woman or a boy under the age of 14”. I’m considering playing if only to celebrate the fact that it has finally been recognized that women are just as physically competitive as pre-pubescent boys. Victory! I’m proposing a Scrabble tournament where every team must have at least one man or a girl who doesn’t speak English.

It’s touch rugby, so, instead of tackling my opponent (either another girl or a boy under 14) I would just touch them, with both hands. This is all I know about the game: each player is matched against an opponent on the other team. If your opponent tries to get past you with the ball, you touch him and that’s a “down” (or something). The team tries to get the ball down to the other side of the field by throwing the ball sideways, like a fish at Pike’s place market, while running forwards without exceeding 5 downs (or whatever). When your team makes it to the end of the field with the ball that’s a goal, called a “try” (maybe?). It’s a fast game.

I played once, many moons ago. I was invited to play with the “co-ed” team during their weekly pick-up game. I showed up at the International School of Tanganyika’s football pitch that afternoon expecting a “Thanksgiving afternoon family pick-up game” atmosphere. Instead I was thrown in without warm up, introductions, or explanation beyond the command “cover that guy”, a big guy, with little shorts. In fact all of them were big guys with little shorts (and nice thighs). There were 23 men and 1 girl (me). These guys took their rubgy pretty seriously. It was a Friday afternoon and they wanted to blow off some steam. I ran up and down the field trying not to get trampled. They were big, sweaty, and going full speed. It was a strange sensation playing with them. I hadn’t been physically intimidated in a while; let’s just say, I now have new respect for Mulan. I’d like to say that I turned out to be awesome, but that would be a lie. I got a few “touches” in and tossed the ball several times before I bowed out 20 minutes into the game. I felt like I was in the way, maybe not as a girl, but as a beginner; a very small beginner in a pool of large players. It was like the time in college when I was thrown into the “Advanced pig-showing group” though I was a novice, I was way out of my league. Luckily, Uncas carried us to 5th place.

To play or not to play? This is my Saturday morning dilemma. I’m heading to the field in a few hours, where I will either A) Spend the day two-hand touching under 14 year olds, or B) Drink beer on the sideline with my girlfriends and enjoy the show. Life is full of difficult decisions.

I left you (the reader) in Ujindile, finishing up my run in the Peace Corps.  That was August.  September through early-October found me relaxing in Zanzibar, the beautiful island-nation off the coast of Tanzania.  By mid-October I’d moved back to my parents house—a joy all adult children (and their parents) should partake in at some point in their twenties.  By late October I’d headed to Jersey City, the place my maternal side of the family first immigrated to in the 1920s.  They had a grocery store which supported their large Italian family, all of whom lived upstairs.  I lived on the 8th floor of the Candlewood Suites and worked long hours as a corporate health-care consultant.  I made small talk about the Jets in the elevator, and looked forward to quesadilla Friday’s in the cafeteria.  Once, the self-check health station at work, which takes your blood pressure and weighs you, told me I was borderline obese, so I stopped the quesadillas and focused on the New York Sports Club.  Mid-January my contract ended.  I hit the road and followed a spiritual journey guided by Jet Blue flight specials:  horse-drawn buggies and retirees in Charleston, SC; ghosts and bee-keepers in Savannah, GA; friendly men and delicious cake in Charlotte, NC; a blizzard watched from an apartment that smelled like Subway in Chicago, IL; culture shock and a cattle call of unemployed RPCVs in D.C.  That felt like the end of the road: D.C, where all wayward RPCVS go to compete for work at NGOs.  I think I could have been happy there—in some strange reality where I got a real job and started on a track towards something other than the next adventure.  But, in the midst of doing that I stumbled upon another adventure, disguised as a job.  A job based in Tanzania.

At the moment, I’m in Zanzibar, just for the weekend; writing from the top of a tree house looking out over a rainy beach with tourists trapped under thatch, and dhows in the mist.  Tomorrow I head back to Dar.  Back to the office to organize volunteer trips to Tanzania: host families and work placements at orphanages and schools for American and European volunteers coming abroad.  Helping others start down a path that brought me to where I am today. 

_____

I wrote that update a few months ago and never posted it. In fact, I've got a whole folder of mediocre blog posts that I just haven't gotten around to posting and now seem irrelevant. Out with the old, in the with the new. New city, new job, new Chapter of the blog. And so it begins:

A Day in Dar, as Recounted During my Lunch Break

This morning I got an iced latte at Africafe. They used long-life milk to make it, but it was delicious. I picked up my intern at the office and hit the road to Watoto Wetu, an orphan center just outside the Dar es Salaam city limits. We sat in traffic for an hour and listened to the New Yorker: Fiction podcast while motorcycles weaved in and out of the line, and young men on foot tried to sell us tropical fish out of small aquariums balanced on their heads.

At Watoto Wetu I sat and watched two Swedish volunteers and one Icelandic volunteer teach English. They were playing hang-man with eight Tanzanian children who live at the center. Several held my hands, touched my freckles, and played with my Ray-Bans as I watched the students guess the word: T S H I R T.

After an hour and a half at the orphanage the intern and I are back on the road, windows down, pumping Jackson 5. I texted a few friends to see who wanted some chipsi, a rare lunch treat only awarded to myself on days when all of the food in the refrigerator has gone bad. Then my mind got to thinking: you know what goes well with chipsi? Beer. Beer and chipsi on a gorgeous Wednesday afternoon in Dar. That's the ticket.

Ten minutes later I'm back in the office and back to reality: work to do, presentation to prepare, volunteers to organize. Beer will have to wait, but not too long, tonight the girls and I are breaking out the dancing shoes. Beer and music with a light breeze on a Wednesday night in Dar: that's the ticket!

And that's a lunch break intro to my life as an American in Dar: volunteers, cute kids, randomness, office, and dancing. Some 1st world comforts with 3rd world charm. It's not a bad life, though it could use a little more writing.

More lunch break updates to come! Mungu Akipenda

Building projects are a funny thing. Peace Corps discourages them for a number of reasons, some of them legitimate. First of all, I suppose you could say building projects are out of our scope. When we're sworn into service we take an oath to fulfill the three goals of Peace Corps:

1. Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.

2. Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.

3. Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

No where in the mission statement does it say "procure large sums of money to build structures that will likely decay once the volunteer has left the village". Which is the next reason Peace Corps gives: buildings are not sustainable. They require upkeep, staff, and a whole list of other needs that the village can not guarantee after the volunteer's wallet is gone. Which brings us to the next point: Volunteers should not be seen as a giant wallet. Villages should see their volunteers as technical resources, not nipples on the magical teat of aid money. Plus building projects are difficult execute, often requiring more time and money than originally budgeted. After careful consideration of all these arguments over a two year period of time, I decided to go ahead and do a building project, in the last 3 months of my service.

The argument that I used to convince myself that this would work was simple: Ujindile is different from other villages. They have a track record of sustainability: projects that Peace Corps volunteers did years ago are still chugging along, and there are no unfinished building projects in the area. They own the projects, contributing financially and physically to every project we’ve done, in most cases without me asking (the last volunteer must have had something to do with this). They’ve never pressured me to do building projects or contribute money to anything (aside from a few individuals who tried their luck early on and were shot down). I’d already finished all my Peace Corps projects, which were for the most part successful, and felt like the village appreciated me as a volunteer, even when I did small education projects that we all knew no one understood (like the “pet care seminar”). Knowing that there would not be another volunteer replacing me (it’s difficult for a new volunteer to walk into a village with a fresh building project, and big expectations), I decided to bite the bullet and go out with a bang; thus Project Awali was born.

Awali means kindergarten in Kiswahili. In Tanzania, primary school is mandatory. In every village there is a primary school which provides free schooling for 1st through 7th graders. Some villages have chekachea which pre-schoolers may attend for a fee. Rarely do villages also have an awali. When I arrived in Ujindile, they had an awali class of 30 students, a fair amount considering awali is not free, and they had no classroom. Instead they rotated between classrooms as the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders went out to do their morning chores.

This May, when I approached the village leaders privately to see which kind of building they would like done I expected them to suggest something along the lines of “new doctor housing” to attract a good doctor, or “new CCM building” for the upcoming elections. Surprisingly, they unanimously suggested an awali, then they spot pledged full support and fiscal responsibility (corruption and disappearing funds can also be an issue). For the billionth time in the past two years I silently thanked Eliguard, my Peace Corps supervisor, for placing me in such a motivated village.

The next few months were a blur. We secured funding, designed the building plans, hired a builder and were off to the races. On the first day the builder estimated four months till completion. I told him he had 6 weeks. The Awali Committee took care of all the banking, loyally submitting receipts every week. The builder worked Monday-Saturday 8-6p.m, taking time every morning to teach the apprentice village builders how to build a circular classroom. Sometime after the first week of drawing and digging I slipped off to Dar to pick up a few friends visiting from the states. When we went back to the village the foundation was laid and the walls were up. A few days later I slipped off again and when I returned the roof supports were up. I ran to town for the night to pick up shadowing volunteers and when we came back the roofing was on!! I nervously checked up on the budget (which we’d feared we’d under budgeted), and kumbe! there was still plenty of cash left over for desks and chairs.

When I left the village on August 5th I was told there was one week left till Project Awali was finished. It’s an unsettling feeling to leave the village whilst a project is ongoing. I’ve heard several stories about half-ass volunteers who abandoned projects mid-way and went back to the states (I know these volunteers must have done other great things over their two year service, unfortunately when people gossip they usually focus on the negatives). I crossed by fingers, packed up my house, and headed for COS (completion of service).

At COS I reflected on my first two year of service, I’ve had many experiences, some good, some bad, some very, very strange; I could have stopped there and had a wonderful service. However, in the last three months I have seen a new side of Ujindile: super human work ethic fueled by community values that make this village exceptional by any standard. Had I not participated in this last project I would have missed out big time. On August 12th, my last day as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I sat with Eliguard reviewing my illegal operation (Project Awali was funded and executed outside of Peace Corps) he said “you know, every village is different, this could have taken another village two years to complete”. Not five minutes later Pasta called to announce that the last wall was painted that morning. What’s more, 50 students were signed up for kindergarten this fall; a good sign for the future of Ujindile.

Day 1: Volunteers eager to have their children attend kindergarten this fall clear the land in front of the primary school.

It's the dry season and it is so dusty that it's not necessary or possible to wear sunscreen; the dust settles into a fine, sun-proof layer on your skin. A layer that turns into cement when mixed with sunscreen.

The project had so much help from so many different people. The John D. Durante Foundation and Mary Ryan Foundation helped with funding. Filippo the Italian architect designed the kindergarten. Sylvia, another Italian, came to the village to help drawn the plan on the Ujindile soil. Dowdi Nyarusi, "the amazing", came from Makambako to be the head builder (he finished in 6 weeks, unheard of!). Though we hired 5 official carpenters to help with construction, every day another dozen people showed up to volunteer their time. The village raised 30% of the finances, and donated almost all the raw material available in the village.

Building in Africa is an amazing process. Everything is done by hand using the simplest tools.

Digging out the foundation. The earth in the dry season is hard as rocks, but with a little Rosa Muhundo and the Dixie Chicks playing in the back round, the day flew by.

That's the same earth that we used to make the bricks. A little clay soil, a little water, shove it in a wood mold, run out of the mud and plop it on the ground to dry in the sun. People did this all day long in a big muddy pit, usually on the jog. We used more than 20,000 hand made bricks.

Perfect circle.

Next step: 1st layer of the foundation: big ol' Ujindile rocks.

Street cred.

For the first month of building school was on break. Here the students are back at school, checking out the progress of the awali.

Students back in school meant more hands to help. We used the storage rooms in the courtyard at my house to keep the cement. One morning as I hung my freshly cleaned chupies up to dry the door flung open and the entire 7th grade came in to carry cement. There I was hanging up a pair of polka dot bikinis. I think they blushed more than I did.

Awali was built on man power and team work.

Christian worked on the tip top, chiseling the frame so that the pieces of tin roofing would fit in perfectly. The men spent two weeks working on the roof in the height of the windy season, with no safety harnesses. Luckily the only injury sustained during building was when I got sawdust in my eye. After that they didn't let me near the building.

Me "How is it going up there?

Christian: "Fantastic."

He's a rock star.

This is the future sight of the classroom and blackboard. Imagine 50 smiling faces learning their "ahhh, behhhh, cehhhh's".

A 360 degree view...

...means light all day long.

When we did the drawing we had to take into account the wind which tends to bring in a nice layer of dust every day of the windy season. If the door was in the wrong place the kids would wind up cleaning all day instead of learning 1+1=mmmmbbbbiiiillliiiii.

There's a beautiful wrap around, rain-proof terrace...

...so that the kids can play outside all year long. Even during the rainy season which lasted from Dec-May this year.

That's the teacher's office.

And the other window is the stoo, where the corn goes to dry.

Lovin' the roman columns. You can tell an Italian worked on the project.

With one week left at site everything was on track.

Just some plastering, painting, and windows to put.

I left my site August 5th. Awali was lookin good.

On August 12th, my date of official Completion of Service, I received a call from Pasta saying the building was completely finished, windows in, painted, blackboard up, and little tiny chairs ready for little tiny students. I hope to return sometime this fall to see the classroom in action and hear those magical words "good morning teecha"...I may spend a few months teaching kindergarten.

Tanzanian mamas know how to have a good time. Any excuse to dance is a good one...

especially when there are the village drummers. Their work fees are paid in ulanzi.

ulanzi-local brew.

Shake it, shake it, shake it...

And then I shook it and had a slight wardrobe malfunction.....but just kept on dancing.

Lots of lovely harmonizing.

It was freezing cold, luckily I kept getting wrapped in layers of khanga and other party paraphernalia.

Party face.

Mwenye Kiti "And these baskets are cozy's for you to put your pombe in." pombe-alcohol

Me "And there are two of them so i can double fist, awwww, ninyi!!!"

ninyi-you guys!!

This woman gave me a bag of raw wheat.

Mama "This is for dinner tonight." Me "There's not much meat on him, but thank you."

These were sort of backhanded avacados. "We present these avacados to Greta, who will be helping us to find a market in Dar as she's done with the honey". Me "what? who? market, me?"

Lots of baskets.

TAG church also gave me money. Sijui.

I'm not sure where they got this tail.

Basket of eggs.

This woman gave me a mia tano (about 50 cents)

Dada Emily, she also recited an original poem about my time in Ujindile. Sweet heart.

There was an original score.

These handmade baskets are special to the Iringa region. I wound up with about two dozen of them over the course of the party.

Christian gave an amazing speech about the importance of education, as opposed to material things, as a means of sustainable development, "that way, when the volunteer leaves the information remains". Christian, mwenye kiti, and I teared up.

Gonna miss those faces.The next generation: After the first two months of Peace Corps training in Tanga, TZ, these Peace Corps Trainees came down to Ujindile to "shadow" a volunteer (me). Amy, Kate, and Sativa are all health volunteers being inducted into Peace Corps TZ on August 18th. The after party, VIP section.

Winni.... more pictures and a video on the next blog...

Last day at home, I toted Winni around while Agie and a small army disassembled my home and fit it into 4 small bags.

Baby Boom!! Two weeks before I left my neighbor gave birth to this little peanut, Jane; less than a week before I left Yusta (my house mama/besti) gave birth to a giant bundle, at 2a.m. on July 30th she hopped into a car to the hospital 1hr drive away, by 6a.m she gave birth completely naturally (ouch) to her 3.5kg baby, by mid-morning she was up, on a public bus back to the village!!! Amazing. Baby name: Steve, after my dad (she wanted to name it greta, but as it's not a boys name and no one can pronounce it, we went with steve).

On our way! Tusker and I packed up a taxi and headed for the big city. The wonder dog is going to join a new peace corps volunteer at her site in Njombe next week.

My husband’s name is Jean-Claude, Ringo, or Sven depending on my mood. We met while hiking the Shikoku trail sophomore year of college. We’ve got three kids, two boys and one little girl. Where is Ringo now? Back in the village, home-schooling the children. He cooks and gardens; has a big piki piki and knows kung-fu. He’s your everyday bad-ass turned homemaker, very sexy. Or at least that’s what I tell people; more specifically the forward town boys looking for an mchumba. Sometimes I get it from the women too, yesterday a Tanzanian mama walked up to me in the bus stand, took my side ponytail and gave it a good yank—“It’s real?! Do you have a husband? My son would love a wife with this hair.” I told her I’d marry her son if he’d be willing to cook and clean my house, she laughed and walked away. The mental stability of volunteers in Tanzania largely depends on how they handle uncomfortable situations. I’ve met this challenge with varying degrees of success.

