Well, life’s been percolating along here in Tanzania.  In the village, we’ve spent the last month and a half visiting schools, holding community meetings, and conducting family interviews, trying to a better handle on what folks here want us to do.  After spending a lot of time explaining that no, in fact, we’re not here to build a hospital, or put in a new road, or give everyone money, I think we’ve extracted enough useful information about the needs and resources of the village to clear at least some of the fog in our minds about what we’re doing, and we have a few project ideas in the works.  But before we get ahead of ourselves in that regard, we’re headed to Morogoro for the first couple weeks of December with the other 38 or so volunteers in our cohort to discuss our findings and get some new information and training, if needed, so we can hit the ground running shortly after the new year.  A nice perk of the trip (besides having access to electricity and running water for two weeks) is that we’re each able to take someone from the village for part of the training: our neighbor, the head of the village coffee farmer’s association, is coming with me, and Michelle’s taking one of the nurses from the health clinic.  They’ll get some technical training as well as a fuller explanation of the nature of our work than what we have probably been able to communicate effectively with our basic Swahili in the village.

So we’re coming out of the dry season now here in the Southern Highlands:  it rained, really rained, for the first time this week.  We have had a few drippy sputters in the last couple of weeks, but this was a self-respecting rainstorm, complete with a few minutes of hail and enough rain make muddy lakes in the courtyard.  The temperature dropped quickly after it started raining, so to quell the goosebumps, we ran inside to throw on sweatshirts.  After we stood on the porch for awhile watching the rain shivering with semi-chattery teeth, I looked at the thermometer, which said 78°.  Kind of felt pathetic after that.

  

In other news, we recently got a few packages sent from home (thanks Mom H., Kara, Sam, and Beth), containing junk food and magazines, both scarce resources around here.  That’s a good thing because I was beginning to have food-related hallucinations on an increasingly frequent basis.   I’ve had a few dreams in the last couple weeks with pizza as a central theme; this popcorn we found here, I’m convinced, tastes like lobster; and once when I was eating a banana, I swear I tasted hash browns, one bite even with just the right amount of salt and ketchup.  Mercifully, our supply of reading material has also been replenished.  Prior to this week, I had been spending far too much time trolling the fine print of the RV and laundry detergent ads in the July/August issue of Midwest Living, hoping to discover some new tidbit of information about The Land Of Civilization that my brain could mull over during the slow, hot hours of midday.  I’m not kidding here.  So seriously, thank you.

Finally, below are a couple pictures of village life and of our recent trip to Lake Malawi.  Next week we’ll be in Mbeya to celebrate Thanksgiving with the other Peace Corps folk in the region, and a few from the Njombe and Iringa areas too.  Then after Morogoro, we’re headed to Mafia Island, which is south of Zanzibar, for a bit of R & R.  Word on the street (or, in the Lonely Planet guidebook) is that Mafia has some pretty good snorkeling (with whale sharks!), nice beaches, perhaps fishing opportunities, and it’s not as touristy as Zanzibar either.  We’ll return to the village sometime around Christmas. 

Happy Thanksgiving!  We’ll miss you all heading into the Holiday season.

A hike up to a waterfall near Lake Malawi

Sunrise over Lake Malawi at Matema Beach

Villagers drawing a map at a community meeting

Hiking in the mountains above the village

Michelle at the health clinic

So people have been wondering what exactly we do here. That’s a great question, and we are still trying to figure that out. But to give you a sense of what we’re up to, here’s the schedule for a typical day (not that a typical day really exists, but you’ll get the point anyway).

6:00am: I wake up. Brush teeth, start water boiling for tea.

6:20am: Eat breakfast: tea, a bread-like thing called maandazi, a banana.

6:35am: Head outside, water the garden and tree nursery. Feed the chicken. Make two trips to the river to get water.

7:15am: Michelle gets up, eats breakfast too, then makes another water-fetching trip with me.

8:00am: I pretend to study at the table, but mostly I’m staring out the window. Michelle gets ready for work.

9:30am: Michelle goes next door to the health clinic. Weighs babies, learns Swahili, teaches a little English, makes small talk with the nurses. I stay at home and read about good tree species to use for livestock fodder or prevention of soil erosion, and learn how to talk about such things in Swahili.

