Back courtyard life

I am reading in my room after a long day of language and technical training. I hear our neighbor come into the backyard and greet my mama. I knew he came by yesterday evening, asking if I had returned, but I had been too tired to go out and greet him.

He and his wife live a stone's throw away, with their three kids. I close my book and head outside to greet him. He looks genuinely happy to see me, and asks about my travels last week. He is dressed for the mosque and soon leaves for prayer.

Mama asks me to sweep while she gets ready for prayers. I sweep the courtyard with a grass broom, cleaning up after the chickens and ducks that run amok all day, and the coconut tops and the spilled charcoal and ashes from the day's cooking.

There is nothing more satisfying than the swoosh of air whipping through the broom every time you swing it back to brush the red dust and debris off the hard-packed clay.

Reeled back in

Don't get me wrong, homestay is fine and our training, both Swahili and technical, is important, but it was hard today to come back to our community-based training and homestay village. We had a week to roam, with some degree of freedom, seeing our future sites and having a taste of what will hopefully very shortly be the life we will be enjoying.

So I got two vitambua (fried coconut-flavored creations) this morning in the early morning light of the bus stop, and took the nine-hour ride back to our villages. My mama let me rest this evening. And my dress is done! I realized I made a "rookie mistake" by forgetting to ask my fundi to make pockets, but I guess if I really want them I can add them later. It will be nice to have some more clothes to wear as my wardrobe has been rather small.

I raided the shelf of the volunteer I was shadowing, and came home with The Alchemist. It's barely half past seven and I am exhausted. Time to read until I fall asleep.

One day off

The four of us sit in the gathering darkness at the shawarma place in town. The sky is still light in the west, and I get a seat at our outdoor table that faces that direction. The remaining light in the sky shines through the mosque's minaret, and there is a cement building closer to us, with two stories and rows of small square windows, glowing many different jewel tones: red, pink, blue, green.

I order a chocolate milkshake and the trainees and volunteer I am with order shawarma. The breeze is almost chilly when it is dark, and the smoke of cooking meat wafts up and over our table from inside.

We have come so far in this week in distance and visions of the future - if not in our Swahili capabilities, as much of my time has been spent in English conversation with other Americans. 

I'm rested and I'm ready for training to be over, now that I've caught a glimpse of my future home.

Travel images

Getting up when it's still dark, walking to the bus station here in the city. It is pitch dark - there are no floodlights anywhere, just the headlights of humming coach buses, smoke from drivers' cigarettes and engine rubber, and everyone moving, walking through crowds of young men, asking if you need a ticket or a ride on a pikipiki (motorcycle) somewhere. You find the man from your bus company and you follow him, weaving between and past the heat and hulk of worn buses, running lights and flashlights and yellow headlights lighting up the colorful, sometimes garish colors that the buses are painted. You manoeuver through luggage, crates of chickens, and piles of bananas, through steam and smoke. You haven't eaten breakfast but you smell the tea and the chapati frying at the stalls of the chai mamas. All you want is to take the bags off your shoulders and hands and drink hot tea and eat a fried coconut creation that you had the other day.

The bus is here and you dig the small ticket scrap from your handbag.

The steps to climb into the coach are steep, and the handrails warm. You know your hands will smell like metal and cooking oil.

You find your seat and peer out at the entropy that continues without you.

What you can buy from a bus window

Today I took a nine-ish hour bus ride to the capital for the first leg of my journey for my site visit. Here in Tanzania you can buy a lot of things from your bus window as you pull into each stop:

Live chickens (the bus driver asked the price for a hen, and apparently anything more than 7,000 shillings, or about $4, he considered too much.)

Cashews

Small decorative tables

Blocks of sugarcane

Roasted sweet corn fresh off the grill

Newspapers (in Swahili or English)

Shortbread biscuits or chocolate cookies

Beaded flip flops

Woven baskets

Massive bunches of bananas

To name a few items.

Dinner at an Italian restaurant, pizza and  time to decompress with two other trainees and the volunteers who have come to escort/ host us this week.

Tonight, a nice clean room in the place we're staying, with our own bathroom that is 1. Inside and 2. Has a toilet! Oh the luxuries. :)

And it's long rain season

Let me tell you what doing laundry looked like today.

After breakfast this morning, probably around 9 a.m., my mama called me to the back courtyard and told me it was time to do laundry. I was a little confused because it looked like it was going to rain, but I went and got my clothes from inside.

My mama's sister, who's visiting from Dar es Salaam, helped me wash my clothes, and I was giving them their first rinse when it started to rain. Mama Fatuma came over, and she started giving my clothes their second rinse and hanging them up. By the time all my clothes were on the lines across the courtyard, it was seriously raining. And rain here doesn't mess around: when it rains, as they say, it pours.

Luckily I had the wisdom of three women who know this weather and knew that by evening my clothes would be, for the most part, dry.