Due to an active imagination and sense of humor the wedding proposals are no problem for me. In fact sometimes I enjoy telling eager taxi drivers about how Jean-Claude proposed, under a full moon on top of Machu Picchu. The incessant mzungu calls are a bigger problem for me. Mzungu literally means Europeaner. Just as you wouldn’t yell “hey African” at strangers walking down the street in Boston; it’s not polite to yell mzungu. Traveling in TZ can feel like a game of dodge ball where I’m in the middle, mzungu being thrown at me from every angle until someone hits me with a kidney shot mzungu and I take a swing back (metaphorically speaking, thankfully I’ve never lost it enough to hit anyone except that perv on the Q train in Brooklyn). There are a few ways to deal with this situation:

1-Stay in village, don’t travel. The only person who calls me mzungu in Ujindile is a man whose name is officeCHAIRdoor, and who thinks he’s a motorcycle. I don’t mind being called mzungu if it’s followed by a dazzling motorcycle mime-show. Unfortunately, we all have to leave the village at some point, mostly to check email.

2-Get really pissed off, seethe, don’t talk to anyone, then wait for it all to boil over and explode at someone with third grade Swahili insults that come out like fraggle-rock. This is for amateurs; it’s embarrassing to be a second year PCV who flips off little old ladies in the market place.

3-Take the time to explain why being called mzungu bothers you, boring.

4-Embrace the mzungu. A year into service I realized the jig is up, I am Mzungu; Mzungu and proud! Jambo right back at you rafiki. This approach often leads into having to tell stories about my Ringo and his views on education.

The most uncomfortable situation I have gotten myself into in-country was a very public stance I took against our village executive officer (VEO) when he had impregnated and denied my house girl. Before the incident the VEO and I had been good friends with a teasing, brother-sister relationship (which is how I received my village name- Semblinyi, sister of VEO). During our fight VEO took the teasing to the next level at inappropriate public moments. At town meetings he would add snide little comments, such as “Peace Corps missed the last town meeting and doesn’t know what’s going on.” Which was true, but before the scandal he would have had my back, and would have called me by name. I’d smile back and shoot off a “Bwana, you know Sue Bora* hasn’t been here for years, of course she missed the meeting.” The town would laugh and VEO would snicker. In this way VEO and I formed a sort of two-man show at public forums. The town warmed up to my sense of humor, and now I joke around with everyone. VEO owned up to being the father of my house girl’s child, and now we’re back to teasing each other, though I’m usually the one who takes it to the next level:

VEO: Greta, why don’t you marry an Mbena?

Greta: Because I need a man who’s taller than me.

VEO: Why?

Greta: Because in America we have electricity and the light bulbs are really high, I need a man to change light bulbs.

VEO: Is that all?

Greta: No. Also, with short men everything is short, and tall men…

VEO: WEH! Greta! You’re a troublemaker.

Greta: Why are you surprised?

These days I share more laughter with people than anything else.

At times situations are completely overwhelming, and in those cases it’s best to call in reinforcements. There is nothing that the fab five (my five closest girlfriends who live in Njombe) and I can’t handle; quite literally. We’ve fought crime, corruption, and the battle of the bulge, no sweat.

With my network of close friends, the support of my husbands, and a healthy sense of humor I deal with the uncomfortable parts of Tz so that I can enjoy the wonderful, weird, and wild adventure that is Peace Corps Tanzania. It’s taken me two years to get to this point, but it’s worth it, if only for two straight months of village laughter.

*Sue Borah was a Peace Corp volunteer in Ujindile several years ago.

“What’s her name?” I ask.

“Whose name?” She replies, breast in hand.

“The baby” I say “your baby.” The question hangs in the air with the smoke from the cooking fire.

“She doesn’t have one.” She says, lifting the other side of her shirt to switch breasts.

“Well, what should I call her?” I have the strange desire to help her try to get the child to latch on, but that’s probably inappropriate.

She laughs distractedly and exchanges amused glances with the woman next to me. “Greta, why would you call a baby?”

“A baby needs a name.” I say, “Especially one that’s already a week old!”

“I haven’t thought of one yet.” The baby makes a few gasping noises and finally takes hold of her nipple.

“What were you thinking of for nine months?” This is one of those this makes perfect sense to everyone in the village but Greta conversations.

“Thinking? I don’t know, I just haven’t thought of a name.” She smiles completely lost in her nursing child.

“When will you give it a name?” I persist, “see, doesn’t it sound bad calling it it?”

“Sometime next month when I get her weighed at the clinic, I have to give her a name then.” This seems to be the definitive answer, as if I asked what time the bus was leaving and she told me.

“You should start a list, every time you think of a name you like you can put it on the list, then next month you can look at your list and choose one.” I say as if I’m a baby naming expert.

She gives me a since when are you a baby naming expert look and says “Thanks for the advice Greta.”

I laugh. Though Agnes is five years younger than me, the tables in our relationship have been suddenly and irrevocably turned by this five minute conversation.

. . .

Agnes was the first girl I met in my village. She was outfront gardening as the village car pulled up and dropped me off in front of my new residence. “Really?” I said, “this house is for me!?” The place was less I live in a hut in Africa and more I summer in the Southern Highlands version of Versailles; I’d hit the Peace Corps jackpot. The leaders beamed with pride. “Yes,” they said, “this is your house, and this is your live-in house girl, Agnes.” She stepped forward and smiled. I took a step back. I had no intentions of having a maid; besides the fact that I’d joined Peace Corps to help people, not hire them, I was also afraid of getting my ass kicked by other volunteers. If another Peace Corps volunteer ever came by and saw me in my castle, having my breakfast on the terrace as Agnes mopped the floor, there would be trouble. I tried to politely decline and was politely ignored. After a brief struggle with my basic Swahili a compromise was made: they would give me a month on my own to do my own house work, then Agnes would pick up what I couldn’t handle. I went back to my “I live in paradise” bliss.

The next morning I awoke to Agnes knocking on my door at 6 a.m. I declined her offer to help unpack, and went straight back to bed. She showed up the next morning, and the next. Each time she agreed that she wouldn’t start for a month, but everyday she’d sneak around behind my back and tidy things within her reach: sweep the dirt off the rocks out back, churn up the soil in the flower bed, pickup sticks from the terrace. After two weeks of covert cleaning I caught her in the act of removing leaves from the gutter at 7a.m. “Ok,” I said, “You start on Monday.” I could hear her continue to remove leaves as I lay in bed.

She started coming around every few days. She’d show up at 7a.m. in high heels and kanga wraps. She tended the garden in her heels while she waited for some direction. Having no prior experience as mistress of a house, I had little to offer her. While I’m not the cleanest person in the world I felt pressure to keep my house tidy so as not to be judged harshly by Agnes. The night before “Agie days” I’d clean up the house, then dirty a few dishes, and strip the beds so she’d have work to do. It occurred to me that it was more work to have a house girl than to live like a happy little pig in my own private pen.

After a few months we fell into a rhythm. Ag would show up a few hours too early, laugh at me while I did yoga while she did the dishes, watered the garden, and did the laundry. I was meticulous in my laundry sorting so as not to include anything in Agie’s bag that might embarrass her. One day I wandered outside to find Agie hanging a pair of my chupies (panties) on the cloths line. I quickly apologized and promised her it wouldn’t happen again. She giggled, “I’ve been wondering if you wear them. These ones are nice! I don’t mind washing your chupies.” From then on she washed the chupies, I often caught her twisting and pulling the lacier ones with a confused look.

We had a few miscommunications; the most fatal was the case of Bob and Mkude, the guinea pigs Agnes sold me for three dollars. Bob and Mkude lived in a room off of the courtyard which they shared at night with Betty and Wilma the chickens. Many people in my village keep guinea pigs to eat, I kept them because they pooped a lot and Agnes said it was great manure for my garden. They were kind of cute; admittedly, I grew attached. One day I discovered Bob was pregnant. When I told Agnes she wasn’t surprised. “But why didn’t you tell me she wasn’t a boy when I named her Bob?” I asked. She shrugged. A month later I opened the door to let the chickens out and found three little guinea pig carcasses pecked clean. When I explained this to Agnes she said “of course, chickens eat baby guinea pigs.” I asked her why she didn’t tell me, or move the chickens herself, she shrugged. A few months later I left Agnes in charge while I spent a few weeks training new volunteers in the Northwestern region of Tanga, Tanzania. I returned to find poor little Bob and Mkude dead beneath their bamboo leaves. Agnes, still smiling said “Greta, it’s the cold season, you need to keep guinea pigs in the cooking room where there’s a fire.” I believe she then shrugged.

Agnes’s favorite expression to welcome me home after a trip was “Greta! Ka! Umenenepa!” Translation: “wow Greta, you’re fat”. Agnes wasn’t’ the only one who said this to me, it’s sort of a compliment in Tanzania, plus compared to a 5’ tall, 90lb villager, I am fat. Late August I returned to Ujindile after a few months of on-off traveling and found a somewhat rounded out Agie. I beat her to the punch line, “Wow Ags, you look like you put down a few dozen kilo’s of ugali flour.” She smiled the Greta’s crazy smile and shrugged.

. . .

To an outsider, life in the village can appear to be a somewhat monotonous affair. Catching up with people after a month or so of travel usually goes something like this:

Me- “How are you?”

Village Friend- “Fine, you?”

Me- “Good. How were the many days?”

Village Friend- “Good. You?”

Me- “Great. How’s mama? The kids?”

Village Friend- “Everyone’s good.”

Me- “Alright, good to see you, catch you ‘round.”

Village Friend- “Great, come by for chai sometime.”

It’s when you make the cross over from an outsider to a somewhat observant resident that life begins to get more interesting. When I got home from travels last August my first greeting went something like this:

Me-“How are you?”

Village Friend- “Good. How are you?”

Me- “Good. Does Agnes look fat to you?”

Village Friend- “She’s five months pregnant.”

Me- “Ka!”

. . .

There comes a point in every volunteer’s service when the honeymoon is interrupted. The place you’ve come to think of as home slowly reveals itself to you, and sometimes it’s not the colorful paradise you’ve come to love. The dry season drains the life from the rainy season; the dark side of a close friend exposed. In a small village where the favorite past time is gossiping, it doesn’t take much digging to find the trash buried in a garden. Agnes’s garden had one big piece of trash in it, his name was Pasta.

Pasta is the Village Executive Officer, aka big man on campus. He’s the most charismatic man in our village, and was at the time my supervisor and best friend. He’d been my right hand man on every project I’d done, and he was my favorite social outlet: two beers on Tuesday nights, which got us both a little giggly. He got my sense of humor, and made great fat jokes “Greta’s so big, soon she’ll need her own sub-village.” Not to mention he was a devout Christian, husband, and father of four. When I found out Pasta was the father of Agnes’s baby my heart sank.

One thing about digging around in other people’s trash is that you never know what you’re going to find. In August Agnes asked me for money to rebuild her house. When I asked her what happened to her old house she said “fire”; I assumed it was a casualty of the dry season. When I started talking to a close friend about Agnes’s relationship with Pasta he had more to share than I was ready for. It turns out that Pasta is sort of the Genghis Khan of our village; he’s got children all over the area. Agnes was the latest and most public affair. As retribution for her relationship with Pasta someone lit her roof on fire in the middle of the night while she was still in there. The revelation was shocking! Adultery, pregnancy out of wedlock, revenge arson—and that was just from scratching the surface. A landfill of mischief had been buried in my backyard and all I had seen was a slightly bloated Agnes, and an irritated Pasta.

I spent a few month confused and hurt. I expected more from both of them. Agnes was set up to go to school in town in January, an opportunity most girls past the age of twenty don’t get. We’d been planning for months, and I was excited to see her get out of the village, I thought she was just as excited. Pasta was my go-to guy. I held him under a different standard than other Tanzanian officials, who can be prone to lying (what politician isn’t?), and other Tanzanian men who are prone to adultery (as are men from many cultures).

. . .

Eventually you stop trying to fit the realities of your village into what your own image of the village is. You stop trying to control and contain your garden. American seeds are thrown away and local shrubs (the kind that sustain all seasons) are planted in rusty paint cans and that are placed outside your door. You focus your energy on seeing things a new way, instead of trying to get people to see things your way. You invite people to share your garden, and learn from each other. You don’t go looking for other people’s trash (we all have something buried back there), instead you appreciate the beauty of their flowers.

. . .

When I see Agnes now I do not see the timid, smiling girl who welcomed me to my house a year and eight months ago; I see a mother whose been dealt a hard hand, but embraces it as a gift. She doesn’t have the things that I want for her: an education, a secure future, and empowerment; yet when I see smile at her baby I question whether any of those things were ever what she wanted for herself. I see things in Agnes that I never recognized while she was hiding behind the façade as my binti: she’s strong enough to survive the village rumor mill, a burnt down house, and a dead beat partner; she focuses on the positive, anyone who sees her smiling on her colicky baby can see that; and she never loses her sense of humor, even with a silly mzungu who thinks she knows what’s best, though it was Agnes all along, who planted my garden, and kept it from dying.

By the end of the dry season the dust is so deep you’d think you could plow it and pack it into strange dark snowmen. You drive through it and erase the road behind you as it envelops in a dirt curtain. You trudge through it and it gently yields, cushioning each step like a walk on a thin layer of clouds. By the end of the day your feet are stained, your tissues covered in dark snots, and your hair lets dust like a carpet being beat in the sun.

It’s the season of struggle. The water tap runs dry for days. Women and children are sent down to the river to carry buckets of water back on their heads, their necks thicker than a football player. Deep hacking echoes across the fire-blackened farms as women tear at the parched earth—the hacking coming from their chests, the widespread warm-season cold.

Death, ever the opportunist, hovers nearby. In the past two weeks she’s visited four of our neighbors. Early Tuesday morning she knocked on another door. We all heard it—a visit from Death is always announced with the beating of the drums. The music is bittersweet; as clearly as it’s a sad song that signals the mourning which the entire village will partake in, it is also a song of relief that someone’s suffering is finally over. Death here is undignified and as painfully slow as the drip from the dry tap. Life here is as delicate as the dust and as easily displaced.

The funeral started first thing in the morning. While the uniformed school children marched one by one up to the school, small groups of women and men started to shuffle down the long path to Fuka, the farthest and smallest of our sub-villages.

I stayed in bed, not out of disrespect, rather out of exhaustion. I’d heard the drums in the pre-dawn hours but was half awake and concentrating on the last chills of a fever. I wasn’t so much concerned with the infection, more annoyed; when you live and work with people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) and see the disease claim every aspect of their life you develop a new perspective on what it means to be sick, REALLY sick. Everything else you treat, continue with life, and know how lucky you are that it’s defeat-able.

It was mid-day by the time I heard that the drums were Rehema’s. She was a member of Tupambane, a group of PLWHA whom I work with on a daily basis, mostly in the community garden. The name ‘Tupambane’ literally means ‘we are fighting’. Rehema was a fighter. Looking through the mid-day sun I could see the smoke from the cooking fires trickling up from her home on the second far hill. It was just under an hour’s walk, a walk she made to my house several times a week.

I made it there as the last of the hundred or so family and friends received their plate of ugali and greens. Everyone sat scattered in the smallest slivers of shade on the hillside. They sat in silence, exhausted by the hike to the family burial ground, the piercing sun, and the weight of their mourning. The silence was pregnant with solidarity, not solitude, the mourning was collective, never a weight for an individual. The closest relatives were collected together in a small room surrounded on the outside by other close relatives. Had I arrived in the morning with everyone else I would have been escorted into the room to sit or lay with the body. Since I was late I was instead given a spot to kneel with Rehema’s sisters and daughters who cried in unison as Rehema’s mother prayed.

When I got up from the circle and left the room the sun blinded me a moment. As I refocused I met eyes with Rehema’s youngest daughter. I remembered her shyness when my own mother tried to greet her last summer, she covered her mouth and ducked behind Rehema. Though I know the Tanzanian concept of family means that Rehema’s two daughters will automatically be absorbed into an aunt’s family, or given to the charge of their grandmother, this is always the hardest part of Death for me here, she erases the path for the young living, their options in life are undeniably fewer as they join an ever-growing group of orphans and vulnerable children in the far reaches of the village. I smiled at Rehema’s daughter and her friend (both about five years old) and they fell over each other giggling—small gestures receive BIG reactions from kids here, it was generous of her.

One does not know the depths of generosity until they’re a guest in a Tanzanian’s home. Even at this funeral where I tried to blend into the back round I found myself given the best stool in the best shade next to my closest female friends. Rehema’s daughter showered me with shy smiles. When I gave a 1,000 shillingi contribution (which is standard) I was thanked by every single member of Rehema’s family, which shocked me by the great number of individuals in the small sub-village where I’d spent little time. When my close friend Christian, her cousin and the village chairman, thanked me I felt embarrassed. “It’s only a little” I said to him. He replied “even a little comes from a big heart”, one of the most gracious men I know.

The funeral continued all day until the evening prayer service at the Lutheran church. As the drums opened the day, the gong of the church bell closed it. The setting sun cast a deep rust color against the low clouds of dust which trailed the church goers.

At this time of day you can always find me sitting parallel to the mountain where the sun sets, alone with my thoughts. On days like that, the hard ones where you experience something that changes you and your course, like the dust closing the path behind you, it’s the lessons you learn from your friends and neighbors, like the one I learned about generosity, that shows you the path to take in the future.

