Well, we’ve successfully made it through our first of eight weeks of the homestay portion of our training! We live in a hardened mud house with a tin roof in a dainty little village called Kibaoni Dilima, which is strewn along a dirt road about 10 miles from Muheza in the Tanga region. Three other PCTs (Peace Corps Trainees) live with other families in the village, and there are five others who live in the neighboring village. The ten of us are split into two groups for language, culture, and technical training, which keep us busy from 8am to 5pm, Monday through Saturday. The rest of the time we spend practicing our Swahili with our host Mom and Dad, who also help us learn to do basic household chores without the help of electricity or running water.

Our host father is a farmer, and in addition to growing corn and oranges, he also keeps cows, goats, sheep, and chickens, the latter of which are abundant and like to visit us in our room from time to time. We’ve become familiar with some of the local wildlife, too. Rats and large spiders are a part of daily (or nightly) life, and Michelle has worked out an agreement with the bat that inhabits our outhouse. Needless to say, we had to quickly adjust our ideas of what is normal.

People here have been complaining about how cold it is here. True, it’s not unbearably hot (in the 80s each day), but it’s humid enough that any sustained movement induces a sweat. Some of the local kids have been wearing hooded sweatshirts, which goes to show how much further we have to go to get used to the elements here.

So far, the food has not been entirely unpalatable, but I have to say that I’d pay serious money for a pizza right now. The ubiquitous ugali, a polenta-like staple, leaves something to be desired, but we’ve been impressed with chipsi mayai (a french-fry omelet) and a sweet banana dish made with tomatoes and onions. Our Swahili is coming along slowly, but we’re beginning to at least understand parts of conversations and interpolate from the few words we know what is going on around us. It’s a bit nerve-wracking to think that we’ll have to pass a language proficiency test in less than seven weeks, but it seems like we’ll make it with any luck.

We hope you are all doing well back home, and we wish you the best from Tanzania!

Until later,

Justin