A most unstructured day for me, as this is an odd Saturday off before I leave for my site visit. A cool (60s F) day, cloudy and a good day to sit on the front bench, try to read a book, and get distracted by the hilarious village kids for hours.

I accompanied my nine-year-old neighbor Fatuma to the fruit stand down the way, on a search for bananas. My mama gave us money to buy me bananas, because I think Peace corps implores our host families to provide us with fruit. In this area, and in this season, it seems that eating fruit at meals, or even at all, is not very common.

Fatuma took one look at the forlorn, tiny bananas at the stand and walked away. When we got back my mama asked what happened, and then sent us to the second-string stand on the other side of the village. They had closed for the day, but a neighbor shouted across the way to the shopkeeper, who replied "hamna!" None.

Not a suitable banana to be found in my village today. A pretty hilarious situation.

On another note, my aunt made chipsi mayai for dinner that was out of this world. :)

I have been measured

Today we got our scores back for our mid-training LPI, or language proficiency interview. The goal for this point in our training was to be at the intermediate-mid level in Swahili, and I am happy to say that I am in the middle of the pack and reached that benchmark! I also did well on the written test we had last week.

The excitement is building for our site visits. The first group leaves tomorrow, and I will leave the next day, because I only have ~1.5 days of travel, instead of two or more.

It rained today, a lot, and I was glad because we got our mango and orange trees in the ground yesterday. My father insisted on digging the holes, even though I offered to help him. Our neighbor friend came over and helped us as well. I watered the trees last night and the rain watered them all today.

Today the fundi (tailor) came to take my fabric and measurements for the dress I'm getting made! I bought the fabric (called kitenge) when we were in town. It's mostly green with fish swimming in rows across it. It's pretty beautiful.

I was expecting our fundi to be female, but no, this is fundi Ijumaa. My mama has a dress we're modeling this one after. We will see how it turns out. The total cost of the fabric and getting it made will be about the equivalent of $10. Pretty awesome. It will hopefully be ready and waiting for me when I get back from my site visit. :)

Every day it won't rain

I sit in the growing dark with Mustafa, my six-year-old neighbor and contemporary. Mustafa and I love hanging out because he's at an age where if he says things that actually make sense, they're pretty non sequitur - not unlike most things I try to say in Swahili. Most of the time he's coming up with excuses about why he shouldn't have to start going to school, playing with charcoal or tree branches or anything he can get his hands on, and chasing our cats and chickens. When he appears at the gate of our back courtyard, his mama wearily tries to get him to "shikamoo" me, however he's young enough to get away with not greeting people, and his shy, hilarious smile makes up for our shared lack of communication.

Yesterday my mama explained, very rapidly, that she wanted me to get coals from mama Fatuma's house. I only caught the coals and Fatuma part, and I thought I needed to take coal TO mama Fatuma's house. I poked around in the kitchen, but all ashes were cold. I walked over to mama Fatuma's house, and asked if she needed coals. She looked confused, then told me to bring something from my house. I didn't know what it was so she sent Mustafa with me. Which was, of course, a mistake, because we spent our time poking around the courtyard, laughing at each other, and clearly neither of us knew what we were doing! Eventually we got it sorted out that I was to bring a metal lid to carry some hot coals back to our house. Mustafa instructed me how to put the charcoal in the jiko (stove), and my mama came to the backyard and turns out we had actually done our task right.

I sat in the growing dark with Mustafa, waiting as the potatoes cooked on the jiko and the mosque called to prayer. Mustafa chose a charcoal bit that had fallen out of the jiko one by one, bringing them over to the wide concrete step where we sit, cook, and relax in the back courtyard. He spoke and laughed to himself as he drew his versions of numbers, buildings, and figures, wiping the surface continuously with his small hand to make more room for his charcoal ramblings. Every so often he would look up with his ever-entertained, bright eyes.

My mama came back outside after praying, and it was time for Mustafa to return home. He stood up and struggled to pull about a dozen more small pieces of charcoal out of his tiny pants pocket. He scattered them across the clay courtyard, and ran home.

Site announcements

I'm sure a lot of things happened today, but they all pale in comparison to the fact that we received our site announcements this afternoon.

I have received an agriculture assignment in eastern central Tanzania, and it is a new Peace corps site - I will be the first volunteer at my village. (I know you might want to know more specifically where I will be in-country, but Peace corps advises not to disclose specific locations on public blogs. If you want more information, feel free to contact me personally.)

I am the only new agriculture volunteer in my region, but there are two new health volunteers in my region: one shares a banking town with me, and the other is in our region but in a different district with a different banking town. (A banking town is, incidentally, where one goes to withdraw money from the bank, seeing as most villages operate on cash only.)

During my placement interview and in the questionnaire we filled out, I was very open to where I was willing to be sent - many people said they wanted cooler, mountainous regions, such as Kilimanjaro or the southern highlands. The only things I said I wanted were that it would be nice if there was a Catholic community I could get involved in, that I was interested in learning more about beekeeping, and other than that, put me where my skills (working with animals) could be best used.