One of the most difficult aspects of life here is that you can not hide from your frustrations. You can't grab a pint of Ben & Jerry's and relax on a nice comfy couch in front of Season 3 of The Office (sigh). You are living together with everyone else, and usually the things that frustrate you are the things that you rely on the most. Here are my top three frustrations:

1. Tanzanian men. Seriously? You think that if you shout mzungu and ask me to be your 2nd or 3rd wife I'll oblige? I'm at least 1st wife material. Or that you can ignore me and talk to my friend because he's a guy, even though my swahili is ten times better? And, what's up with the wiggly finger..is that really suppose to turn me on??? SERIOUSLY?!?! Jesus.

2. Transportation. There are no words.

3. Formal Tanzanian events. You can count on a few things: it will start late, you will be a VIP--required to introduce yourself and give a speech (if you're at the wedding of someone you've never met, they will boot out the mother of the bride for you to get a good seat..for a funeral you will be given the best seat next to either the body or next of kin), you have to wear uncomfortable traditional clothing that makes your ass sweat, there will be at least one man who can't get enough of hearing themself talk, also, it will end much later than seems possible.

That said, there are many exceptions to these frustrations. You never know when you're gonna bump into a really polite, educated, considerate conda (bus attendant) on a super plush, comfortable 12 hour bus ride back from Dar, and they give you mango juice instead of soda and play "Crocodile II. Death Role" on the video screen while you're comfortably shaded from the sun. It's the unexpected things that make this life worth the frustrations. However, the one day I knew I would be unable to avoid sitting in a sweaty pool of ohmygodyouvegottabekiddingmeishereallystilltalking was October 1st, 2009-Darasa la saba graduation (primary school graduation).

Graduations are my version of village hell. It is an all day event of village leaders giving long-winded speeches, terrible student performances, and oh god the giving of diplomas!! It's just awful. It goes on from 11 a.m till the sun comes up the next day (seriously, last year the graduation disco went til the sun came up). And, the whole time I'm held hostage. I can't leave. Too hot in the sun? Too bad. Nothing to say for a speech? We're makin you go first. Ever since last Septemper I've dreaded the return of Darasa la Saba graduation (primary school).

After a long morning of lying in bed willing myself diahhrea (the only beleivable excuse my teachers will accept) I put on my brandnew over-sized kanga-gowni I had specially made to hang off my body--extra breathable should I be sat in the sun again. I fed Tusker and arrived right on time, knowing this would be far to early and that I would be waiting for at least an hour. Low and behold, I was seated in the shade as the head master announced over the speakers that he fully intended on starting on time, even though half the village hadn't showed up.

During the dreaded introductions I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of women who held positions in our village government. The long-winded speeches? Hysterical. The sub-village chairman of Ipogoro forbid the 7th graders to buy sterios and cell phones, while the head of the Assemblies of God church talked about personal hygeine and good cooking. I was proud to be able to give the best on-the-spot speech yet (it actually made sense and had some heart, and ended with "kwa hiyo, usisahau kupiga mswaki" therefore, do not forget to brush your teeth).

After all the diplomas were given and the soccer match was played and the food was eaten came the highlight: the DJ with the giant speakers. While the DJ was setting up the photographer came around and everyone in the village got a picture of me in my kanga-gowni, a resume bonus should I ever apply for a Minnie Mouse position. The other highlight of the evening was free beer. I had a few beers then learned the TZ version of the macarena (double right step, double left step, jump forward, bend over, shake your ass in the air as you hop back to where you started, clap, start over). The kids were actually dancing with me, like it was cool. What American 7th grader do you know who would dance with their teachers at the school dance?!

It was some strange combination of the macarena and the beer that got me to volunteer for all night disco duty, something I would regret a few hours later when all the beer was finished and we'd already done the macarena three times. It was a wonderful, unexpected evening. The unexpected: something that keeps all of us volunteers on our feet, and addicted to the crazy lifestyle when really ANYTHING could happen. You never know, and it's a lovely feeling.

A few pictures from graduation performances and diploma giving:

The past few months I've spent alot of time traveling outside of my village (for work, and family vaca). When I finally got back to site last week after a 16 hour bus ride (gotta love road work and breakdowns) I found the members of the community garden group double digging (a technique my counter part and I taught) in the garden near my house... i know it sounds silly, but it brought a tear to my eye. I was exhausted (thoroughly, fall asleep sitting-up exhausted), and had felt guilty for being away so long that when I got back to site and saw that what I've been doing is making an impact, even a small impact--like double digging--it brought this wonderful, warm feeling.

The next day I went to a town meeting and followed my typical rounds of greeting the masses. This time, however, I actually recognized almost all the people I was greeting. The town was no longer random groups of dark people in bright clothing. I found myself greeting by name and asking How's your daughter joani doing? Is she ready for the mtihani? and How was your sister's send off party? Is your wife back from the hospital? Did we kick Igosi's ass last week in soccer? I even caught my self once asking Where did you get your hair done?! It is Beautiful! and meaning it.

My 8 month old puppy is still quite a puppy, and even though he's crazy and ate my neighbor's goat, a chicken, and my folder full of grant receipts, I still love sitting next to him in the court yard as he scratches his fleas and I scrub my dirty socks.

You're saying to yourself...Greta, you've lived there for a year, it should feel like home! And though my house has felt like home for quite a while, the village now, more than ever, really feels like home. My neighbors invitations for dinner no longer feel like politeness. Sitting with the women under one small tree in the middle of the village wondering if a meeting is ever going to start is not such a bad way to pass the morning. When I laugh with my neighbors it's not always myself, but at some joke they've made that I actually find funny.

It's really hard to explain. Amongst volunteers there's a silent understanding of this shared experience, we can take one look at each other after weeks of not seeing each other and know exactly what's on each other minds (usually, lets get a drink). The flip side of this is how we fumble and struggle to put the experience into words for all of you back at home.

I love it here, most of the time. The frustrations are very real, and at times I've wondered if I'm doing the right thing by being way over here while my friends and family and life carries on back at home-- am I making that much of a difference to make it worth it?? I wondered this a lot after my family's visit. They weren't as impressed with Tanzania as I think we all hoped they'd be. I was really frustrated at not being able to show them all the things I love about Tz. I wondered if maybe I'd just been here too long, and if being away from the 'real word' for so long had tainted my perception of my experience. Maybe it has, I mean, no one really loves almost peeing on their feet every time they go to the bathroom. The way I feel about my experience, and my value to my community changes as I learn more about myself and more about the realities of Tanzania. But, what I can tell you for sure after a year in my village is this: coming home everyday to my neighbor's 2 and 3 year olds, dusty and dirty, in the same clothes as yesterday, with HUGE toothy smiles, jumping up and down screaming my name and dancing, makes all those small frustrations and questions disappear, and I know that at those moments that there isn't anywhere else I'd rather be.

I'm still here. I'm still loving it. I'm still hating bus conda's. I'm still constantly surprised. I'm frequently disappointed. Frustration has become my middle name, and "can sit idly for up to 12 hours on a bus" my last. My first name has become Semblyni (I've been dubbed a true mBena--my village's tribe). It's a ride, that is for sure. Thanks for coming along--and Karibu for the real thing, ya'll are always welcome at Chez Ujindile--I've got a beautiful guestroom, and an extremely friendly dog.

Cheers,

G

1- No picture blog is complete without an Ujindile sunset. Always stunning.

2- The community garden is sprouting all over the place. We've got several varieties of local spinach, and chinese cabbage growing strong; as well as recently transplanted tomato, cucumber, eggplant, squash, cauliflower (fingers crossed), and carrots!!

3-And the best part is that I hardly do anything!!! The group has completely taken the care of the garden upon themselves. Most of the greens will be sold at the village market while some of the greens and most of the other vegetables will go to the gardeners to enrich their diets.

4-Frolla watering the transplanted chinesi and spinachi...she told me she was charging me for this picture..so, if you'd like to make any donations to the "Frolla wants Fedha Fund" , please send them to "Frolla Wants Fedha" at P.O Box 939 Njombe, TZ. East Africa. ..Though I believe she was kidding.

1-Bajaji, a cheap and somewhat dangerous, but convenient (and did I mention cheap) way to get around in dar. It's a three wheeled tin can with a driver who doesn't need any kind of driver's licence. But, THIS one, is safe, as it is protected by the blood of jesus (notice sticker in the upper left hand window).

2-This is apparently the only picture I took on Zanzibar from my family vacation, my mom wanted a picture of an animal driven cart going down the road with the cars...here you go mom : )

3-A giant baobob tree in Ruaha National Park. That elephant to the right of it was HUGE!!! Now look at that tree again and really appreciate how big and beautiful it is.

4-My mom, on safari in Ruaha Nat. Park. Just to the left of her next to the tree are about 12 lions, feasting on a fresh baby giraffe. My mom, dad, sister, and both brothers came all the way across the world to TZ to visit my site, go on safari, head to Zanzibar, and make a few stops in between. While it wasn't say, a walk in the park, it's was an amazing experience having my family share this world that I love..even if drop choo's aren't for everyone.

5-At Fox Farm in Mufindi, a nice family horseback ride through coffee and tree plantations...OK, so I guess this day of family vacation was a walk in the park.

1-Me on top of Kili- 5898m.8:30a.m. Day 5

2-A trailmarker hovering like a beacon above a sea of clouds.

3-Ellie (my sis) sipping on a mango juice box at lunch on day 4.

4-Even though there were tourists there from just about every european country, and a huge group of very fit, song loving, South Koreans, the mountain was big enough for all over us to share. Here we walk on day 4 without a soul, or a sound in site.

5-View of Kili from camp day 3.

6-Once we'd climbed out of the rainforest day one we had 180 degree views, and wide open paths. It's weird doing touristy things in TZ. I'm so use to being treated like a member of the culture and community that stepping outside of that where people say things like "JAMBO!" to you (greeting used only with tourists) and the waitor attentively serve you at expecting a fluffy tip (Mano brought us all our delicious meals in a big white tent)can be weird and uncomfortable. Luckily we had a great group of porters and guides that I could joke around with in Swahili and feel a little more at home with. My sis and I wore spandex, all spandex, when the weather allowed, and speedily scrambled up the first few days, until the altitude slowed us down. In all we walked 5 days. We started as 4 people, lost one to altitude sickenss on day 3, while 2 of us attempted the summit, 1 made it to the tippity-top...then we all went back down that same day--day 5--to hot showers on a sunny afternoon in Moshi.

1-VAC- Volunteer Advisory Council. Every region in TZ with volunteers has a VAC representative which goes to a meeting in Dar every 3 months to discuss volunteer issues, policy, etc. One of my besti's, Meesh the Mbeya rep(in picture on left), and I the Njombe rep stay out on this nice little beach called Mikadi. For less than 4$ camp out, grill our own seafood (fresh from the huge market right across the bay), and take the ferry (less than 10 cents) over to the mainland in the morning for the meeting. One of the ways of mixing business and pleasure in PC.

2-Oh, and this is the sunrise we catch before we head to Peace Corps office for a day of meetings.

3-Tupambane planting the community garden.

4-If it's not raining rain it's raining..dust. This is a picture I took from the front seat of our village coaster on the way home from town. All that dust was kicked up by a car in front of us. Notice the child on the left side of the road.

1-David, my counter part, and I took a little field trip to Manyoni, Singida (just west of Dodoma in centralish TZ), to get the first hand buzz of bee-keeping. The training was provided by an NGO called Honey Care with whom we're working on a bee-keeping income generation project.

2-The hives were mostly scattered under this extensive network of thickets. We saw every type of hive from modern Longstroth (the type we're using), to traditional log hives. We didn't get stung at all...but we did step through quit a bit of elephant poo.

3-A party with all my neighbors, most of whom work at the primary school.

4-When mama Jessica told me she'd stopped breastfeeding, and didn't want to have any more children we celebrated. We drank homemade lemon wine, killed and ate my chickens, and learned how to use condoms (well, I demonstrated, and they, hopefully, learned). All of this is visible if you look hard enough in this picture.

5-Tupambane, a group of PLWHA, built a community garden..this is the beginning, carrying the timber from the bottom of the mountain up to the plot of land in front of my house.

1-A crowded lori at a gas station in Njombe. My village has a nice new coaster that we use to get to town, but many villages use a lori as a cheap means to transport a lot of people..giddy up.

2-I returned to my homestay where I lived last June-August when I was learning to speak swahili. I held these twins everyday for three months...no sign of recognition.

3-My mama and dada from homestay. The twins may not have remembered me but mama sure did, she remembered my favorite dish from (pumpkin leaves cooked in coconut milk with beans and ugali), and my shoe size...she gifted me some used white plastic massai sandals, which i LOVE. I gifted them some Obama kangas then we all put them on and then strutted our stuff through town.

4-The 5th grade doing a little farm work...a typical outside-class activity. While they usually work on the school farm and/or their teachers' farms, I got them for one special day of field clearing for a community tree nursery. We listened to the Backstreet Boys and jembe'd till the school bell rang

I’m sitting on a balcony overlooking a busy street in downtown Moshi. All is business as usual in this northern Tanzanian town: dalas rush up and down the street with young condas clanking coins and hanging from the open door yelling “sokoni, sokoni!”, mamas in faded kangas balance trays of avocados, mangos, and other produce on their heads, school girls in their bright orange skirts and starched white button-ups giggle and stroll down the street, while a few blocks down workers hammer away on the seventh floor of a foundation made almost entirely out of large sticks and tin. Engines, horns, bango flavor, smokey street meat, and occasional truck exhaust mixes with the misty fog hanging in the air. One thing sticks out like a sore kidolo gumba—a group of white people being led across the street by two Tanzanian guides.

Moshi in Swahili means “smoke” which came from one of the world’s largest volcano which lies several km to the north of the town—Kiliminjaro. While the volcano hasn’t been active since the late eighteenth century the heavy clouds that rest on mountain most days looks like smoke, leaving Moshi town the most accurately named place I’ve been in Tanzania (except my village, which translates in Kibena to “waiting”). Though she stands at 5891 M above sea level, and is only a dala ride from town, Kili is only a silhouette, peaking every now and then to give a tease of the hike to come.

The past few months at site I kept a strict training regimen: running around after Tusker, gardening, carrying heavy stuff on my head, and eating nothing but sweet potato soup, and oatmeal (which admittedly was more of a budget issue). Since I left site a few weeks ago to assist the new volunteer training in Tanga I’ve been carb-loading on Safari Lager, and pizza. I feel good.

Something tells me I don’t looks as prepared as all the other Wazungu here. Perched on my second floor balcony I feel like I’m watching an ad for North Face and Patagonia. Everything I will be wearing up the mountain will be 2nd (or 3rd, 4th, even 5th) hand clothing; you’d be amazed at the quality of clothing in the Tuesday market.

And so, in stranger’s boots I’ll start to hike. It’s what I’ve spent the last year doing—learning to walk in someone else’s shoes. As I summit the mountain, I’ll also be reaching the mid-point of my Peace Corps service. There’s a lot to reflect on, and a lot to look forward to; what better vantage point than the top of Africa?

The winds have arrived in Ujindile and like any good Tanzanian guest they brought gifts: a cloudless blue sky, a proud lingering sun, and visibility for kilometers on end. Everyone is about the village—women with baskets of beans on their heads, students in giggling groups on mkeka shuck mahindi, uniformed preschoolers play kata (hopscotch on steroids), bees swarm and settle, goats mow the overgrowth, the harmonic choir gives the sunset a soundtrack, and the lazy Peace Corps volunteer takes it all in from her hammock.

Yes, the height of hammock season is upon me. I fight the morning frosts with trail runs on the newly dry footpaths, group meetings (mostly in preparation for the community garden we’re planting), clinic talks (how to fight anemia with no iron in your diet…boil a few nails and use the juice to cook, Where There is No Doctor is an astounding resource) and more AIDS education at the primary school (ask any one of those sixth graders which white blood cell HIV affects most and they will tell you chembechembe saidizi T4 ...I’d put pesa on it). Constant motion is my morning mantra. By mid-day the sun has taken the bite out of the high-altitude bitterness. By afternoon that big bright jua lays over the land like a blanket. This is my cue to crawl into that clay dyed piece of canvas attached to two mammoth white eucalyptus trees, and let Ms. Windy season sway me in her gusts.

I busy myself with small tasks like learning new vocabulary, checking groups’ budgets, and other simple paperwork. I grab a book on chicken husbandry or micro-business, and a handful of sticks for Tusker. I write bad poetry. I make small talk with neighbors, I shell sunflower seeds, and I daydream about Swahili fluency.

Last week I put my feet up with a stack of papers—notes and plans from a previous volunteer dated five years ago. Replaced Peace Corps sites are interesting. As a replacing volunteer you go about your day to day work focused on the present and the needs of now. You give condom demonstrations, immunize chickens, and make plans with PLWHA (People Living with HIV/AIDS) all the while forgetting that someone was here before you; that your work is the extension of someone/s successes and failures. It’s like an inherited landscape but instead of painting over it, you add colors to the sunrise.

