Good news – we’ve arrived in Tanzania! After recovering from some serious jet lag, we’ve begun the first stage of our training in Dar es Salaam.
Along with the 39 other members of our Peace Corps cohort, we’re staying at the Masembazi center, an educational center for Tanzanians and foreigners that is run by a group of nuns. To our surprise, the center has electricity, running water, three bars (!), and TVs where we’ve been watching the World Cup games, which are sometimes only broadcast in Swahili. We’ll enjoy these amenities of civilization until Tuesday when we’re shipped off to Muheza in the Tanga Region (about 5 hours north of Dar) to live with host families for the remaining eight weeks of training. We were originally told that Michelle and I would be living with different families in different villages during training, but we found out today that we’ll be staying together after all.
So far our training has been fairly general, but we’ll begin intensive language, culture, and technical training once we get to our homestay site next week. The Peace Corps training staff – mostly native Tanzanians - seem very competent and enthusiastic. Although we don’t yet know the specific projects we’ll be involved in, it seems that the health volunteers (e.g., Michelle) work primarily on HIV/AIDS education and prevention. For the environment volunteers (e.g., me), there is a big emphasis on pemagardening and using other agroecological techniques to provide food security, reduce erosion and desertification, and relieve pressure on native forests. Because our two specialty areas are not mutually exclusive, Michelle and I will probably be working together quite a bit when we get to our village.
A word on keeping in touch: Internet access is significantly scarcer here than we originally thought, and it’s possible (though not certain) that we won’t be able to access email or update the blog until after the eight weeks of homestay/training. We’ll be getting cell phones sometime over the next two months as well, and we’ll be sure to pass that info along when we have it.
Hope all is well back home!
Until later,
Justin
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Hooray! So glad to hear that you've arrived safely. Thanks for the update. I imagine it must be pretty cool to be able to watch the World Cup in Africa, eh? Also, Justin, it sounds like your job may be pretty interesting - you'll have to learn a whole new set of native and non-native species!
ReplyDeleteJust a note for other people reading this who might be subscribing to your blog on the Peace Corps site - I did so a while ago and did not get an email from them about this blog update. Maybe it's still coming! But just so everyone knows, that may not be an extremely reliable way to know if it's updated. I'll keep checking.
Love to both of you.