So I got stuck with the hot, flat, semi-arid, animal-herding and grain-growing middle zone of the country. And I couldn't be more excited. :)

From the little description Peace corps has given us, my region has opportunities with animal husbandry, water projects, and nutrition education, all of which I'm excited about. Other possibilities include tree planting, gardening, and environmental education.

Did I mention my region is the winemaking capital of the country? Bonus.

Mid homestay

I step into my room in the late afternoon and see my bats chasing each other silently. I move very slowly to the center of my room and they continue to fly around me, circling and darting, flying under my bed and back out again. They fly so close but do not even brush against me.

In the growing dark my mama sends me with pots of food to mama Fatuma's house. It's one of the houses across the way- I'd only actually been there once, on the first or second day. I stand outside what must be her house and call her name. There is a dim light inside and I hear people chatting. After a minute I call her name again, and her daughter, also Fatuma, appears behind me, with a bucket balanced on her head. She "shikamoo"s me and takes the pots, smiling. I see Ijumaa and then mama in the front doorway. She thanks me and I walk back to our backyard a stone's throw away.

My mama bought me and a bunch of the young village boys ice cream from the ice cream bicycle man this afternoon. I have been warned about the quality of his products, but in the heat of Africa and the moment, I couldn't turn it down.

Raining a little more each day.

Hot breezes

We got cold soda after class today, at the duka (shop) that's about a mile or so down my road. The shopkeeper rummaged through his chest refrigerator to dig up the last coke for me. It tasted amazing.

Today is the second day I've brought up the projects I need to do here with my mama: we must dig two holes to plant an avocado tree and a mango tree, and I am supposed to make a "vertical" bag garden for my host family as well. As my vocabulary expands, I am more able to introduce ideas and things that need to happen in a "Tanzanian" manner, that is to say you learn to beat around the bush, bring up the point, and then go around again.

Mama and I sat in the early evening in front of our house, looking down the road, when a cow ran across the road, jumped the ditch with surprising grace, and continued loping, a rope trailing after it. We both laugh in surprise. "Anaruka!" My mama says. Which I love because it can either be translated as "he jumps", or "he flies!"

The chickens kept pecking in the setting sun, and I opened my textbook to study.

10 things I can tell you about the Swahili language

I am by no means a linguist or a Swahili expert, however in the process of learning Swahili I've found some interesting things. Here are a few that come to mind:

1. The Swahili word for time, hour, watch, and clock is all the same word. Also, Tanzanian time starts with hour zero, or 12:00, being six a.m., with the hours running like usual, with a six hour difference, until night starts at six in the evening. Sound confusing? It definitely is.

2. The hour between five and six in the morning is called alfajiri. As far as I know, this is the only hour that is commonly referred to with a special name.

3. There is no Swahili word for "beautiful"- the closest translation is "nzuri", which has many meanings, including good, nice, or pretty.

4. Swahili does not have a way of saying "I miss this person". The reason was explained to me as historically, people didn't used to travel far from or leave their village or regional area often, therefore people you cared about were pretty much always around and you never had a feeling of missing someone that you needed to express.

5. Since we're talking about feelings, some feelings in Swahili are expressed as a physical sensation, i.e. "I'm hearing hunger", etc.

6. If you want to say "I had this thing" or "I will have this thing", the literal translation from Swahili says that you were with something or that you will be with something. The sense of ownership is implied, not stated.

7. With the verb "to marry", men take the active verb and women take the passive verb. Men marry and women are married.

8. When discussing extended family, strictly speaking, you only have aunts on your father's side and uncles on your mother's side. Your father's brothers are your "baba mkubwa" or "baba mdogo"- big fathers or little fathers, depending on age relative to your actual father. The same applies on your mother's side- you have "mama mkubwa" and "mama mdogo", depending on relative age.

9. When asking what someone's name is, you're really asking "who" their name is, or you call yourself "who".

10. Kupenda is the verb to like or love. I love this chipsi mayai (fries and eggs). I love you too. What's the difference in the intensity of that love? Who's to say. :)

Get your flashlight and lock your door

Tonight I was eating dinner with my mama when two of her older mama friends came over. They ate with my mama and me, and then one of the mamas told me she wanted to take me to the music in our village tonight. We finished the meal and my mama told me to get my flashlight and lock my door. Our neighbor mama took me down the street where many children and some adults were gathered, many sitting in plastic chairs or on mats near the surrounding houses. Mama told me that we were waiting for fuel for the generator. We sat in the darkness amid shy children coming up to "shikamoo" me (a respectful greeting).

The generator started, a single fluorescent bulb was lit above the dancefloor, and the giant speakers were suddenly in sight. A young man stood on the porch of the house, his laptop glowing as he started up the mix.

Children and adults dancing in the deep night, women sitting with wiped-out youngsters in the dark near each other. A clear night, so many stars.