These are the types of things one thinks about when one sways away an afternoon.

When I first arrived at site I heard many things about the particular volunteer whom these papers belonged to. She was a saint (or goddess, depending who you talked to). She rid the village of AIDS, built a dispensary from twigs and sticks, and drove a chariot pulled by winged donkeys every morning to guide the sun. There is a picture of her in the town office—long gray hair, a modest smile, and dark wise eyes.

In the stack of papers I found this letter-

Dear Tom Cruise,

I’m a Peace Corps volunteer living in a small African village in the southern highlands of Tanzania. There is a villager by the name of _________ who has five children and owns one of the local drinking clubs. Although he has a different skin color he is in every other way your likeness. He is your African twin. I thought you would like to know.

Sincerely,

Ex-Volunteer

I straightened up a bit in my canvas. A Tanzanian Tom Cruise? In my village? This was an unexpected gem of a letter. Somehow it had escaped an uncertain future in airmail and fan club inbox and found its way serendipitously into my hands. I decided to follow up on Tanzanian Tom Cruise. What was his connection to the previous volunteer? Does he know who Tom Cruise is? Do they have anything in common—height, age, religious views (though rare, scientologists do exists in Tz)? Who was the Kat to this Tom? I intended to find out.

I waited until Sunday—official get out of the shamba and loaded on ulanzi at the klebu day. I awoke with the church bells calling the faithful to service, and me to my yoga mat. Warrior, eagle, butterfly—all poses I much prefer to kneeling on hard wood. I stripped down and washed my hair in the courtyard faucet, drip drying in the sun. I dug through an old pile of People Magazines and found a good picture of Tom. Memory refreshed, hair dry, and kanga on I headed to the klebu.

The klebu was as busy as I’d ever seen it. Men stood peeing off the main road into corn stalks—highway markers signaling the exit ramp into klebu. Music was blasting, two young dusty-skinned watoto (children) bounced their boney knees and swung their bodies to the bongo beats. The fiery sun had ignited a thirst in the village as I’d never seen. Dozens of men were scattered about the klebu courtyard playing checkers, yelling, leaning, drooling over fried pork, and helping each other to various dark doorways—but which of these dark doorways belonged to Tom Cruise??

I made a weaving pattern around the masses, greeting, shaking hands, and making mental notes to never use my right hand to eat again. I searched sweaty faces for signs of Tom Cruise: a twinkle in an eye, a dimple, aviators, anything—nothing; nothing but drunken men in second hand clothes and smiling mamas in bright kangas.

I’d been out and about for a few hours, stuck in the sun making small talk while secretly stalking a celebrity look alike. I’d gotten lost in my mission, was sunburned and thirsty, and not in the mood for the blood thinning pombe. The only place left to look for Tom Cruise was within the dark doorways of the pombe club rooms—I questioned just how serious I was about this hunt. Things were looking bleak.

Just as the local lush threatened an uncomfortably long handshake, Nixon, a member of the chicken group, rescued me. He brought me to a quiet group in the shade. He ordered me a warm pepsi and friendly banter about tetea and jogoo (hens and cocks). It was then that I saw him. Not short but tall, with a huge smile, and unmistakable eyes. It wasn’t Tom Cruise but Morgan Freedman—those eyes were a dead give away. He shook my hand and murmured something that sounded like get busy living or get busy dying, but in Swahili. I drank my Pepsi. Now that I thought about it, even Nixon himself had a Jim Carey smile (circa Dumb and Dumber), Samweli had a Clint Eastwood jaw, and that kid who brought the soda—didn’t he have a hint of Haley Joel Osmond? The oddest part of the whole revelation was that I remembered what Haley Joel Osmond looked like. I finished my Pepsi.

The sun was slowly descending and I still hadn’t found Tz Tom. He, like the real Tom Cruise, was elusive. I respected this. Having spent the afternoon with Haley Joel Osmond and Clint Eastwood who was I to complain? I decided to head back up to my nyumbani. Morgan Freeman escorted me up that red carpet dirt road. Fifteen minutes later I was back in the hammock, enjoying the first class sunset. This was my Ujindile—sunsets and stars, kata and choirs, afternoons in the hammock, and Nixon’s coming to my rescue. So Tz Tom doesn’t have a place in it. I caught a glimpse of the first twinkles over the horizon and thought- we all take different things from a single landscape.

I’m running full speed uphill in the dark, full backpack, full oversized purse, in flip flops. It’s 5:50a.m. I’m realizing that “full speed” for me is just a few notches below some guy who looks like he’s 50 whose sprinting ahead of me as dark figures are yelling “Chale’s late for the bus, Chale’s late for the bus!!” I hear the engine rev, the brake lights go off, and as I approach a stone-throw's distance the bus takes off. “I’m not Chale” I start to wheeze, “I’m Chale’s friend, Sonyaa (the tribal name I use in her village).” I’ve been in my friend’s village for a few days now, helping her recover from a series of illnesses, and am ready, am anxious to get back to my village. Another bus immediately pulls up in the darkness and I board, “Chale!! Chale!!” everyone, and I do mean everyone, knows my friend. It takes me 25 minutes to explain to everyone who I am, where I’m from, and why I’m here. The bus finally takes off. The flying sardine can has two rows of seats where you’d typically find one; my knees are shoved securely into the back of the person in front of me (whose vertebrae I can feel), while the person behind me is giving me a free Swedish massage with their knees. We’re going incredibly fast, way to fast for comfort, to fast in fact for sanity and I’m fairy certain that someone’s going to die by the end of this three hour bus ride on the windy dirt roads down the mountain from Chale’s. We’ve caught up to the other bus, and now the drivers are drag racing. They’re passing each other side by side on a road made for one vehicle, which also happens to be a two way street. This is the worst bus ride of my life. I pray to god to deliver me valium. The only comfort I can find is that we’re going so fast that if we do crash hopefully we won’t feel much. I distract myself by meditating on the red carpeted ceiling, and practicing the lines “Kama utaendelea kuendesha kama mtoto, nitaendelea kwa miguu if you continue to drive like a childem, I will continue on foot. I try to catch someone’s eye with my own what the hell are they doing?! look, but everyone seems perfectly relaxed. The other bus slows down and we completely pass. Two hours later we’re in town, ten hours later I’m in Njombe, home sweet home…another two hours to go until village. This is my life in Tz.

My life in Tz is completely different from what I imagined a year ago. When I accepted my invitation to Peace Corps Tanzania the information they sent mentioned mud huts and remote villages. I thought Africa:, hot sun, no water, village in the middle of no where with no cell phone service and no white people for miles for two years. I imagined bathing periodically, sitting on the ground, being hungry, and being completely lonely for my far away Peace Corps friends. I remember the thing I was most nervous about was being in one place for so long. I’ve always been a traveler and I haven’t been in the same place for a whole year in many years. I had an open mind about the living conditions and social life that awaited me in Tanzania, I was ready for the struggle and the adventure. What I got was a little different.

I got a beautiful village with a bus that runs from my house to town daily (just an hour and a half in the dry season). I got an amazing house with a stonework terrace and a view that's to die for. I got running water. I got a site mate that lives two and a half hours walking through a pretty little path. I got about 50 other crazy Peace Corps volunteers in my region. I gained about 15 lbs from all the food at site, and beer in town. Best of all I got the most motivated, wonderful villagers who are ready and raring to go. Condom demonstration? Lets do it. Bee-keeping group? Organized and ready to go. Students who are concerned and active in fighting the HIV stigma? They’ve formed their own group. These are things that can be incredibly taboo, or difficult to accomplish; yet my villagers are up for anything.

So where’s the struggle? I think about this as the coaster I’m in sits in it’s fifth hour at another bus stand hours away from our destination, just waiting for people to board, while vendors knock on my window and yell “mzungu, buy my peanuts, buy my chocolate biscuits, buy my men's underwear, buy my watches, buy buy buy.” The struggle (if you can call it that) is in being away from site. Do not mistake this for a complaint. I love traveling. I love seeing the country. I love being involved in things that help Peace Corps. I love learning new skills at trainings, and writing grants to get my village more resources. I love having travel adventures like the one this morning, even it results in a one sided sun burn from sitting in the sun in those standis for so long. And, I love having a cold beer at our favorite guesti with my girlfriends. Love it.

But there’s always that voice in my head saying, What’s going on in Ujindile right now. I wonder what Agnes is up to right now? I hope so and so’s gotten back from the hospital. I wonder what the kids are doing at school, or whose playing soccer. It’s a constant longing to be there. And I am usually there, it’s just that I haven’t had a time when I’ve been in village longing to leave, it’s always the other way around.

In less than a month we’ll celebrate our one year anniversary in the Peace Corps. It’s going fast. I don’t want to wake up in another year with regrets. Should have spent more time at site or should have visited more people. I’ve avoided major regrets in life to date (except for when I quit the gig as a tour guide for german exchange students mid tour to work at the children’s zoo, I still feel bad about that). So, I’ve got a plan. I’m not gonna alter my travel plans. I still love being involved and seeing more of the country. I have three weeks at site until my next travel obligations (PCV of the week training in Tanga-north coast). In those three weeks I’m gonna be in my village. Not just in my village, but really in it. I’m gonna spend more time at more people's houses. I’m gonna invite more people over for dinner. I’m gonna go out to the shamba more, and peel more potatoes at the mgahawa. I’m gonna spend so much time with everyone they’re gonna be sick of me. Then I’ll do some yoga to see what I can do about this 15 lbs (gotta get in shape for a Kili climb in July : ) ). Everyone’s Peace Corps is different. Some people teach and spend most of their time at home. Some people do no projects and simply live like the people, sharing their struggles and successes. Peace Corps gives you the freedom to make your service your service. So my service is different than I’d imagined. It’s time to readjust, reevaluate, and put purpose in every day. It’s not just the quantity of time spent at site, but the quality. Time to give mine a bit of an upgrade.

**Disclaimer** I hope I didn’t give you all the impression that I’m a huge slacker volunteer. I do a lot of work at site, and spend a lot of time with my neighbors. And 90% of my time away from site is Peace Corps work related. And there is a lot of difficulties that go along with being a volunteer..illness, racism, constant pressure of attention on you, to name a few, but those are things you can’t control. I’ve zoea’d (adjusted) to those things just like most other volunteers. Peace Corps is a tough job, but I think the hardest part is taking full responsibility of your service and yourself and dealing with every problem that you can peke yangu (all by yourself)…though those cold beers and good friends do help : )

Pictures:

1- The Mpangala's feeding each other cake at their wedding. Because I had made the cake I cut it for them, then fed everyone else at the wedding a piece.

2- Honey I Shrunk the Village, everything has become overgrown from all the rain, huts in my town are now hidden behind wildflowers, corn, and sunflowers.

3- Every morning the pup and I go for a hike, at 5 months old he has vuvumkaa'd (flourished)

4- MOROCCO The main square in Marrakesh lit up at night with food vendors, snake charmers, monkeys, and more.

5- A tannery in fez. We sniffed sprigs of mint to cover the heavy stench of hides.

6- The mosques had amazing detail work. If you look closely you can see all the intricate carving. The Koran is carved into walls of this once university turned mosque in Fez.

7- Narrow walkways in the souk.

8- Turn off to Casablanca on our way from Essouira to Fez (11 hour drive).

9- We did a lot of driving from city to city, passing lots of fields like this one.

10- Transportation: cars, motorcycles, bikes, and donkeys, all sharing the city streets.

11- While hiking to a waterfall in the middle Atlas mountains we walked through olive tree forests with mellow olive eating monkeys.

12- A camel's view of Essouira, a coastal city where Jimi Hendrix and Cat Stevens use to hang.

13- Essouira.

14- View from our room above the Atlantic...first time I've seen the atlantic in about 9 months.

15- Sunrise in Essouira.

16- Flying Emirates meant passing through Dubai. I had 10 hour layovers on the way there and back (in the middle of the night). The airport however, was amazing. This fountain had a small forest of trees, where live doves lived. I sat at the Starbucks next to it and sipped a very surreal Americano.

17- More Dubai airport. On my way home I did the following: got a pint of beer at an irish pub, duty free shopped, read all the gossip magazines, got cake batter ice cream at cold stone creamery at 4:30 a.m., walked miles of moving sidewalk, and people watched endlessly.

18- Tusker and Milo spooning on my couch...before Tusker grew up and got all rowdy.

19- Rainy season sunset at site : )

11

If there’s one thing Tanzania has more of than corn it’s God. God is everywhere. He is the reason for a good harvest, a safe travel, and recovery from a bad case of malaria. The phrases “If God wishes…” and “thanks to God” are on constant repeat throughout my village and around Tanzania. The strength of the church in my village stems from a missionary presence dating back to the 1940s. Long before Ujindile was Ujindile, before paved roads, schools, and independence, twenty years before the Peace Corps was even formed, there was a tall white man with a bible preaching the word of God. Man did that word spread—it spread like wildfire in the dry season, destroying native beliefs and traditional customs in its path.

The Lutherans were first to Ujindile followed by Catholics, Pentacostal, Anglicans, and Seventh Day Evangalists. Currently there are five times more churches in my village than schools. At the primary school there are seven teachers for over 500 students, one of those teachers only teaches religion. In any given week there is about as much preaching going on as there is teaching.

One sunny Saturday afternoon I relaxed on the porch of the Chani (a guest house in town). A Land Rover pulled up with a white guy in shades, shorts, and a big friendly grin. He introduced himself as “Jehovas Witness…from Colorado by way of California.” He had two Maasai Jehovas Witnesses in tow, which I found surprising since all the Maasai I know are Lutheran. I listened to his witnessing about the Lord and what not for about an hour and a half—such is the state of desperation amongst an almost entirely female volunteer population. He was a nice witness, he liked Tanzania so much that he planned to move to Dar es Salaam.

Last week on a bus home from Dar I met two more missionaries. They were from Pennsylvania and were involved with some cultish sounding church. They preached to the bus for a half hour (thirty seconds of which I captured on my disposable video camera). They were two men in there early twenties, here with there wives and children. After some deliberation my friend Meesh and I decided to give a health talk—to preach the word of Prevention. We asked the conda (short for conducta) nicely when would be an appropriate time to conduct our presentation. He smiled nervously and turned us down, putting the wooden penis back into the bag of condoms.

Hotuba is the Kiswahili word for speech or sermon. Yesterday I gave a hotuba about nutrition at the village dispensary. Once a month all the mothers in Ujindile bring their infants to get weighed and have a quick health check up. As I stood on the platform reading passages from “Where There is no Doctor” and stressing the need to grow more varieties of vegetables, I felt very much like I was giving a sermon; in a way I was.

The missionary is a respected position in Tanzania. People in my village respond to longwinded sermon like speeches, it’s what they’re use to. We volunteers are in our villages everyday teaching about things we hope will increase the quality of life for those around us. Whether it’s lecturing about safe sex in a classroom, soil fertility on the farm, or gender equality at the local duka (store), it’s all things we believe in. We’re on a grassroots mission, hoping that word will spread—maybe a bit more peacefully than a wildfire.

Sundays in Tanzania are very much like Sundays in America, they involve church, alcohol, and football. It is the one day of the week when farmers, carpenters, shopkeepers, and government officials alike come together to pray, drink, and play their worries away. The morning starts off with a trip to one of the five area churches (everything from Catholic to Seventh Day Adventists). By noon the main dirt road is a hussle and bussle of church auctions, families greeting each other, and neighbors heading home for some midday chai. After everyone’s had their fill of potatoes and tea the men head to the club to drink pombe, the young men head to the field to play soccer, and the women sit around gossiping. While gossiping is a fine pastime if you’re, well, boring; I’ve got legs, and a fine appetite for alcohols of all kinds. I suspect the women of my village are the same, but as is custom in Tanzania women are left on the sidelines. As a Peace Corps Volunteer and a woman I’ve taken it upon myself to try to further the cause of women in my village; to show the men and the women that it is not a man’s world. The pombe club, being completely dominated by men, seemed like the best place to start.

As I finished my bowl of boiled potatoes I told my neighbors about my plan. Sophia (aka Mama Jessica by the rest of the village) shook her head and let out a string of “ka ka ka”s as Witty (her youngest born) grabbed and screamed for her matiti. Rehema (Mama Chale) laughed and high fived me, as David and Chale (the two male teachers) nodded in agreement. “Yes” David said in English “Even myself, I will go to unwind my mind.” Unwind my mind I thought this job comes with perks.

Around 4p.m. David and I strolled down the dirt path towards the pombe club. Now in the final weeks of the rainy season the entire village is blooming with overgrown wildflowers and grasses. Bamboo shoots tower and bend over the path, heavy with the weight of their overgrown stocks. Bamboo, a member of the grass family, is sort of the duck tape of southern highlands crops, it’s used for everything from building fences and making instruments, to feeding guinea pigs and brewing Ulanzi. Pombe, or local brew, is made of whatever produce is local and readily available, this can include corn, baobab fruit, to bamboo. Ulanzi, bamboo pombe, is the official drink of the Southern Highlands.