12:30pm: Michelle returns from work and we eat lunch: Maandazi and raspberry jam, a cucumber, and peanuts.

1:00pm: The sun’s pretty hot now, so we rest. Read, take a nap, putz around.

2:00pm: Our neighbor, Romano, stops over to discuss tomorrow’s plan to interview families in one of the subvillages. He’s coming along as our translator. He doesn’t know English, he’s just patient and uses “special Swahili” with us. We also discuss why my Moringa seeds aren’t sprouting yet. We don’t come up with any solutions.

4:00pm: Romano and I discuss world geography, and I try to clear up that America isn’t in Europe, and that it’s bigger than Tanzania too. I also try to explain ice fishing, which, given that Romano has never seen ice and never been fishing, is a considerable challenge. Also, I can’t remember the word for “ice,” so I end up saying that each January when it’s cold in America, you can walk on the water. “Americans can walk on water?” he says. Then he heads home, scratching his head I’m sure.

4:15pm: I chop carrots and potatoes for dinner, Michelle starts the charcoal stove. I put on a pot of rice.

4:45pm: I take a shower – the bucket’s been warming in the sun all day, but the wind has wicked most of the warmth away. I get relatively clean, then it’s Michelle’s turn.

5:00pm: The rice is done, so I put the potato-lentil curry on the stove to cook.

5:15pm: Some kids come by and ask for drinking water, but we know it’s just a ploy to stare at the white people. We give them water anyway and send them on their way.

6:00pm: Eat dinner.

6:30pm: We finish dinner and clean dishes outside in the courtyard. The garden looks a little dry, so I give the plants another watering.

7:15pm: It’s dark now, so we brush teeth and get ready for bed.

7:30pm: We light the lantern, get in bed, and read magazines sent from home (Thanks, Mom!).

9:00pm: In America, it’s pathetic to go to bed this early, but not here.

As I think I’ve mentioned, our first three months in the village are meant to be spent navigating life, learning about the village, and writing the Village Situation Assessment report, thus our schedule isn’t terribly regular at this point. In December, we head to Morogoro for additional technical training and to discuss potential projects with the Peace Corps, after which our days might flesh out a bit more with project development and what you might call “real work.” More on that when the time comes.

We hope everyone’s enjoying fall back home. It’s certainly strange to not have the seasonal cues of leaves falling, apples ripening, and the like. It’s just getting hotter here, but we’re looking forward to the coming rains to green things up and pour some life back into the landscape.

Until later,

Justin

It’s hard to imagine that we’ve been at our site for a month now, and we’re beginning to settle into a routine. Michelle hangs out at the health clinic three or four days a week, weighing babies, talking with the patients, and teaching the nurses some basic English. In return, the nurses are trying to teach her Kinyekusa, the main local language, and a bit of Kisafwa, yet another one (there are actually five local languages spoken here, but almost everyone under of the age of 50 or so speaks good Swahili). The health clinic here is pretty functional compared to others we’ve seen in Tanzania (i.e., people actually work there, there’s medication available, etc.), but there’s a lot lacking in the way of basic preventative care and education that Michelle hopes to help improve once we’re a little more established.


Without a captive audience like the health clinic, I’ve been a little slower at carving out my role here. We’ll spend much of October conducting interviews and holding community meetings for the Village Situation Analysis, a process which will help us better identify the needs of the village and hopefully give us both more direction on potential projects. In the meantime, I’m keeping busy by learning about the local environment, talking with farmers, and collecting seeds to start a tree seedling nursery. I’ve planted a couple papaya and avocado trees around the house, and the tomatoes, green peppers, and herbs are going in next week.

A couple days ago, we went across the river to see some of the farms in the outlying subvillages. We saw a big chunk of the village that we haven’t seen yet – including great views of the mountains and some impressively lush fields of spinach, cucumbers, and other vegetables. Along the way, we ran into the Chief’s brother, a witch doctor, who as a blessing gave us eight pounds of carrots and a chicken. Yep, we now own a chicken, tethered in the courtyard. Michelle was excited about the prospect of fresh eggs and a pet until our neighbor told us that it was a young rooster, after which Michelle lost all desire to keep it. Our neighbor agreed to help us butcher it next week, and I might break from vegetarianism for a day and eat that poor sucker before it can completely destroy the garden.