My mama's ringtone

I am at home, it's around nine p.m. and my parents have gone to some type of meeting a short distance away. I hear a man's voice, fuzzy and amplified, and the crowd's occasional reactions. It it entirely dark in my house.

My mama has left her phone here and I've heard it ring three times now in the past fifteen minutes. Her ringtone is children laughing, which sounds like it might be creepy but is actually not that bad.

We have two hens with broods, about ten tiny chicks between them. The mothers seem so large and vivacious, and are fierce protectors of their small offspring. Throughout the day the mothers are constantly tutting while the chicks are cheeping back, and the mothers will fluff up their feathers and let the chicks congregate under them, many tiny feet showing underneath.

Food here

I realize that I've been in Tanzania for about a month now. (It's crazy to think it's been that long already.) and I think I'm adapting to what it's like to be a food-eating human here.

During homestay, we have limited control over what we eat, as we are usually not the ones doing the food-growing, food-shopping, and food-cooking. As a result, my diet in the past few weeks has been a large amount of refined carbs, eggs,

some cooked greens and veggies, and some meat. I haven't had milk since I was sick and my mama decided I wasn't allowed to have it anymore (oh sad day).

As a side note: I was surprised to find out that some of my fellow Americans were not aware that brown rice and white rice come from the same plant. White rice is simply polished rice: its bran has been milled off, basically, so white rice is essentially a refined carbohydrate, as you lose the complex carbs present in the bran.

In the US, white rice is often less expensive than brown rice for reasons such as subsidization. It seems illogical because white rice is more processed, therefore you think it would be more expansive, however that is often not the case.

Here in Tanzania, I believe a lot of the rice is imported, and you can pretty much only find brown rice in specialty shops in the larger cities. Practically speaking, brown rice does generally take longer to cook, and in a country where a lot of people are using charcoal stoves, and where fuel is becoming more and more of an issue, it makes sense to eat foods that cook faster. But it's a tradeoff because you're losing a lot of nutrition by not eating the bran.

Enough of that tangent. Bottom line is, I've learned how to house copious amounts of white rice in one sitting. And I'm looking forward to having more control over what I eat once homestay is over. :)

Oranges for days

My parents have given me my third installment of oranges from their farm. My baba came home after dark today, bringing a big bag of oranges that don't actually get past the green color on the outside. I have been told that after the rainy season, they will actually turn orange when ripe.

I'm still working on the last bag they gave me. It's time to double up and/or give some to my fellow trainees.

This afternoon we learned how to make vertical gardens out of large bags, similar to those that are used to sell rice in large quantities. I'm pretty excited to use this skill, and we all received bags to build these gardens with our homestay families. We also need to prepare two holes for fruit-bearing saplings we will be receiving to plant at our homes as well.

More hot days and dusty winds.

Nights so dark in my room that you see the same thing whether your eyes are open or closed. Oh perfect night.

Adrenaline rushes

Just another day full of Swahili lessons, gardening instruction, and Tanzanian heat. I was able to get a cold ginger beer soda on our way back to our village today, which made the day that much better.

Then I almost got run over by a motorcycle. I credit the ginger soda for my quick reflexes. Disaster averted.

I went to our bathroom tonight after dark and my toad friend was there as usual. This time he was practically doing parkour moves, scaling the gap between the door and the frame. I was mesmerized by the strength in his small body as he free climbed more than two feet up, then I realized I had to actually get out of the bathroom at some point. I held onto him as I opened the door so he wouldn't fall, then set him on the step outside.

One of our hens hatched chicks this morning. I went into the kitchen to put away the dishes I just washed and there they all were!

Tiny lives.

Losing light

Yesterday my parents did their best to explain to me that today someone was coming to remove the lights. Midway through our Swahili lessons, my baba came to summon me to unlock my door so that the crew could remove the light in my room.

My mama explained to me that even though the unit is solar-powered, they still have to pay more than 10,000 shillings (about $5) for it each month. Simple math tells us that that's more than a million shillings over the course of ten years. That's a lot of money in Tanzania.

Sitting in the back courtyard with my mama and aunt in the dark, the kerosene lamp perched on the floor just inside the hall of the house. My aunt teaches me a new way to respond when someone calls my name, and eventually walks back to her house.

We wait for the coconut rice to finish. The lamp casts a golden light in the hall, illuminating the walls that are rust-colored halfway up, then a smoky blue on the upper portion. Everything is dark except the hallway, the light spilling out onto the stony stoop, and the sky that is almost exactly the same color as the hallway's upper walls. The three doors in the hallway all have breezy curtains that hang in front of them, and the one in front of my mama's room billows gently back and forth. Our kitten plays behind the lamp, hunting insects and shadows.

My mama gets up to fetch the platter from the small table in the hallway behind the back door. She pauses for a moment in the doorway, and the light shines through the many-colored stripes that border her skirt.