The club itself is located just down the main dirt road, in close approximation to the churches (lest anyone stray after morning service). It is a U-shaped dirt courtyard, walled in by connecting thatch-roofed mud huts. Each hut offers something a little different. On any given Sunday up to three huts will have fresh Ulanzi, two huts make chipsi mayai (fried potatoes and eggs), one makes kiti moto (fried pork), and several huts offer empty rooms in which people play the town’s favorite past time: checkers. David and I inquire as to where the “safi ulanzi” is and proceed to a dark doorway. My eyes adjust as I’m greeted with ecstatic drunken calls to sit and share some Ulanzi.

“Greytaa!” cries one old man “Unakunywa ulanzi?!?”

“It is possible” I say, taking a seat next to David and an elderly man.

The room is a simple musty space with mud walls, dirt floor, and a thatch roof. There are about eight men and two bibis (grannies) filling the benches lining the 12 x 12 room. A plastic 1 liter cup is in front of each group of people. A few men firmly grasp onto 2 liter cups. Everyone is sharing. The bar maid makes a show of bringin me a small cup full of cloudy liquid. “Nashakuru” (thank-you) she says over and over, bending on one knee to show respect. I thank her and take the cup to my lips. The old women are stone faced as the men whoop and holler. “Careful,” on calls, “you’ll wind up on the floor.”

I drink cautiously at first, my last experience with pombe was that it strongly resembled the taste of dirty sock water. My senses eased, this ulanzi was different, it was sweet, it was cool, it was refreshing, it was safi. I expressed as much to the crowd that had accumulated at the door: “Kitamu sana” (very sweet) I smile “nipe lita mbili”(make mine a double). The bibis smilke, and the men exchange “kaa”s and quite laughter. David, my neighbor leans over and says to me “Wey! (you!) You’re going to have to walk home later you know. “Yes” I respond in Swahili, “I’m walking home, will you be sleeping on this bench?” Everyone finds this funny, we have a laugh, and the mzungu moment, for now, has past. I happily eye the green two liter bucket-cup that’s coming my way let the unwinding begin.

At first nothing spectacular happens. The ulanzi seems to be fairly weak—much weaker than the corn pombe my home stay mother use to brew. I sip it like wine, swishing it around my mouth and swallowing daintily. Pomegranite I decide tastes like a watered down pomegranate martini, delicious.

Within an hour the entire male population of my village and several of the surrounding villages, has passed through my pombe hut. They all express gratitude for my “visit” and those whom I know well take a few sips from my 2 liter. Everyone is happy and spirited, even when as the afternoon rain storm stews a pool of inescapable mud.

The few women who are at the club are either bibis or bar maids. They sit silently and sit their liters, occasionally dribbling on their traditional kanga cloths, which cover their upper and lower torsos. The men, however, are dominating the conversation. They talk loudly and drunkenly to their friends and cousins. They are all wearing relatively modern cloths, second hand clothing from the last two and a half decades of the western world that has found its way to Africa. “Fast, Fun, and Furious Pet Salon” is sitting next to “Dick Knows Videos”. From what I gather one is a driver from Iringa visiting his brother from another mother (a common family relation, the men get around while the women settle down for a life as a first, second, or third wife). The man in the knee0lenfth wool pea coat is a farmer, I’ve seen him before at tree seminars. The man in the puff paint Christmas sweatshirt is a timber worker, he once delivered 200 planks of pine to my house for a “garden fence”. Everyone in the hut has turned their attention to teaching me Kibena (the local language). “You’re drinking the drink” they say “now you must speak the language.” On a good day I can pick up a few words that I’ll maybe remember and use to impress someone later that day. On a Sunday afternoon, after a liter of ulanzi, I can’t seem to pick up anything. I slur through a few noungs and sip through a few more verbs. My mind slowly seems to unwind…

The bar maid brings me one ear of corn and repeats the Kibena word several times. This is a good one to learn I think, recounting the number of times I talk about corn in a week (it’s a lot) I should remember this. A moment later I’ve completely forgotten. I hear myself say “look, this corn’s got hair like mine” with a big sill grin on my face. The room fills with laughter. That was stupid I rebuke myself, being a sloppy drunk was not part of the plan. Another glance down at the con however and I find myself thinking, but it really does sort of look like me…

We’re all sharing insights that may or may not be jokes, but I laugh at them all anyway. My laugher comes to an abrupt halt when Christian, my Christian, straight arrow of a village chairman comes in.

“Greta!” he cries, “unakunywa ulanzi?!?”

“No.” I reply, “Just enjoying two liters of water. Karibu!” To my surprise Christian takes a sat next to me and takes a long slow drink from the bucket-cup.

“Wewe!” I scold “I thought you didn’t drink alcohol?!”

“This is ulanzi” he says “not alocohol”, a point my body is strong contesting. We share the final few sips of the 2 liter over some town gossip (of course about the town doctor), and I find myself a bit confused when I bring the cup to my lips to find but a drop left.

“Do you want some chips (fried potatoes)” David asks. The sun is descending and the club is getting more crowded.

“No.” I say.

“Some kiti moto?”

“No.”

“Another liter of ulanzi?” The question hangs in the air-

“No,” I manage, though the truth is I’m curious to see what would happen.

“What would you like to do?” David asks. What I really want to do is dance I think, glancing at the old bibi outside shaking and wiggling her worries away, but now is not the time. I’ve finished my bucket, preserved my dignity, and I even had a roll of good jokes—though I can’t quite remember what they were—that got everyone laughing. Quit while you’re ahead that pesky fly of an idea comes around, I promptly shoo it away. Quit while you’re ahead it persists, as flies often do, and I succumb.

“I think it’s time for me to go home” I say, shaking hands with the men, and giving knee-bending praise to the bibis who are now on their way to their 3rd liters.

“Karibu tena!” they say as I cautiously exit.

“Of course I’ll come back” I say, wondering why I’d spend most of my Sundays on the sidelines, “of course”.

I do my best not to stumble or breath on anyone who greets me on my way home. I cradle my ear of corn and hike up the slippery mud hill to my house. It’s dark by the time I struggle with the key and come under attack by Tusker my puppy. I light candles and look around my house. Tusker and Milo eye me expectantly, looking from me to their food bowls. I’m exhausted, and a little tipsy, but it’s time to get to work. I light the jiko (charcoal stove) and get to work sifting rice for the animals. An hour later I serve the animals food, barely able to keep my eyes open. I slouch on the couch, listening to the rain on the roof and doze off.

In the morning Sophia shows up bright and early to borrow a jembe. As I rub my head and hand her the hoe I notice Witty casually breastfeeding. At once it’s clear why the women stay away from the pombe: to nurse a hangover and several children doesn’t sound like the best way to start a week. I feed my six animals and thank got they’re not grabbing for my matiti.

It has been a crazy year so far. I've gone from New Years in Dar es Salaam, to site, to training in Iringa, to site, to Morocco, and now back to site. It was nice to see my family in Morocco, but at the same time it made me realize how fast this experience is going. I've since been trying to spend more time at site, and am savouring every minute of it.

While I was away in Morocco a few things changed: Tusker, my sweet little puppy, is an adolescent beast who is either chasing chickens or humping his pillow; Milo, my cat, is extremely pregnant, fairly cranky, and always hungry; Wilma and Betty have started to lay eggs, however, since Tusker started terrorizing them they started to lay eggs outside half the time..which makes for a fun little neverending egg hunt; and I believe Bobbi the guinnea pig to be pregnant again, though she could just be that they are growing fat on overgrown bamboo leaves. My closest neighbors are getting married (again?) after about 10 years of marriage and 3 kids (the wedding is tomorrow...I have been charged with making the wedding cake!), I got my entire head braided which I quite like, my town doctor is finally getting fired for being a raging alcoholic (though there is no doctor in sight...it's a good thing PC gave us a copy of "where there is no doctor" in kiswahili), Agie (my house girl) finished about 5 kg of ugali flour, and our permaculture garden is growing really strong. I haven't had a chance to put together a formal blog entry, I'll try for next week when I come to town for jam making supplies, but for now I'll leave you with this, a brief conversation from last week:

Scene: Town office, 6 p.m. Wednesday evening

Characters: Pasta-late 40s, short, charismatic, joker, hard-working public official;

Christian- late 40s, short, hard-working, well mannered, god loving, public official

Me-tall, good humored, peace corps volunteer.

Pasta- No one wants the doctor anymore. Everyone wants him to leave.

Me- Good, I never liked him.

Pasta- Greytaa!

Me- For true. Ever since the first time I met him I didn't like him, he drinks too much.

Christian- I don't like him either. He's a drunk.

Pasta- Ka! ah, he did drink alot and (... says something I don't understand but think i hear bangi)

Me- He smokes bangi?? I didn't think anyone here smoked bangi.

Christian- No, no bangi. Greta.

Me- No no, not me, I just thought he said..

Pasta- Do you smoke bangi? Greta. Are you going to smoke bangi at the wedding on Sunday? (he says this with a playful smirk)

Me- I don't smoke bangi. And I won't even have a beer. Only soda this month. (I'm still recovering from a month of illess leading to and occuring in Morocco).

Pasta- Ka!

Me- For true. However, in the state I'm from

Pasta- Masichewsits

Christian-Massachewwws

Me- Yes, Massachusetts, they have legalized banji. They say, if you have a small amount and smoke it, hamna shida (no problem). You can not sell it. However, in America, you can get bangi from doctors, if you have cancer. Dawa ya bangi (medicinal marijuana).

Pasta, Christian- shangaa'd (stunned awe)

Me- For true. You buy it at the duka la dawa (pharmacy).

Christian- A light goes on in his eyes Pasta! We should farm banji. It would grow well here. We could export .

Me- Eruption of laughter

Pasta- Eruption of giggles and high fives

Christian- Really, we could.

Pasta and Me- Laughter

Christian- Ka.

It is always surprising how business minded people in my village are. They think big...and sometimes use fancy english words like "export". It is good to be back : )

1. Puppy Love!! My new pup Tusker revived after I got him yesterday laden with fleas and minyoo. eww.

2. It might be love? Wedding of Agnes's brother in December. I get treated like a VIP at these events...sit in front, first for food...even made my first several sentence speach at this event: "Sasa, mmepenndeeeeeza. Baadaye kidogo, mtakuwa na watoto mzema kabisa. Watasoma nyingi, na wataenda shule ya secondari. Mtapanda mparachichi mingi, na mtakuwa na maishi nzuri, nzuri sana." ...there was a standing ovation. Incidently, this will be the speach I make at every wedding from now on. Translation: "Right now, you are beautiful. In a little while you will have whole/complete/very good children. They will study alot, and they will go to highschool. You will plant many avacado trees, and your life will be good, very good."

3. Permaculture instructional video watching on a borrowed portable DVD player in my living room.

4. My WONDERFUL counterpart David teaching compost (to use instead of pricy fertilizer).

5. We built a beautiful compost pile.

6. This is why I don't have many pictures of me in the vil...after several instructional sessions Agnes still doesn't understand the concept of capturing the whole picture...I'm in the back of the pile, black shirt, skirt.

7. And then we dug...double dug. Permaculture is a form of bio-intensive gardening designed to help sick people create a garden that produces enough food, with a good variety, without having to use alot of space, or trudge all the way to the shamba (farm, far far away).

8. Everyone helped...here we are covering over our corn and bean seeds...

9. well, everyone except this little boy who was fascinated by the camera. They are ALL this cute. Look at those eyes.

10. And then we made a 'tanzanian style' garden bed. The one on the right is permaculture, the left is Tz style. In a few weeks, then a few months we'll see if the permaculture is worth all that work...I hope it works out!

Yup, so there's a couple shots of my villagers and I...and my new pup. There's a lot of love in these picks! Happy Valentines Day.

When Milo went missing for over 36 hours the village consensus was that someone had eaten her. “But, she’s so young and small, they should wait until she is older and more meaty” I joked. “Next time I will get a dog.” I said, finishing my beer. Flora, the bar maiden/ owner of the small dark room we were sitting in picked up my bottle “Good, make it a big one, lots of meat.”

As she opened another bottle I asked her why she had not yet eaten her cat, Milo’s mother, who looked to me very plump. “She’s good for business” she replied. This is true. She has a monopoly on the feline market in Ujindile, and the rodent infested huts are sorely in need of her services. Most of the cats in my village are stick thin. At six months old, Milo is the chubbiest cat out of any feline I’ve seen in Tanzania.

“She’s gone off to find an mpenzi” Agnes my house girl said to me at choir practice earlier that day. “She’s too young for a boyfriend Agie, like you.” I reply, though Agnes is 20, I seize every opportunity to assist in her family planning. “Not you!” she laughs, “you should have babies, they will look like this;” she motions to someone’s baby she’s been holding throughout practice, “now you are mTanzanian.” She laughs again and slaps my hand. “We will see” I say, and we go into another round of kwake yesu nasimama.

After choir practice I stop into visit Pasta, my VEO (village executive officer). “Pasta, I think the school boys have stolen my cat like they have stolen my flowers” I say. At 6:30 p.m. on a Thursday evening Pasta is hard at work in the village office-a musky brick hut with two desks and a lot of hand written documents strewn about two shelves. He stops what he is doing and looks at me very seriously. Pasta is a small, charismatic man. He always wears a detective-like hat and is constantly smiling his bright yellowy smile. Past experience with volunteers has apparently shown him that pet matters are of grave importance. “No good.” he says, his only two English word “when has Milo left?” he asks while getting up from his previously important work. “Yesterday afternoon” I say very seriously “they have picked him like they picked my flowers and they have dropped him somewhere like they have dropped my flowers”. Now he knows I am joking. Tanzanians typically do not understand sarcasm, but Pasta and I have spent so much time together he knows that I rarely get upset, and when I do, I use few words. He sits back down, and we discuss the possible whereabouts of the cat.

It’s now dark and for some reason I’m not too concerned about Milo. A few sips of my safari lager sooths the few pangs of guilt I had for not keeping a closer eye; however, there’s not much one can do about it. Pet does not translate in Kiswahili. Animals are for working and eating. Perhaps a plump little one with a shiny collar running around at all hours of the night is screaming “stew me”. Pasta has alerted the neighbors and the town is on the look out. My mzungu ways have again distinguished me from my neighbors, but my sense of humor brings me back in. Flora opens another beer and we discuss names for my next animal, a cat maybe named “kiti moto” (slang for pork). “Greeta” says Peter, one of my adult English students “you eat Kiti moto? But I thought you were Muslim”. Pasta and I laugh loudly and a whole new can of worms is opened. I forget about Milo.

The next morning I awake at 6 a.m. There’s a cat call at the door, it’s Milo. She struts in and plops down exhaustedly on the couch. I think to myself, Flora may not hold the feline monopoly for long as I pass out listening to the school children on their way to class.

My first morning in Africa I awoke to the call to prayer. A nearby mosque floated the morning song into my room and through my mosquito net. It was exotic and beautiful, a stark contrast to the uncomfortable silence which hovered over our coaster as we hurried through the darkness towards our conference center the night before.

During my first few months in Tanzania everything was foreign and exciting. A dala ride was an adventure, and the language was a mystery. I was enamored by the beauty, and captivated by the life and rhythm that my host family taught me.

At some point I began to listen. Underneath the laughter of my teenage host sister’s friends was the whine of their babies; across the courtyard the crying of my neighbor whose twin infants were near death with malaria washed out the morning call to prayer. It was awakening; however, there was a language barrier, and I hadn’t fully allowed myself to take in the reality of the world I was discovering.

Then I moved to my own village--far from the warmth of my host family, and from the morning song I’d begun to love. The first few months at site I was mesmerized by the beauty surrounding my village, and charmed by the people who welcomed me. It didn’t take long for the village to become my home, but it has taken some time for me to begin to really understand its problems. It’s difficult to be in love with something and know, at least in part, what it’s up against.

I try to focus on the light—the eagerness of the children’s smiles; the few empowered women who own their own businesses; the strong uncorrupt village government who are dedicated to moving forward (a rarity in TZ); and the families who plant fruit trees so that they not only have a bowl of ugali today, but something better tomorrow. Most of all I see hope in the kids—some sick, some hungry, most barefoot, and all fast with a smile and easy with their laughter.

Their problems are many, and it’s difficult not dwell on them. Instead, at the end of a hard day I try to focus on those smiles, wonder at the brightness of the stars in the dark night, and look forward to the song of the school kids on their way to class in the morning—a new call to prayer.