In other news, our furniture has arrived, so our house is no longer an empty concrete box. The only thing is that since Tanzanian home fashion is unavoidably on the tacky side, our living room is adorned with a leopard print couch, green ruffled curtains, and a bookshelf plastered with purple flowered contact paper. It’s certainly a bit clashy and offensive, but we’ve come to embrace it. Seriously, what other time in our lives can we get away with buying a leopard print couch?

We’re in Mbeya for the weekend, stocking up on food we can’t get at home (peanut butter, pasta, cheese), and catching up with other PCVs in the area. Tomorrow the plan is to head to a nearby western-run resort that has pizza, real (not instant) coffee, a pool, and allegedly a ping pong table. Every once in awhile, you just need a break from village life.

Hope everyone’s doing well back home.  We'll leave you with a couple quick pictures:

Our back porch, taken from the courtyard.

 

The kitchen.






Michelle peeling an egg on the leopard print couch.



The view from the hill behind our house.





Well, a lot has changed since our last post – we’re now living on our own in the village! After training was finished and we passed our language exams, we traveled to Dar for the ceremony at the ambassador’s residence that officially made us Peace Corps Volunteers. There, we basked in the luxuries of American food, fluent English speakers, and like-minded friends for a day there before heading out early the next morning to Mbeya. From Dar, we took two days to get there, stopping in Mafinga overnight to let off three new volunteers posted in that region. In Mbeya the next day, a current volunteer took us briefly to buy survival essentials for the first night in our empty home: peanut butter, a loaf of bread, and an overpriced bottle of wine.

In Mbeya, we met with the District and Village officials, who drove us down a rocky road for nearly an hour to our village. To welcome us, the village leaders held a ceremony with drums and dancing and promptly gave us new names. I’m now called James Mwemni, which, depending on pronunciation, means either “James, son of the Chief” or “James of the mango tree.” Michelle is simply called Simwembi, or “Daughter of the Chief,” or alternately she could be called Mama James, because since we don’t have children, I’m taking the place of her firstborn as far as naming rights go. We both agree it’s better than being called Mzungu, which means “white person,” so we’re trying to get used to it.

The villagers have been welcoming, although many people seem to be thoroughly confused as to why there are two wazungu living here now. Thus, we have a lot of explaining to do in our rudimentary Swahili. Our neighbor in particular has been great – he’s taken us around to show us important features of the village and took swift action when the local crazy guy made repeated half-hearted attempts to break into our house. He also has a brother who is a university student and is virtually fluent in English, but he’s busy with school most of the time so we’ve only had a chance to talk to him a little bit – still those few minutes of English were wonderful!

Our house is brand new, and quite big by Peace Corps (and village) standards. It’s near the Health Clinic and has a large living room and three bedrooms, one which we’ll use as a kitchen. Our favorite feature is the large enclosed courtyard out back, complete with a covered porch. And then yesterday an electrician randomly showed up at 6:30am to wire our house for electricity…for free. From the best we can figure out, the Health Clinic is slated to get electricity from the grid next month, and they’ll just string a wire from there to here once it’s connected. Not a bad deal, I’d say.

The landscape here is markedly different than the red clay and coconut palms of the Tanga region where we spent the last two months: the snappy mornings and the gnarly mountain junipers behind our house are more reminiscent of northern Michigan than the typical African scene. Taking two days to travel though the interior of the country to the southwest border was a great way to see the different geography and ecology of Tanzania – the humid coast, the giraffes, zebras, and elephants on the savannas of Mikumi, the rocky baobab valleys north of Iringa, and finally the often desolate highlands of Njombe and Mbeya. The southern highlands have a reputation for being fertile and green, but it’s the dry season now, and the cold and wind have stripped the leaves off many of the trees and turned the rest of the landscape into blowing dust. Not that it isn’t beautiful – it’s scenic indeed – but I’m looking forward to October when the rains begin to green things up again. Maybe I’ll regret that when the road to Mbeya washes out from the deluge, but for now it’s something to look forward to.