I look up. The stars are brighter than ever.

Domestic sundays

Sunday, the one day of the week we have off. Today involved the usual (can I say that already?) tasks of sweeping and mopping, washing laundry, and helping cook. My mama showed me how to make ugali today. She let me "songa" (stir) the ugali, which is similar to polenta, however I guess I didn't do a good enough job because she took the spoon out of my hand shortly after she let me try!

My mama went to a meeting today and my nine-year-old cousin Fatuma and I rested during the heat of the day. She brought me a thermos of tea and these coconut-flavored fried muffin-like creations that were delicious. We chatted in Swahili to the best of my abilities - I had her teach me colors, and we talked about her siblings' ages, her extended family, her school, what she was going to do for the rest of the day, and what she wants to do when she grows up ("everything").

I sat in front of our house with my mama as she peeled and cut potatoes for chipsi mayai. Neighbors filtered in and out, chatting and sitting on our benches.

It grew dark and I learned that tonight was apparently the night I was to be taught how to iron (one of the "survival skills" Peace corps suggests our host families teach us). Ijumaa, my fifteen-or-so-year-old cousin and domestic dream, summoned me. I think he thought I had never ironed anything before.

I have indeed ironed clothing before, just not outside after dark, in Africa, by the light of a kerosene lamp, with a charcoal-fed iron. First we ironed his school uniform ("freshi!" He said when it was finished), then we moved on to one of my skirts, a kanga, and some of my pillowcases. Ijumaa kept the coals stoked and passed me the iron. He seemed pretty proud when we finished. I thanked him as best I could.

My toad had a toad friend in the bathroom when I went to go shower tonight.

A dry day, a starry night.

10 things I didn't do before coming here

1. Eating meat. I've eaten some beef and chicken since coming here. I can't say that I enjoy it very much, and I certainly wouldn't cook it for myself, but in a land where refined starches dominate the plate, I'll take my nutrients where they're presented.

2. Greeting (and being greeted by) EVERYONE you see. Living in a small village, everyone knows who you are, what you're doing, and where you're supposed to be. If you don't greet people, they may not help you out in the future, so greeting everyone is the general rule. (One exception: boys/ men aged 15-30; they usually greet me first. I do not greet them first.)

3. Resisting the urge to pet every animal I see. I am living in a Muslim community, and although there are some people in my village who own dogs, they are considered unclean animals, and are used strictly as work animals. Most people do not keep pets as we consider them in the US; here, animals are considered livestock. Hardly anyone shows affection for animals.

4. Taking bucket baths. It's pretty remarkable how little water you actually need to get clean. 

5. Pit latrines. Enough said.

6. Getting really excited about cold soda, cold water, anything cold to drink. In a land where refrigeration doesn't really exist, it's a pretty big deal.

7. Riding piled into the backs of land rovers with my contemporaries, the AC struggling against the many bodies in the African heat. Bumpy roads and cattle crossings.

8. Getting excited for cloudy days and the rainy season. It's probably not a fun season at all, but the pros are that it might be cooler (probably not really) and that mango season is coming!

9. Looking forward to seeing my toad friend when I shower in the morning and at night.

10. Being acutely aware of the Islam call to prayer. All hours of the day and night, it seems.

Frog is in the choo

I have a toad friend who I frequently see in the morning and at night, when I'm showering. I think he passes through the choo (bathroom) at night to soak up the water left in the floor and to seek out any insects that are in there.

The other night, I was sitting with my mama in our back courtyard after it grew dark. All of a sudden we hear a light tap, tap, tap on the hard-packed clay, and see a tiny dark figure bouncing across the courtyard.

"Chura!" My mama says. "Frog!" We both laugh. It is such a peaceful and humorous moment of a tiny creature making its way, not so silently, across the ground.

Our kitten likes to chase my toad friend. Tonight he was chasing him, pretty harmlessly, but frightening for the toad nonetheless. I was sitting in the courtyard, it growing dark again. The kitten chased the toad toward me, and he took refuge, first between my feet and then jumped up onto my foot, his small body surprisingly soft, almost velvety, against my skin. Then he scampered away towards the duck pen. The kitten chased him halfheartedly.

Dramas of small lives all around me.

The new normal

In "real life" back in the US, brushing my teeth was never a social activity, and in fact was never an activity that was particularly interesting or notable.

I think you know where I'm going with this: not so in Tanzania.

In the morning, I brush my teeth after breakfast and before I put sunscreen on. I rummage through all my belongings piled on my desk (the only furniture in my room is a bed, a desk, and a chair), find my toothbrush and toothpaste, nab my towel and water bottle and head for the back courtyard. I slide my sandals on, as we do not wear shoes in the house.

Usually this is around 7:30 am, and the sun has risen and the chickens and ducks are running around the courtyard, eating and chasing each other, helter-skelter.