A Few of the Fam at Ralph's Surprise 40th + Lew's 46th. Clockwise: Me, Mick, Ralph, Teri(far right), Cory, Lew, Katie, Kate, and Meesh

Dear Friends and Family,

It's hard being away from home at the holidays. All the way on the other side of the world, far from the egg nog, the New England landscape glistening with snow/sleet/ice, my mom's chocolate covered oreos and homemade toffee, tear. Many of us here in Africa find ourselves reminiscing about family traditions, decadent meals, winter sweaters, and wine...yummy wine. When a group of us Njombe girls got together yesterday to start preparing for our holiday party (today-friday)we found ourselves talking about hot toddies, stuffed stockings, and christmas dinners of yore; however, more present than nostalgia was our typical teasing, laughing, and taste-testing of each others food (we found a new rice and beans place where the ugali is out of this world). We've made our own family out here in Tanzania. Our training class of 45 is still fairly close, there's lots of texting that goes on across the country while in village; but our district, Njombe, is even closer. Composed of mostly girls, we have an incredible kindred female-spirit that dissolves all village frustrations and most homesicknesses with a simple trip to the local chai joint. We laugh, we cry (usually during girls movies), we come to town when each other are sick, we share experiences that only other 1st year Njombe volunteers can relate to, and we know that the bonds we are forming will be life long--it's just the simple understanding between us.

For many of us this Thanksgiving and Christmas will be the first time we're away from family for the holidays-- of course we miss our home, moms, dads, sisters, brothers, dogs, cats, friends, and cozy bed that we grew up in, but I think it's also important for loved ones to know what an amazing group of friends/family we've developed here.

I hope everyone is having a warm and wonderful christmas, and that the New Year finds you healthy and maybe even planning a little trip to check out this Tanzania place for yourself : )

Love,

Greta

I stood across from the her, the main dirt road between us, and stared as she tilled her land: spade to soil, spade to soil. An old woman farming her land is by no means an unusual site in Tanzania. Yet, this was unusual. I'd never seen anyone at this hut before. The windows of the ancient looking mud hut were always boarded up, and the fence surrounding the courtyard (perhaps the only symbol of Tanzanian privacy) is dilapidated, exposing the entire courtyard. I'd assumed it was condemned- abandoned at least, and always imagined the armies of panye (rats) that must rule over the dark, musty innards of the decrepid structure.

On this November morning the courtyard firepit was boiling morning chai, the boards were down, and this amazing woman was preparing her yard for a new year of crops. She was shoeless and working the land like a young woman, though she looked to be about 80. Spade to soil, spade to soil...the usual movement, performed by every villager since they could hold a hoe (there are special mini hoes made for children). What held me in awe was the woman's face. As she lifted and sliced the spade her eyes remained towards the sky. Though she was blind this elderly woman could read the land like a seasoned hand gliding over braille, revealing the story of her life.

1920s: Tanganyika. Introduced to farming as an infant strapped to her mother's back, I imagine one of the first things a Tanzanian baby registers is the metal head of the hoe, briefly over head, then swung out of site. The country recently under British mandate (after being turned over by the Germanany in 1919) was composed of many territorial tribes, spread over a diverse terrain where wild animals still roamed, and travel was done by foot. The old woman spent her youth in the Wabena territory of the southern highlands farmlands, where relatively few people lived, and where only the Kibena language was spoken.

As a child the girl learned to plant, shuck, dry, beat, grind, and cook corn- the base of the Tanzanian diet. She lived in a mud hut composed from the clay soil below her barefeet and thatch from grasses grown next to her corn. She slept with her sisters and brothers and parents in a single room, and learned to cook over firewood in a small smoky room set off from the main house. Most of her time was spent traveling to and from the trickling river that borders the valleys, where she would "chote" water in clay pots on her head, and scrub the family kanga's (cloths worn to cover the women's bodies), on the rocks.

She learned to keep a house. To wake up early, cook chai, carrying her infant siblings on her back while she cleaned dishes and hiked out to the farm. Schools were few and, well, suffice it to say that by 1954 only two Tanganyikans had been educated to the university level abroad, one the future leader of a free Tanzania, Julius Nyerere. A young woman would have spent her days caring for young, providing for the men in her family, and sowing, havesting, grinding, and cooking corn.

1940s: She was married by her early twenties and was probably pregnant and barefoot while tensions reached the boiling point between her tribe, Bena, and the neighboring tribe, Kinga. By the mid-40s the woman was living on land located in the center of the brutal conflict. Kinga warriors would hike and hide in the Kipengere mountain range adjacent her village, while Bena warriors would come from the rolling hillside to climb the highest hill in her village (the hill upon which my house sits), and wait for the Kinga warriors to decend onto their territory. The woman would survive the war to see her tribe win, and claim once and for all her village thus named "waiting" to commemorate the efforts of the Wabena warriors. As a village slowly took shape around her, the woman too took shape, caring for and producing as many children as her body would allow (family planning? a 43 year old neighbor of mine just had a baby last summer). They too would be suckled in the open, strapped to her back, and hauled to the field to learn to how, sow, and harvest.

1960s: Tanzania. While The woman moved through a life of quiet repetition, the nation of Tanganyika was evolving. The 1950s saw the formation of Tanzania's first domestic political party, TANU (Tanganyika African National Union) by Julius Nyerere . The UN sanctioned England to release Tanganyika as a free and self-ruling country, and following elections in 1960, Tanzania's first prime minister (soon to be President), Julius Nyerere took office.

Word must have reached the small village in which the now middle aged woman lived on the outskirts soon after the election, but I wonder if the Wabena there understood the implications of the adjustments to come. To unite and strengthen the country Nyerere ordered all tribes to move closer to towns, to consolidate. Small villages were composed of scattered families, and large towns grew into cities. Next, education was made available, and Swahili mandatory. A united country needs to be able to communicate, and Swahili became the glue that binded the formerly warring and territorial tribes together. The woman's children would benefit from the education and Swahili, while the woman, and her contemporaries would head out to the field and hoe, sow, and harvest the corn.

The move to villages brought people together. The woman had women with which to beat corn, and men had men to drink pombe with. Both genders now had a greater pool with which to breed. UKIMWI and a number of other communicable diseases started to sow seeds of their own, setting up the country for a devestating epidemic that would kill many (and still kills many), orphan more (still orphaning thousands of children), and give Tanzania one of the highest HIV/AIDS rates of any country. In the 1970s however, discovery and treatment of the disease was years away.

1980s. Nyerere left office in 1985, a widely celebrated leader who took a country, united it, educated it, and primed it for success as an independent nation; "Be Free" the countries motto. He is still celebrated at the level of other great leaders such as Nelson Mandela (the only pictures my neighbor has hanging in his living room are of Nyerere, Mandela, and Barack Obama).

As the nation developed and her children finished school the woman would in turn marry off her sons and daughters, and plant her fields alone. Long hours in the sun perhaps caused damage to her eyes, or maybe an infection that the local medicine man could not manage. Whatever the cause, the woman lost her site; but to what affect? A lifetime in which her tribe won a war, a country switched owners three times, united, educated, and modernized (to an extent), was a lifetime of repetition for her: plant, tend, harvest, feed, breed, plant, tend, harvest, feed.

The country would continue to develop, a water tower built in the 90s provided the town with running water to several well spaced spouts--eliminating the need for her to navigate to the river; the ring of cell phones would cross the mud walls of her hut as tin-roofed homes were built next door; and a duka close by would bring world news to the old woman, daily, through a loud, public radio. As the world developed around the old woman she in turn planted, tended, and harvested.

She stared at the sun, and I stared at her. Spade to soil, spade to soil, retracing her footsteps, and the footsteps of many Tanzanian, Tanganyikan, and Wabena women before her. As I moved on, the footsteps of five little uniformed girls passed me, on their way away from the shamba, and up to the school.

Mambo vipi, ma rafiki.

Shadow week, or "Spring Break '08 (part III)" as I like to call it, has come to an end. I had an amazing time traveling from Kilosa to Morogoro to the Southern Highlands, Iringa, Dar es Salaam, and back to Kilosa. I traveled in small buses on smaller roads, I jogged over golden hillsides at dusk while rural Tanzanians chased and laughed (I will explain their understanding/lack there of of exercise baaidaye), I baked chocolate chip cookies over a charcoal jiko (stove), met a Tanzanian whose favorite music is "Norah Jones and Louis Armstrong", and shook my wowowo at a disco in Iringa until long after the cows had gone home. I had an amazing 10 days, in which I got to know my fellow volunteers, the people, land, and smells of Tanzania a bit better.

At the end of the week we all gathered at the Peace Corps office in Dar and had the site announcement ceremony. All 46 of our sites were announced to the group with a short description of the area and the people of each site. From the short description of my site I can report that "there are beautiful mountains, perfect for hiking, biking, and general pumzika (relaxation)". The site is located in the Iringa region (Southern Highlands) in Njombe district, right outside of Makombaco. It is a small village, and I am furahi sana (very happy). Of course there will be lots of work to do once I am there, but for now, as the sun sets on my training I'm stuck in a euphoric African haze. I know that in just a few days (next weekend to be exact) I will wake up alone in my Southern Highlands nyumbani (home), and there will be a chill to the air (it drops below freezing at night), and the reality of living alone in an African village will dawn on me...I eagerly await that day.

Aya, I'm off to chai...there is nothing like a fried piece of bread and milk chai in the middle of the morning. Thank you so much to everyone who has emailed and mailed...it brings a giant smile to my face. I promise I will get around to writing back to everyone. There may be a few weeks, or even a month before my next post...but I hear there is safi internet in Njombe. Also, my address has changed, no longer the P.O Box in Dar es Salaam. I will let ya'll know what it is when I know.

Lots of love from TZ!

xxGreta

1.how often do you meet the other PCTs in the area? Good parties? Cool people?

2.are you worried about the swahili test before swear-in?

3. Any ideas/preferences regarding your site?

4. What religion is everyone there?

5. How far are you from the capital?

6. What do they make the alcohol from?

7. What's the country office like? Good CD?

8. Will you date and marry a huge black tanzanian and have brown redhead babies???

I’m staring at a box that represents the potential to communicate with you all at home- to paint a picture of my wild, wonderful, colorful life in Tanzania, and today I have come ill prepared. I forgot my properly written blog in the nunnery (where we stay when in town), I’m hot and sweaty from cramming bodyparts (both mine and others) into a small space in a doladola (tiny bus), and for the first time there is no line for the computer, so I have all the time in the world/my 35:02 minutes remaining to develop something, anything to give you a glimpse of this crazy existence in Tanzania. Lucky for me Drew sent an email with a few questions that I will use as an outline:

1-How often do you meet the other PCTs in the area? Good Parties? Cool people?

I have 6 other PCT (peace corps trainees) in my large town and we spend all day everyday together. We have been through the dumps (and this is a hot topic in our daily communications-who got sick from what, etc.), collectively we received the highest score on our mid-training oral proficiency exam in Swahili, and about once a week we all go to a bar in town and have a Safari lager baridi (you must specify cold or it will come to you armpit warm). Currently I’m I Morogoro with the rest of our training group (46 total) and we are about to be sent our separate ways for “shadow week”. In groups of 2-3 PCTs we’re traveling to the sites of current volunteers where we’ll spend the week figuring out how to deal with the daily tasks of being a Peace Corps Volunteer in TZ—living alone, “working”(the pace of life here makes our notion of doing work a gross exaggeration of what actually gets achieved), greeting people every day, cleaning the dust of the dirt, and fending for yourself in general. I’m going to shadow an education volunteer in Iringa (in the southern highlands) where it is cold at night, and crisp in the morning—like the Adirondacks in August.

As for the group of PCTs in general, we are very lucky. Our group is fairly diverse, we have a volunteer to represent every region of America, and every level of travel experience. We have as much to learn from each other as we do from the land and people of Tanzania. And when we get together after a long hard week/s of training we always make up for lost time. Perhaps this is another reason there is a mental barrier between me and the writing today.

2. On Friday I had my final OPI (oral proficiency exam). I needed to score Intermediate Mid in order to be inducted into the peace Corps on Aug. 20th. I scored Intermediate High on my “mid” training OPI, and I feel really confident with the process of listening and learning and being confident enough to test out my language skills on random people—it’s not difficult to get practice, everyone always wants to talk to the mazungu.

3. Any ideas/preferences regarding your site?

3. A “site” in PC lingo is the village where you will base your work out of. Your town has asked for a PCV and will provide housing for it. The town then expects that the PCV will work with the villagers to improve life in that area. The sites available for people in my group are highly diverse. Some sites are on the tropical coast, some are in a mountainous dessert area, some are in Dodoma where it is dry, and lacking water, and other sites are high in gorgeous mountains where it is chilly, but wonderful. Though I told them that I don’t care where I go, I am of course pulling for the beautiful Southern Highlands…where it is more likely that I’ll be able to do Livestock programs because of the sustainability of the land.I will find out a week from Tuesday.

4. What religion is everyone there?

4.-My village is split with about 40% Muslim 50% Christian and 10% crazy old ladies who worship the witchdoctor and sing all night outside my home. Religion is a stabilizing factor in a life where there is a lot of idle time. Everyone seems to get along…except no one seems to get a lot with the Maassaai sadly…a blog for another day.

5. How far are you from the capital?

The official capital is Dodoma, but hardly anything besides govern meetings occurs there. Dar es Salaam is the main hub of city life in Tanzania. As opposed to Dodoma’s central and desertlike atmostphere, Dar is temperate and situated on the southern half of the coast. Most government officials and major economical players life in Dar and travel to Dodoma for gov. business. Kilosa is about 6 hours on a bus to Dar, Morogoro about 3 ½, where I am going for shadow week in Iriniga is 12 hours on a bus. Public restrooms you may wonder? The bus stops on the highway (one lane, truly one lane, for both sides of traffic) the wanamume (men) go to the left side of the bus, and the wanamamke (women) go to the right side…watch out for snakes in the grass, once I found a snake skin three feet long beneath my feet where I had squatted.

6. What do they make the alcohol from?

6. Lucky for me my mama braught me to see the magic of Pombe (local brew) take place. It was a hot morning, and I hadn’t even gotten the chance to piga decki (mop), when mama dragged me across the village-withough explanation- to a dark nyumbani. There were no lights inside and it took my eyes a few minutes to see what my nose had immediately detected: two giant metal barrels (bigger than me) where my neighbor and some one else where waist deep in mixing the pombe ya mahindi (corn alcohol.. is also pombe ya ndizi (banana) ya pumba (rice), and some sort of sugar one) The smell was all encompassing and when mama scooped out a cup and offered it to me I nearly lost my ugali (dinner from the night before). Pombe…is not made in the most sanitary of ways, it doesn’t taste soo bad…but I like Safari Lager just fine.

7. What's the country office like? Good CD?

7. Because of some form I signed at some point in my first 48 hours in country that I can not answer this question…I’m not sure what else I’m not suppose to talk about…but I do know that if you get on the bad list, it’s fairly easy for PC Tz to find a reason to send you home…this happens several times a year.

8. Will you date and marry a huge black tanzanian and have brown redhead babies???

Hmm, will Greta date and marry a huge black Tanzanian and produce brown redheaded babies, stay tuned….

Alright, I’m off now for the beautiful southern highlands where there’s mountains, water, and yes cheese. I’ll return next weekend to Dar to find out my site placement and hopefully give an update to the blog before I’m sent out for my first 3 months at site. Hope all is well on the Western Front!

XX

G

When we arrived in Dar 3+ weeks ago I was amazed at how close to America I felt. Physically I was less than a days journey to D.C, and emotionally I was fairly comfotable, had internet access, and a large group of good spirited Americans to speak English with. Now, 300 km into Africa, 3 + weeks into my homestay, and weeks without foreign communication, I feel worlds away from America--though a day rarely passes when I manage not to think about family, friends, and ice cold diet coke.

It's 9p.m. on Saturday, July 5th. I've been promised a ride to town tomorow morning (about a 30 minute drive)and so I'm staying up past my usual bedtime of 8:30p.m. to prepare this blog, just incase the internet actually works. I'm writing by the light of my lantern, straining through my mosquito net. Lead mixes with drips of sweat on the paper, it's a hot night in Kimamba. A cement wall seperates me from the main hall where my family is blaring the radio which they've been charging on the generator all day-rhiana is coming through loud and clear. There are 7 members of my host family, including myself. 'Family' has a different meaning in Tanzania--it includes most extended branches of the family tree, which tend to grow large in the rich african soil. There are 6 women in my family, and one man. After school each day I return to my nyumbani (home) to the generous company of my host mother, sisters, neices, and relatives I'm not sure we even have a name for in America. They teach me to cook, speak, and dance--we all have a good time trying to get me to shake my "wo wo wo" (badonk adonk) like a Tanzanian, progress on all fronts is slow but steady. Laughter transcends the language barrier and we often explode in an eruption of laughter, heartier than I have ever known.

Our house is small, 4 modest bedrooms, 1 of which is rented out to a mother and her daughter, 1 for my host parents, 1 for me, and the rest snuggle in the other room. Tanzania is a communal society (as opposed to the American idividual based society) and there is no problem sharing space, and work. There is always plenty of chores to do, and plenty of food to each at the end of each long day.