Finally, we are in the process of getting a new mailing address. We’ve been advised not to post it on the web, so if you’d like it, just send us an email.

Exciting news this week! Michelle and I found out that we'll be spending the next two years in a small village 30k outside of Mbeya. Mbeya, which is south near the border of Zambia, is alleged to have cheese, coffee, and some of the most spectacular views in all of Tanzania. Ours is a new Peace Corps site, meaning that since we're not replacing an old volunteer, we'll have to start everything from scratch. We're supposed to have a little house with a courtyard next to the Health Clinic, where Michelle will be working. I'll likely be working to develop a land management plan for the village and to educate folks on the sustainable use of the river that flows through the area. We've been given very few details about our site or our work, so unfortunately, Mom, I won't be able to answer all of your questions until we get settled in.

We're currently in Dar for a day, having spent the past week travelling throughout the country to stay with current volunteers to see what life in the field is like. Michelle was up in Moshi, and I was down near Njombe, only a couple hours from Mbeya. For me, highlights were learning to cook pizza on a charcoal stove and seeing elephants, zebras, warthogs, and copious girrafes from the bus when driving through Mikomi National Park southwest of Morogoro. Michelle ate well too, and caught a glimpse of Mount Kilimanjaro. I'm a little jealous, because since Mt. Kili is a three or four day trip from Mbeya, my plans to climb said mountain have become a bit more complicated.

Tomorrow, we'll travel back to Muheza for the final week and a half of homesay/training, before we return to Dar for the "swearing in" ceremony. Our final oral language proficiency exam is on Thursday, so your thoughts, prayers, and positive brain waves are very much appreciated!

Hope all's well back home.

Not to make anybody jealous, but as I’m writing this, the sun is rising over the Indian Ocean, and I’m seated comfortably on the porch of a poolside bungalow on Pangani Beach, an hour drive from Tanga. Five monkeys are playing in the lawn amid the palms, and I just finished a cup of coffee. It’s our mid-training break, a welcomed weekend hiatus from the rigors of learning to live and work in rural Tanzania.

I’d be lying if I said that homestay was a walk in the park, but I guess there’s a reason why they call these two months of training “Peace Corps Boot Camp.” Life can be particularly exciting at home for Michelle and I because our host mom is the village traditional healer (a.k.a. witch doctor), and she sometimes hosts gatherings where jubilant singing and possession by Maasai spirits goes late into the night. She invites us to these ceremonies too, which is pretty surreal sometimes when we realize that this isn’t a tourist shtick or that the director’s not going to yell “cut” at the end of the scene. Our host father has a more conventional occupation – he’s a farmer who grows corn, oranges, lemons, and bananas.

To their credit, our host family takes their job of training us seriously, but they’re clearly under the impression that we are incapable of doing anything on our own. When our host mom was showing me how to peel potatoes and I told her that I already knew how, she informed me that no, I can’t possibly know how to peel potatoes by hand, because in American everything is done by machines. These little cultural snafus are compounded by the facts that 1) Our language skills are still fairly limited, and 2) Tanzanian communication is very indirect, so in order to say you’re sick of eating ugali every day and the thought of eating it again tomorrow makes your stomach turn, you have to say something like “This ugali is very delicious, but maybe tomorrow I’ll prefer cassava.” A month of such cultural-personal misunderstandings begins to wear at your ego, for better or worse, but the upside is that our previous grievances, including the bountiful outhouse wildlife, have become more-or-less mundane.

This weekend marks the end of four weeks of intensive language classes, and we’re looking forward to beginning the more technical aspects of training next week. There is a lot of overlap in our training sessions, but Michelle will be learning about HIV/AIDS and other health issues in the rural context, and much of the environmental training for me will focus on permagardening and tree propagation. I’ve been anxious to pick the brains of the botanically-oriented Peace Corps staff, but since learning Latin names of plants takes up approximately the same brain space as learning Swahili, I’ll be content to just enjoy the greenery for now.

Since the word is out that parents of other PCTs have been reading these little updates, I can vouch that everyone here is doing just fine – nobody’s gotten malaria, there’ve been only two hospital visits, and from what we can tell, just a few emotional meltdowns.

Well, off to the beach!

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