A relative or neighbor inevitably walks through the gate, and I must go through rounds of greetings: I will greet an elder appropriately, they will ask me the news of the morning (Always "good") and how I woke up (always "peacefully"). If I anticipate someone coming, I try to avoid having a mouthful of frothy toothpaste so I'm actually able to reply!

Chickens and ducks wreaking havoc, me spitting my toothpaste into the drain while my uncle wakes up my cousin who sleeps in a room off our courtyard. My aunt coming and going, my mama's grandson bringing fruit or vegetables.

Never a dull moment when brushing your teeth.

Post-fever images

Lying on my bed sweating, in the hot afternoon, one bat and then another swooping silently through my room. They are so peaceful.

I drop my mosquito net, sweating and texting and watching their silhouettes dip in and out of my periphery.

You start thinking in terms of tradeoffs: I'd rather have bats than mosquitoes, I'd rather be meticulous about my filter than watching my water be boiled, I'd rather not eat meat than eat it and increase my chances of getting sick.

Mustafa, my aunt's son, about five years old, dances to the music blasting through the neighboorhood around 8 pm, after dark. We are in the back courtyard, and from the light of a kerosene lamp I watch him and his sister dance. They dance better than most adults I know.

Our cat and her kitten have their daily standoff: her "teenage" kitten still wants to nurse, so she has to run the kitten off every day. My mama puts out food for them both.

Cold ginger beer soda at lessons today. Feeling a lot better. Long rains soon. 

Soda and fries

There's a good moon on the rise. Today I've felt infinitely better than yesterday. We had class and my fellow trainees informed me the found the SODA BARIDI yesterday!!!! Soda baridi (cold soda) has been akin to the holy grail or an oasis in the desert for us.

Let me explain: we are living in a tiny village that has pretty much no electricity, except for a few houses wealthy enough to have tiny solar panels on their roofs that power some small indoor lights for after sunset. There is no electricity for anything else: no refrigerators, no freezers, no electric stoves.

Our instructor informed us that down my road, near the mission, there is soda baridi. Yesterday I was too sick to go on the garden tour my group went on. Which took them to a garden near the mission. And lo and behold, soda baridi!

It didn't take too much arm-twisting to get two of my fellow trainees to walk to soda baridi with me today after class. I got an ice-cold passion fruit Fanta. It kind of hurt to drink it, what with the coldness and the sugar and the carbonation and my stomach being essentially empty for the past few days, but it was so worth it.

Soda baridi, we will meet again. And again. And again.

Tonight my mama and my aunt (that's the best way to refer to her) showed me how to make chipsi mayai. My favorite Tanzanian dish. Nothing beats what is essentially a French fry omelet.

And I ate an orange and two bananas today. It was an A+ day as far as food goes.

Cipro time

Yesterday I was so sick that I did not write a blog entry, so I am writing it today. Let me just describe the scene of yesterday and I think it will convey how I was feeling.

Me: swaddled in damp kangas and handkerchiefs, lying in bed under my half-open mosquito net, an empty bucket beside me.

Things in bed with me: thermometer, two phones, ripped-open packets of various meds, my Swahili phrase book that has medical phrases, my solar lantern.

When I got home from Swahili class and realized I felt especially awful, I took my temperature and it read 103.8F. What!

If you are in Africa and don't feel like it's the weather that's making you hot, you are probably sick.

So I called my medical officer, and after describing every last gory detail to him, he told me to start a course of Cipro, along with ibuprofen to bring my fever down.

I spent the rest of the day and night harnessing the energy of evaporation, which would of course have worked better had it been less humid.

It's actually a great feeling when you start sweating again.

One week past in a somewhere of Africa

Tomorrow will be one week of homestay already. I feel like I should have made more progress than I have, but that's water over the dam, or under the bridge, or a sunk cost, as they say.

I'm pretty sure my feet will be perpetually stained with the red dusty clay that is everywhere. It gets everywhere: soaked into the edges of your notebook paper, into your clothes, seeping into the soles of your feet.

Sometimes you feel like the land is claiming you. You feel like the heat and the water scarcity and the sun are all very good reasons not to be here.

But people are, have been, and will be here.

The ice cream bicycle man cycled by today as we were waiting for our ride to our group lesson today. Nothing sounds more tantalizing than the small bell chiming closer and closer every time he pedals his old bike with a green cooler of Popsicles bungeed onto the back. It was a bit of a Pavlovian moment.

But unfortunately our teachers advised us not to buy ice cream, because it could be made with contaminated water and could quite possibly make us sick.

The chimes moved away from us, growing fainter in the beating sun and waves of heat.

First day "off" in my village

On my day off, I "slept in" until 7 am, took a shower, ate breakfast (a semi-hard boiled egg, bread, and chai), swept and mopped my floor and the hall, washed my clothes (with the help of mama), took a siesta from 11 to 12 (too hot to do anything), helped cook lunch and dinner, ate an orange, had lunch (a beef broth soup, then ugali with machicha, a spinach-like dish), then spent hours learning Swahili words with a friend of a neighbor who is in town. From what I understand, he brought his friend via motorcycle from town today so he could make a proposal. I'm pretty sure it went well.