Each morning I awake to the rooster, take my bucket bath, and am out the door to school as soon as I can chug my morning mug of chai. Greetings are important in Tanzania, and it takes me 10-20 extra minutes in the morning to complete all of my greetings on the way to school (which is less than a 1/4 mi. away). Greetings can be exhausting, especially after school (around 5) when children swarm around me, fighting to hold my hand. Last week Brianna (the other peace corps trainee in town) and I were having a Fanta at the local duka (window front store), within 3 minutes we were surrounded by 20 children who remained and stared at us for 15 minutes, untill we began to do head shoulders knees and toes-always a crowd pleaser. The town is fairly large (pop. 4000). My house is located in the center of it, while most trainees (there are 7 of us in my area) are located in the surrounding farm land. We all meet at school to learn swahili and technical skills. So far we've learned tree and plant idenitifications, garden and compost making, and an assortment of other Africa tricks to manipulate the land for human consumption (the bee keeping session is right around the corner--as is the mid-training safari trip). The language training is intense, but effective. I feel confident in getting myself around town, and communicating with just about everyone who wants to stop and chat up the muzungo (whitey--not a very nice term). There is still a lot of hand gesturing involved in commuication, but hopefully by Aug. 20th (volunteer swear in day) I will be ready to be shipped out by myself to a village in the country side.

There is alot to learn, and my days here are full--it can be hard to get a moment to myself, and even harder to get time on a computer in town (when we make it there). Thank you for everyone who has emailed, it is so good to see kind words from you all --even though it's been just under a month there have been some really low times, and some high times. In general I am really enjoying the experience of training, however exhausting it is. The hospitality, and accomodations my host family has provided me with, and especially there love and patience have far exceded my expectations--I am being well looked after.

I have so much to share with you all--the amazing women in my family, my crazy parents who brew their own pombe (local alcohol) and run a drinking club, Peter Massai my new best friend from the Massai tribe--every day really brings a new adventure. Hopefully after training I will have better internet access and more oppertunity to share it all with you.

Snail mail has been the most practical means of writing. If you want to be my penpal shoot me a letter (it only takes about 1-2 weeks for mail/packages to arrive here from the states) and I'll send one back. My address is:

Peace Corps Office

PST: Gretchen Scheibel

P.O Box 9123

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

If you send a package please write "education materials" and draw a bunch of crosses on it (less likely to be thoroughly searched at customs). If you send chocolate I will be your best friend.

I hope everything is good on the home front. I often imagine you all basking in the warm july sun, bbqing, and sipping cold beverages. Please have a twisted tea and think of me.

Lots of love from Tanzania,

G

After several days of orientation I have arrived safely in Tanzania. There are 49 volunteers in my group, 20 of which are Environmental, the rest are Health. It is a great group, and we've had plenty of bonding time...we're all excited to get on to our training in Kilosa. The weather is wonderful, warm--about 85, and nice and breezy. All is well. I will write more when I have time. Cheers!

Q: How are you?

A: I’m good. Thanks for asking.

Q: What are you up to these days?

A: I am home from my Manhattan adventure, wallowing in the bucolic Holden respite. Trail running at Trout Brook with Colby, using the wireless internet at Java and Sweets, arguing with my parents over who should be the next winner of Dancing with the Stars, and stealing my little brother’s car (I sold mine when I received the Peace Corps placement).

Q: Peace Corps?! Where are you going in the Peace Corps?

A: Tanzania.

Q: Tanzania?! Where the heck is that?

A: On the east coast of Africa, just below Kenya (they share Kilimanjaro), above Mozambique.

Q: When are you leaving?

A: June 8th.

Q: Wow, that’s soon, are you excited?

A: Excited, nervous, scared, ecstatic, a little hungry.

Q: What are you going to do in Tanzania?

A: The official job title is “Village-Based Extension Facilitator” in the Environmental Education and Sustainable Agriculture in Rural Communities (EESARC) program. I’m not quite sure what the specifics are, but I will be working in rural areas to promote more efficient, and sustainable farming techniques. I think I will primarily be working with livestock—but I will find out more during my three months of in country training.

Q: Have you farmed before?

A: This may come as a shock, but Farmer Greta has never actually farmed on a farm. I got my BS in Animal Science from the Agriculture College at UConn. And I spent the last year zoo keeping, and teaching ESL. It shouldn’t be too far outside my zone of knowledge…and if it is then I will just teach them how to take care of bunnies and chinchillas (we had a lot of those at the children’s zoo). The in country training should well prepare me for whatever my placement and subsequent projects involve.

Q: Where will you live?

A: They do the placements at the end of training. This is what I know about living conditions: “You will be provided a village house as a contribution of the village government. The houses vary from mud-walled house with a corrugated iron roof, to a concrete house with glass windows, not your typical mud hut…You have a pit latrine and outdoor bath facilities, and you will fetch your water from a village water source. Rain harvesting and treatment of water for drinking will likely be a daily activity. There will be no electricity in your village/house…”

Q: Do you get paid?

A: Well, I get a “settling in allowance” to furnish my hut, a “living wage” equal to middle class wages in my community, and a $6,000 “stipend” at the end of the 27 months (assuming that the economy doesn’t collapse while I’m gone…which, when listening to NPR 12 hours a day, does not sound entirely unlikely). Oh, and I get a bike…though I’ve heard that lions prefer a good chase before the kill, so I think I might just walk very slowly around. Crocodiles on the other hand prefer slow moving objects…they strike quickly when you’re collecting water at the riverside. They are swift swimmers, and surprisingly fast runners (I borrowed Crocodile Attacks “Real stories of when Crocodiles Attack from the Brooklyn Library last fall…fascinating). To escape a crocodile you must run away from the crocodile in a zig-zag pattern. This offsets their balance because they cannot turn their long body very fast. It will be a terrifying day when the crocodile learns the principle of the hypotenuse.

Q: Are you crazy?

A: Yes.

Q: Why are you doing this?

A: I love going new places, meeting new people, exchanging ideas, learning, teaching, and expanding my perspective. I’m at a point in my life where I can do something out of the ordinary, move abroad, learn a language, volunteer, make a difference. Through research, and a visit to my good friend Drew during his Panama Peace Corps service I feel like I have developed a relatively realistic idea of what the Peace Corps experience really is, and it is just what I am looking for.

Q: There are plenty of people in the U.S who need help, why don’t you volunteer domestically?

A: I want to go somewhere where my skill set can really make a difference. Somewhere where there is a much greater need than people to fill that need.

Q: Will you have the internet?

A: Probably not, I most likely will not have any electricity. But I will be using an electronic typewriter (powered by my solar charger) to keep up with writing. Every time I make it into the city I will update the blog. Peace Corps give me a blog address…but I’m pretty sure that’s kind of a censored thing…aisforadults.blogspot will never be censored.

I didn’t see it coming. Of course there were signs, symptoms that I celebrated, laughed off, and ignored. But now it’s here: single. Single, like a boil on my back. Single, a bad stock option that I didn’t trade in early enough. Single, table for one.

Being single is nothing new. I am an independent lady, typically in some sort of geographical transition. I’ve had one real, meaningful long-term relationship, which I loved, yet can’t help but still feel that I lost some of myself while I was in it. I haven’t been inclined to find myself in another long-term relationship at this point in life. I don’t see the point. I’m young, I’ve got places to go and people to meet before I settle into a life of complications.

I’m pretty good at being single. Though I’m not exactly the poster child for the pick-up scene (I’ve left casual sex where it belongs: at college), I do meet quality guys every once in a while, maybe a few times a year, and that’s enough. As with most things in life it’s quality, not quantity (New York could take some cues from this). When I am alone I enjoy my solitude. I rarely get lonely and this is largely because I have an amazing group of friends. It’s very freeing to be young and single: possibilities paint the future.

However, lately the boil’s been flaring up (the metaphorical boil, I don’t have a real boil, to be clear). Single has become an issue, a stance that I’ve been forced to take. Small insecurities that have nagged me from time to time have become a pain. My world has increasing become me vs. he+she. Friends are pairing up and becoming units, closed teams in my free agent world.

I have always had a strong male presence in my life. I lived with guys for several years in college, and I’ve always surrounded myself with guy friends who more often than not picked up the single slack…get me drinks at parties, help carry heavy stuff, occasional snuggling, etc. That has changed. First of all, none of my close guy friends live in Manhattan. Secondly, slowly but surely they are matching up, making it inappropriate to have close female relationships outside of their relationship.

Thirdly, it’s harder to develop the same male-female relationships that were based on the youthful idealism present in college.

Recently I was invited to my college roommate’s wedding. I declined the +1 option, thinking that I was going to reunite with all my old guy friends whom I haven’t seen in over a year. Whoa was me when I arrived to find that not only did most of the guys not show up, the two that did were consumed in their relationships, AND I was one of maybe, MAYBE four single people in the entire place. Two of the single guys left before the dancing even started. As I sat at the open bar, snapping random pictures of people I didn’t know with the disposable cameras, I found myself on the opposite side of not only the camera, but the event. Weddings are of course about love. I’ve got nothing against love, I love love, it’s just that the love club seemed more exclusive that night than ever before.

Maybe one day we’ll all be celebrating my induction to the love club, but for now, single. It's not as simple as it use to be, complications in adulthood are as prevalent as fleas on a mut, but I can handle it. I'll even embrace it: single! with all it's possibilities. Single, diversifying the +1. I’ll take my scarlet S and paint the town red.

Bright lights, questionable morals, getting lucky and having nothing to loose: this is what spring break is all about…when you’re eighteen and in Cancun. When you’re an adult in pursuit of luck, flashy lights, and shady characters you head to the casino. For the record: I hate casinos. I don’t gamble. I am disgusted by large buffets, oppressed by rooms without windows, and scared by giant silent men with earpieces. I have a strong aversion to entering any place where I know I am going to lose; in the case of a casino this includes my money, my mind, and my manners. Yet I went to the casinos, not once but twice, in a two-week period. These visits scythe my memory of spring break—parenthesis capturing the beginning and tail end of a delicious debauchery known as spring break ’08.

March 23rd, Easter Sunday- After a lovely family weekend on Lake George, and a delicious brunch at the Gideon Putnam most of my family—the part that had to work on Monday- headed back to their posts at the doors of responsibility. Meanwhile, my parents, my friend Anna, second cousin Frankie and I headed for the white gates of the racetrack and the golden knobs of the slot machines: the Racino (aka Saratoga Gaming and Raceway). In our Sunday bests, Anna and I gambled with the money we’d won from the prized “money eggs” we’d found during the family’s annual Easter Egg hunt. I had four dollars, Anna had ten (beginner’s luck). We deposited our money in the poker machine’s and awaited the royal flush. At one point I was up two, but by the end of the half hour, I’d lost it all. “My baby’s college fund” I cried, gaining the attention of just one slot player. Anna somehow managed to win a few dollars, while Frankie won over thirty. "Quit while you're ahead" my mother advised, and headed back to the lake house.

The plan was to spend a few days in Lake George, a day in Boston, and the rest of the time in New York City. Though NY, MA, and NYC are all normal stops on my periodic travel table I was prepared to enjoy these destinations with a new perspective on the traditional travel vaca: vacation as a state of mind and not a state of being. Paid-vacation: a state of bliss. Characteristics of a good traveler: flexible (when plans change), reliable (when someone is traveling with you), patient (when you are relying on someone else), good looking (this helps with discounts and directions). Anna and I make the perfect travel friends: we have a solid friendship foundation in which we know and respect each other’s quirks, we’ve spend extended period’s of time together in a foreign country, we like to do the same things, dislike similar things, are hilarious together, and enable each other constantly. Traveling across New England for a week, we were in our element.

The plans changed slightly and we adapted as needed. We left Lake George on Monday afternoon, arrived in my hometown of Holden, MA, bee-lined for Boston that evening, arriving in Brookline around 6 p.m. We had martini’s in the Top of the Hub overlooking the small city buzzing with light, as airplanes dropped across the cityscape into Logan. We flew our little buzzed-selves over to the South End to “Beehive” a great bar with live music, friendly bartenders (and a friend who knew them= the only affordable way to drink in Boston). Bright and early Tuesday we soaked up the academic scene around Harvard Square, seeped Co-op tea, and received complimentary facials at Origins. After a quick appointment back in Worcester, we loaded into my brother’s Endeavor and took off for Cape Cod. After a night of much needed sleep we awoke to a gorgeous 50 degree sunshine-daydream. We walked along the beach, had lunch at my favority local spot “Land-ho”, cruised through Chatham, and headed back to Worcester to catch the 8:30 Greyhound to Port Authority. At 1:35a.m we emerged to find W 35th bustling—as always. Thursday morning found Anna and I running my favorite loop around the northern half of Central Park. Afternoon brought Empire State views, time square crazies, shopping in mid-town, and wine and cheese in Soho next to Whoopi (Goldberg). After a brief rest in East Harlem we headed to the East Village for a small pub crawl—McSorley’s (oldest pub in NY), St. Mark’s Place pub, Blue + Gold, and finally Rodeo Bar (where I fell in love with the Banjo player in the bluegrass band du jour, and Anna and I got into some mischief, and then retreated). I had to work at 9 a.m. on Friday—and by work I mean fill in for my boss as manager…by noon Anna and I were in my favorite local Peruvian restaurant with beans and rice and a pitcher of the best Sangria on 1st ave. Then we got our nails down (mani-peti-20$, can’t beat that). Then I went to Bumble and Bumble and had my hair chopped off and donated to Locks of Love. Before and after pictures will be posted. Next was dinner in Brooklyn, and a night of sing-a-long with Chris and his guitar in Prospect Heights. 5a.m. found us behind the wheel of a borrowed car, headed for Long Island Airport. Anna and I said our airport goodbyes, promising a visit to CA in May, and both daydreaming about the naps in our near future.

A week earlier my mother had advised “quit while you’re ahead.” This was in reference to my being up a few dollars on the slots. I didn’t take the advice then, and in typical fashion, my mother was right—I lost (my mother is almost always right). “Quit while you’re ahead”—as far as spring break went, I was well ahead. We had a great trip, great weather, good luck, and still felt good. So I pushed my luck a little further. That night I went to Banjo Jim’s to see the band from Thursday night (as promised) with Lauren. After I exchanged numbers with the bluegrasser before he headed back to Virginia in his minivan, I headed to Brooklyn with Lauren. We went to a party at her friend’s house (the same friend who was friend’s with the beard from New Years). Needless to say I had a little bit too much to drink, or maybe it’s just something about that house, but by the time we all moved to the Crocodile Lounge I was making out with some guy from Greenpoint. This is not me, and this is why I should have quit while I was ahead…at least in dignity. There was nothing wrong with this guy, he was attractive…I think, or maybe he was just sitting next to me in the booth, the point is, I should have quit while I was ahead. So I did. I had another guy at the bar have his arm around me when Green Point got back from the bathroom (ie. Before we were suppose to leave for Green Point), and he went home alone and I got into a fight with Lauren and took a cab back to E. Harlem alone at 6a.m…salvaging some dignity.

That should have been the end of spring break. It wasn’t. After a few days of work I took off for South Jersey for my old college roommate Jon’s wedding. Thursday-Saturday can be summed as follows: I ate the Tequila worm.

Sunday, April 6th. 12a.m.. I’d been lost for about a half an hour. Physically, I was located somewhere between the penny slots and craps tables on the bottom floor of Caesar’s Atlantic City. Mentally I was somewhere between “I’m gonna take a nap on that bench” and “this is the worst day of my life, I’m taking a bus home”. Truthfully, it had been a great day. We’d all rented a cabana at "Pool Bar" at Harrah’s on Saturday—a five hour pool, margarita, hot tub, lounge extravaganza. After dinner we had vague plans to meet back at Caesar’s Palace. Vague plans + alcohol + large group= frustration, accusation, and resignation. Conner, a friend from college as well as the cameraman for the wedding, is similarly disinclined towards casino’s. We tossed comments back and forth as we trucked down the blood-red carpet highway circled the floor “And these places are packed all the time.” he gawked, “seriously, you could come in here on Easter and it would be packed.” “I know” I replied “We should quit while we’re ahead”. Three hours later, I was dropped off at the front door of my apartment in E.Harlem. Then I went out to a party in Brooklyn, just kidding. I went to bed.

Dictionary.com’s definition of parenthesis is as follows:

Grammar. a qualifying, explanatory, or appositive word, phrase, clause, or sentence that interrupts a syntactic construction without otherwise affecting it, having often a characteristic intonation and indicated in writing by commas, parentheses, or dashes, as in William Smith—you must know him—is coming tonight.

Spring Break, though crazy, is a side note on a greater thought. For me, it’s a fun little blurb on a greater experience of working life in New York. Spring break done right should not carry over affects onto everyday life. When done well, you quit while you’re ahead. You end the parenthesis before it’s becomes a run-on. Then you drink a whole lot of water, and wake up early for work.