Heat, chopping vegetables, stiff and fresh clean sun-dried laundry.

More Swahili words than I can remember right now.

Good company.

Goodnight.

Miles and lifetimes

This morning went by in a semi-dehydrated blur of Swahili lessons. We learned how to make water filters yesterday, but my family already has one, so I brought mine to class to assemble so we will have a filter there. One of our language instructors lives in that building as well, so now he won't have to buy all bottled water to drink.

I still don't know what made me sick, and since the filters can leak or crack, drinking water that is only filtered is not 100% safe. Peace Corps recommends that we boil and then filter, then preferably bleach, our water before drinking.

I'm pretty sure my family doesn't boil the water they filter, so I'm going to try to bring that up tomorrow.

We finished lessons in the early afternoon. I ate a little and then helped my mama cook, fighting the tiredness that has been following me all day.

A girl who seems close to my age, (the first I've seen here in my age range, actually), who I think might be one of my mama's granddaughters, came through our gate with a bucket of wet clean laundry on her head, dressed in three blue-green kangas (similar to sarongs) of different patterns. She started to hang up her laundry on our lines strung across the courtyard. First the whites, brighter than bright. Kangas in many colors and patterns: blue and white, red plaid, more greens. She walked between the lines, clothespinning pieces here and there. There is no wind, just sun. Some of the laundry drips cool water on her bare arms, making darker splashes on her skin. The laundry drips make dark red spots on the hard packed clay.

I am tired and thirsty and in Africa.

First sickness

Today would have been a great day, if I hadn't been struggling with what is now the third day of being sick. I won't go into the gory details, but let's just say it's a GI thing, and I'm not talking about vomiting.

My training class reconvened at our central training site today, and stories were swapped about our respective homestay experiences thus far. We got our second rabies shot, and I talked to my MO (Medical Official, or doctor) about my symptoms. She said she thinks I'm fine for now, but we will keep a watch on how long it goes on and if it changes.

I told my mama about it this morning, as I thought she could probably use an explanation for why I was hurrying outside to the choo (toilet) building three times last night. I feel like now the entire village knows I'm sick. I've received "pole sana"s (very sorry) from a few other mamas today who seem concerned as well.

Since the transition into homestay, it is very hard to pinpoint potential reasons one might get a stomach bug. It could be anything really.

Broke out my woolen blanket Peace Corps provided us with, and hunkering down for now. Let's see how this goes.

I have homework for my Swahili class that's due tomorrow. Since I really don't feel so hot tonight I'm going to try to do it tomorrow before class. I've always done work better in the morning anyway.

Snippets

"This is the story of how we begin to remember. This is the powerful pulsing of love in our veins. These are the roots of rhythm and the roots of rhythm remain..."

-Paul Simon

Sitting with four older women and a girl about twelve or thirteen, who passes me the baby she's holding. I hold him for a while, and every so often he looks up at me, seemingly intrigued by the color of my skin, not fearful as some children here can be, but completely in awe. He is about the age of my nephew back home.

A black cow with a rope trailing after it canters down the hard-packed red clay road. Mama shies away as it cuts off the road and along the houses. A woman walks nonchalantly after it a few minutes later.

Helping (more like watching) Mama Rukia make dinner: tambi, which is a sweet pasta dish. You take bundles of dry what I think are rice noodles, break them, cook them, then fry them in oil and sugar. Needless to say this is pretty tasty.

Sitting as it grows dark, the chickens and ducks tucked into their coops across the courtyard, Mama lights an oil lamp as we eat dinner. She finishes first. "Nimeshiba," I am full. I finish soon after. Baba Raishid fixes something with the electric lights inside. Mama snuffs the oil lamp out with the palm of her hand.

Back to the classroom

First day of Swahili lessons at our "school", which is what seems so be a town-managed room attached to a woman's house. We have hired her to make us chai and lunch on the days we meet there, which is about four to five times a week.

Our language instructors are extremely patient and helpful. There are only four of us students, which is a great size to work with.

Today is Ash Wednesday, the first I've spent living in an almost entirely Muslim community. Tonight as we were sitting in the compound, my Baba (father) asked me what my religion was. Considering I know hardly any Swahili, it took a while for me to understand, but we did have some form of conversation about it.

My Swahili was marginally better today when I got home from class. Mama let me help her cook dinner. I still feel like a child, but it's ok. I got walked to school, a mama made us lunch, I got sent on my way home, had a snack with my mama and her daughter, was told to go read/ study, helped mama with making dinner, did some reading, was told to take a bath, then hung out with my family as it grew dark, drinking steamed milk with sugar and having a little dinner.