I am fresh off a two weeklong spring break-athon in which the concluding event was a wedding in South Jersey. I got home this morning at 2:30 a.m., fell asleep, and still haven’t awoken. These past few weeks have been a crazy ride aboard the fun train through New England fueled with old friends, alcohol, and Easter candy. I am in serious need of Dr. Drew.

It began the Saturday before Easter. Scheibel family tradition dictates that Easter must be observed at Lake George—the only location we all happily travel distances for. As the entire family made their way upstate saturday morning, I performed my annual task of making a walkway through the 5 foot snow bank in the drive way (using both an ax and a shovel to loosen the ice mound). Meanwhile, 2000 miles away in a sunny Monteray, CA Anna, my west coast “movement-teacher-at-a-Waldorf-school” friend was boarding a flight bound for Albany for a week-long visit—“spring break New England”.

Anna and I became friends while studying in Australia in 2004. I first met her when I walked up the 3 flights of stairs to the top floor of my flat building to find a group of people having a good time; Anna was at the center, enthusiastically squeezing the very last drops of boxed wine out of the bag of wine which was removed from the box. Soon there after we discovered our mutual love for running, Oprah, champagne, and being extremely silly almost all the time. I visited her at her home in Seattle once during my road trip after graduation in ’06; this was her first time out East. Mischief, hilarity, and heartache ensued as we pinballed between Albany, Lake George, Saratoga, Holden, Boston, Cape Cod, and New York City…

Yesterday a guy in my neighborhood told me I had a "nice, juicy, apple bottom (and then made a gross throat noise)". I looked it up on UrbanDictionary.com and this is what I found:

1. Apple Bottom

A girl with a nice, big, round, juicy booty.

"Like Me"

That girl got the tightess apple bottom I've ever seen!!!

She got an apple bottom.

Her apple bottom is like wo!!!

2. apple bottom

An ass that has nice, round, plump cheeks. When apple bottom girls wear tight jeans, their ass cheeks bunch up in the bottom of their pants in a way that resembles the bottom of an apple.

This word was coined by porn sites. If you even know it that means you've gone searching for apple bottoms just like me. Spell it APPLE BOTTOM! with a "!" Because they are exciting.

3. apple bottom

nicely shaped booty

My girl's got that apple bottom. Especially in those jeans!

------

I'm speechless.

The end.

I started taking the bus for two reasons: A) There are less then ten stairs involved in getting on and off the bus (as opposed to the 1+ flights involved in descending to the realm of the mole people), and B) I finally figured out that I can take any of four buses direct to my block. The traffic can be tiresome, but I’m new enough to New York that the city streets still entertain. I like to watch the Madison Ave. window displays change from Barney’s in the Upper East Side, to pharmacies near Mt. Sinai, and finally Phat Burger on my block. Taking the 1,2,3,4 down 5th provides a nice view of Central Park: quietly contained by a stone wall that separates the urban jungle from the well maintained nature respite. It’s a nice break from the hustle and bustle of New York’s underground entertainment.

The only view you get on the subway is of people—this is often a spectacle in itself. Here’s my top ten list of most ridiculous subway acts:

10. The Sombrero Guys- They usually ride on the weekend in full traditional Latin garb. One guy plays the ukulele while the other sings a nice catchy tune in Spanish. The first few times I saw these guys I thought they were great; I gave them a smile and a tip. Then I noticed they play the same song every single time. This is like the Gypsy Kings playing Bamboleo over and over and over..its a good song…but lets shake it up a little. Plus, these guys usually pull in at least 5-10 dollars per subway stop (about 3 minutes total)…that means they’re making anywhere from 100-200 dollars an hour on a good subway day, for that one song.

9. The L train Circe du Soleil acrobatics act. Two guys in 80s clothing perform a balancing act that involves the subway poles and dodging nervous passengers. Has potential, but they’re not very good at balancing.

8. The man in his forties who rides the 6 train in Harlem and asks for money in exchange for his impromtpu a cappella performance. I don’t actually think he needs money, I think the subway is the only place where he can find a captive audience—once you steer clear of the closing doors you are sealed in until 96th St.

7. The teenage boys selling bags of peanut M&Ms. Here’s their shpeal “I’m selling candy, but I’m not selling it for no sports team or church group; I’m selling it for myself so I can make a little money and keep myself off the streets. All candy’s a dollar.” These boys don’t heckle you, but they say the speech so heartlessly, I feel like someone’s making them do it. I’ve never bought their candy…but if they had granola bars I’d consider.

6. The accordion player who I saw once on a Q train. The subway is crowded enough without a giant hand-held instruments and flying elbows.

5. The guy selling his homemade techno mixes.

4. The nervous looking, suit-sporting preacher who breaks into a god-loving tourettes fest as soon as the doors close.

3. The crazy “I found Jesus” woman.

2. The crazy “I found Jesus” man.

1. The woman who had a huge pregnant belly and a sign around her neck that said “Please help me feed my baby”. Six months later, same train, same woman, same stomach, same sign. (I’ve never seen this woman, but my co-worker Julie has run into her several times…always the same stage of “pregnancy”).

The subway and I had a good run, but I’ve ascended to the bus. The gentle humming of the engine is a lull compared to the rants of the subway prophets. Unfortunately, unless I’m going somewhere on the UES it’s 10000X faster to hop on the subway than deal with downtown traffic. Nonetheless, every ride down 5th I take, I can take five, and relax.

OK, I know everyone is awaiting part II of the "AH hah", but bear with me as I side tracks..I have had the diving inspiration of Tori Spelling to lead me to a blog this Tuesday evening, misspelled, spontaneous, unfiltered, uncensored, you-only-think-you-know, but you have no idea (you may very well have a good idea) Greta Scheibel in New York, blogstop.com.

I came to New York on a Saturday after recieving a job on Friday to start on Monday in a moments decision, against the better judgement of my parents and...most of the friends' partents I know. WEell, it worked out, and I am now writing to you from my beautiful, central park central location in East Harlem.

It's beautiful and diverse here, which I can attest to first hand since my experience spending time with my 5th floor neighbors New Years Eve. You see mostly eveyone I was with on New Years engaged in morally questioable, chemical endeavors an hour and a half before the ball dropped in a squeeky East Village single. The only people who were out of line for the line were me and a boy with a beard in the Peace Corps. Come midnight, the beard and I were making out. Come 12:30 Dave was in an E. Harlem bound taxi cab, whispering not so sweet nothing in my ear. When I had to pay for the cab, I knew it was a bad decision. Once we climbed the six flights to my "loft" I was about to jump off the balcony, or at least push someone.

I heard the techno music eminatting through floor and for the first time it did not bother me. My brazilian, Russian, New York neighbors on th fifth floor were my savior to a not so uplighting New Year, in my new apartment.

My room mates were out in Park Slope. Actually, they were probably already in bed and preparing for their early morning dip in the Atlantic with the Coney Island polar bear club (because they are that awesome).

The beard finally went home at 5:30 a.m. when I found him shouting obsenties at 5:30 a.m. in my too small for crazy, glass covered bedroom. What he filled those 5 hours with, I can only guess was the broken J.Daniels bottle. Bad Decision me, one of the two I've made. (he did make it back to Brooklyn at 11:30 a.m., I was assured.)

The only other regret I've had in New York was arguing with a gypsy cab driver at 1:30 a.m. after a terrible party where I knew basically no one but a Canadian couple I met, who apparently did not make many other friends...anyways the driver refused to drive up to "that 'hood", and I argued with him, which is weird because I never take unmarked cabs, but anyways threatened to "cut me", which could have turned out bad...but I'm o.k.

So now back to my room mates. I know you guys have tuned in for my literary genius..stand by.

My roomates are amazing. Sarah who works at the Met and graduated with me from UConn, but I never met before responding to the Craigslist add is totally chill, in the intelligent/ poised, up-for-anything but classy and educated sense...she is my Connecticut savior in the sea of strangers that is New York. Kim, my lovely, Northwester alumus, cat-lady, professional writer, social butterfly/ date like it's in style (and when is it not?) roomate is smart, including, and fantastic.

People are wonderful and generous when you expect nothing of them...this I find true in the city. People are also sleezy and creepy when you least expect them to be, this I find true when I ride the subway in running shorts.

So here I am, in my chair. It's not comfotable, but somehow the boy with the beard slept in it on New Years. He's probably in a hot humid hut, in a little village in the Domincan Republic as we speak. There have been boys since him, no doubt. I met one boy on match.com (no holds back). I joined Match.com in a flash of "i'm in new york and should do anything to meet everyone I possibly can" mentality that lastly for about ... oh- 2 weeks. His match.com name was "friedbananana"...I thought it might work out. We got tea at Starbucks on a Tuesday and walked a mile around a foggy January night in Central Park. He grew up in Singapore...but that was about as interesting as it got.

I'm not on match.com anymore. After friendbanana monkey I decided to call it quits. I've met guys at other social functions, but as it stands, I'm leaving for Africa in a few months, and I'm pretty sure there'll be hot guys in Tanzania...the spring break capital of the world.

Well, it's about time to get to bed. Actually, I'm pretty sure I heard my room mate say "girl scout cookie".

Maria is one of ten children in the 2½ year old pre-school group. She is four feet tall with chin length brown hair, brown eyes, and cute little quotation-mark dimples around her constant speech. During the first three weeks of school when most children were homesick and shy, Maria was gregarious and curious. Maria’s only problem at pre-school, is that she does not speak English. None of the staff or other children understand Spanish, but this does not seem to be of concern to Maria.

There was one moment in the third week of school when Maria stopped talking. She just stopped, mid-speech, became silent, wide-eyed, and concerned. It was her “ah ha” moment—the moment she realized that no one could understand a word she was saying—she just looked around and took it all in. In the next moment she shook it off and ran over to hold hands and play with the other children, nothing had changed.

I recently had an “ah ha” moment. It came when I was telling my boss that I’m leaving in June to join the Peace Corps and move to Africa. This is a conversation I have been having fairly frequently for the past few months. “For how long?” is usually the first question, followed by “why?” and “are you nervous” concluded by “you’re crazy” or “good for you” while I know they’re really thinking “you’re crazy”. I am kind of crazy, but it’s somewhat under control, and it’s not a bad thing…or at least this is what I have been telling myself.

My boss’s reaction to my mission statement was different. She sort of stared at me, kindly—she could tell I was nervous about the conversation, but then she asked “What are you getting out of it?”. I started to go into the experience and broadening my horizons, ya da ya da, but she stopped me and said “no, like what do you get, do you get paid?”…I didn’t really have an answer, “Well, I guess I get a 6,000 stipend, and a living wage of the middle class of my village, and priority on government positions when I come home” I stated flatly. She started up again “So you’re just doing this to be good?” I’m really not just doing this to be good, “Well, that, and the experience.” She was polite and supportive, but I could tell she was both turned off by the prospect of the “the experience”, and baffled by the motivation.

To be continued…

I’ve never had the burning desire to flaunt myself on television. However, recently I’ve had recurring daydreams about Matt Lauer interviewing me about The Tequila Diet live on the Today Show. In the dreams it’s early in the morning, but I’m awake and radiant with nervous energy. I pull it together and Matt and I exchange witty banter about college kids and diets, and I am lovely and charming. I awake from these daydreams at work, mid animal-presentation. I catch a glimpse of myself in the window and reposition my overall buckles over my red gingham ¾ sleeve shirt (part of my work uniform), and finish up the show with an animal trick and invitation down to “the farm” (where the animals live). The overalls and animal tricks are never a part of my daydream, but somehow they made it to NBC.

First Look NY was filming a segment at work for a show about “healthy activities in NYC”. They were filming one of our “chef’s on the farm” cooking classes. Thankfully, there is no animal presentation for this class. There is however, “farm time”. I asked the cameramen to keep me out of the shot. I had thrown out my neck from lifting weights improperly earlier in the morning, and could not move it from its 90 degree right angle. Also, I was wearing the overalls, which as one nanny pointed out last week, make me look pregnant. The cameramen complied and only filmed the children playing with the animals, as well as a few shots of parrots and tortoises wandering around the city farm. I thought I was in the clear. I was wrong.

Saturday night I DVR’d First Look NY as I busied myself with preparations for the beach party we hostessed that evening. I woke up just five hours after the party ended. I had to get ready for my cousin’s fiance’s bridal shower in Jersey (I was already in a great mood). My ride was running late(even better). I had a few minutes so I sat down to take a peak at First Look NY. The television show was not itself the highest quality--they fit in about eight segments into a thirty minutes show. Our segment started off O.K: an interview with my boss, then cut to cute kids with aprons on stirring bowls, then back to the interview…all as it should be. Then, a clip of something unexpected. It was a shot of me, interacting with one of the children. We were sitting at the pre-school size table (bright red with yellow chairs that don’t make it past my knee). I was scrunched into the tiny chair in my giant overalls, making pig noises at Harris, the youngest student in my Animal Care class.

Perhaps it wasn't an ideal debut, but not altogether a disappointment. I have to admit that in my overalls I'm utterly irresistible... to the 2-4s. Plus, Harris is as cute, if not cuter than Matt Lauer, and I doubt I could have gotten the same response through wit from Matt as I did with pig grunts from Harris. First Look on Sunday morning was certainly a wake up call from my daydreams...but not a total nightmare either.

Courtesy of dictionary.com

1.having attained full size and strength; grown up; mature: an adult person, animal, or plant. 2.of, pertaining to, or befitting adults. 3.intended for adults; not suitable for children: adult entertainment.

Dictionary.com has this one all wrong.

I am basting in a paste of tahini, pepper, salt, and self loathing. It smells like hummus, but it is not delicious. It is sad, and I have no one to blame but myself.

I didn't work today. I called in sick because at 3p.m. yesterday, I was sick. I had a fever, and my current place of employment requires me to give 24 hour notice for calling in sick. After about 15 hours of R&R I felt well enough to make myself some dinner. Both of my roommates were out and I had the kitchen all to myself. I defrosted a vegetarian chicken cutlet in the microwave and popped it into the toaster while I defrosted an english muffin and took out the barbeque sauce. It isn't the type of meal that would tempt the typical palate--this occured to me as I stared at the black metal things turn red in the toaster. I decided to make homemade hummus. Not to go with the chicken, but maybe for later. I took out the chick peas, the sea salt, the can opener, the hand held blender, the tahini, garlic, chopping knife, and olive oil. As soon as I put the sea salt, chick peas, olive oil, and garlic in the bowl the toaster popped. I put the english muffin in and a slice of provolone (to give the "chicken" a zing). I proceeded to blend the chick peas a bit. Tahini! I had forgotten the tahini. I opened the new can of tahini ( oily paste made of sesame seed) I'd bought several weeks earlier and stared agitatedly at the near solid mass that had formed. There was no expiration date to be found, and I decided that if I could stir it I could eat it. I stuck in a metal spoon and stirred with all my might. Just as my agitation had reached its peak the spoon came free and tahini sauce splashed across my face and chest, bangarang. At this opertune moment the door bell rang. I picked up the intercom to find a delivery man on the other end--wrong apartment. I returned to the kitchen to find my cheese burned off my "chicken" to the bottom of the toaster. I picked it up, burnt my fingers, and placed it on the english muffin. I applied the barbeque sauce, without incident. I should have called it quits and eaten my meal, but I have a slight OCD about cleaning the kitchen before eating so that I can do as little work as possible after the meal. At this point I had only wiped the tahini off my face. It was still on my shirt and neck. It wasn't a bad smell, but it wasn't entirely pleasing. I blended the rest of the hummus. Spices! I almost forgot the spices. I like my hummus spicy--cumin, red pepper, black pepper. Yum. I keep my spices in a plastic bag so that when I move it's easier to pack them up. I've moved three times in the past year, in three different states, that's a lot of moves...and a lot of W2 forms. These are the thoughts that occured to me as I removed the spice bag from the second shelf above my head--these are the thoughts that prevented my memory from accessing the spice bag warning memory: "there's a hole in the spice bag and the pepper has come free of the pepper bottle". As I removed the spice bag from it's shelf a shower of pepper and salt rained over me (it seems the salt had also found it's way out of the salt bottle). I managed to get some in the hummus. After adding a dash of cummin and a double shake of cayenne I poked even bigger holes in the bottom of the spice bag , and shook it over the garbarge can, allowing all of the salt and pepper to drain. I replaced the cayenne and cumin, and placed the bag back on the shelf. I was not calm at this point, and rather in a state of self misery--I had no one to blame but myself. Choices I had made in the past (spice bag) , habits I practiced in the present (rushing to make everything at once, forcing the tahini instead of throwing it away) , add a dash of coincidence (bad tahini, bad delivery man), made for a bad ending to a fairly unremarkable day. This is what it means to be an adult. Being accountable for your own decisions, your own actions, and whatever fate has in store. Tonight that was a recipe for self defeat. Tomorow I'll start on the recipe for self conquering...ala mode.

Today I spent the majority of the day watching Janis Dickinson Modeling Agency. Now I will read Nabakov. I think they cancel each other out.