Current communication status: I haven't bought any credit for my Tanzania phone so literally the only way I could get in touch with anyone is if they called or texted me. It's really nice not to be able to have that kind of distraction for a while.

Life is good.

You never know how many stars are in the sky until you look up at night in Africa.

Homestay day zero

A six hour bus ride north to where our homestays are. We took one break at a rest stop, where I had my first run-in with a non-western latrine (turns out it wasn't that big a deal). As I looked around at the rest stop, a mostly outdoor setting full of food vendors and people chatting and hanging out, all I could think to myself was, I am definitely not on Megabus anymore! :)

We had lunch at what will be our site for biweekly group trainings, and then were dispatched by van with our LCFs (Language and Cross-culture Facilitators) to be dropped off at what will be our homestay families for the next ~10 weeks.

I am now in my room in my homestay house. I am living with an older couple, who have children and grandchildren living a stone's throw away.

I currently have the Swahili capability of a two-year-old (if that), and I must say it is incredibly humbling to be an adult but to be so helpless as far as language goes. I'm pretty sure this is what's called the "sink or swim" part of training.

Despite the language barrier, I feel very at home and taken care of. "Kidogo,

kidogo", I will learn, Mama says. Little by little.

No words but future gratitude

"I'm going to want to tell them all these stories about my life, but all I can say is 'asante'."

-A Peace Corps trainee

Tomorrow we leave to begin our ten weeks of homestay experience. I think it's safe to say that none of us feel prepared - but I think this is one of these situations it will be impossible to be prepared for. We are well versed in a few Swahili phrases such as "thank you", but beyond that our command of the language escapes us.

I had my first (and possibly last, for quite a while) beer at the bar here in the compound, with a group of fellow trainees. The community we will be staying in for our homestays is primarily Muslim, therefore it is unlikely that we will be consuming alcohol at all. In addition to the Islamic factor, female trainees and volunteers throughout Tanzania are discouraged from drinking in their villages, even in their banking towns (larger, more central towns with more assets...such as banks), due to the perceptions and cultural attitudes surrounding the activity and various related acivities.

So my last beer was a Safari. Appropriately named, because tomorrow we take a journey.

Kwaheri, Dar es Salaam. Hujambo, northeast Tanzania.

Great things are waiting.

First Mass

This morning I went to Mass. Well, I tried to, at least.

We are staying in a Catholic retreat/ mission compound, which, of course, houses some priests, nuns, and a beautiful central church. Mass was held at 7:30 this morning and our schedule for the day didn't start til 9, so I took the opportunity to attend, what with it being Sunday and all.

I walked in probably about twenty after seven, and the sisters and priests were doing devotions, chanting psalms in Swahili and harmonizing beautifully.

Many more people came filtering in and mass began, with a mostly women's choir, all dressed beautifully in matching green and brown patterned dresses. The music rose and filled the church, spilling out to other attendees, mostly women and children, in the courtyard.

Turns out we were actually supposed to start at eight today, so I left after a homily I didn't understand to go attend my Swahili lesson.

It is amazing to think that a week ago I went to Mass at St. James church in Pittsburgh, on a cold and gloomy day.

The church is vibrant here and I look forward to experiencing it.

Port of Peace and Chipsi Mayai

I have a go-to meal for any place I am in. In a New Jersey diner, it's eggs over easy with home fries. In a cafe along the Camino in Spain, it's called huevos fritos con patatas. And here, it's called chipsi mayai.

I've only had this version once so far (for lunch today), and I imagine there are various versions depending on where you are within Tanzania, but the name literally means potatoes and eggs. The one I had today in a lazy open air eatery in the Posta part of the city was like an omelet, with the eggs and potatoes (similar to French fries) cooked together and served with hot sauce and a tomato cucumber side salad.

Order an ice-cold Pepsi (that is sweating profusely by the time it reaches your table), and you're golden.

Total cost: 3,300 Tanzanian shillings - about $2.

A hot but educational day walking around Dar, being familiarized with places we might need in the future - such as the main branch of our bank, the econo lodge where many PCVs stay while staying in Dar, and where to catch the ferry to Zanzibar.

Important things.

Bloody Business

Today we learned how to do a malaria self-test, which is a fun skill I hope I will never have to use.

We were all given malaria self-tests in our medical kits, and we were given an extra one to do today in lecture to make sure we know how to do it properly if we ever need to in the future.

The process involves swabbing and lancing your finger, scooping a drop of blood with a tiny scooplet, and then dabbing that in a small absorbent depression on a plastic stick (not unlike the ones used for pregnancy tests). You then place five drops of the reagent in the slightly larger adjacent depression, then wait for the chemical reaction to show either one line in the results window near control (negative reading), or two lines (the second at the "test" benchmark, which would be a positive reading). No line or a line somewhere in between indicates that the test did not work and needs to be repeated. (Each box comes with two tests).

Needless to say at this point, we all tested negative. And I hope it stays that way.

Field trip to the Peace Corps Office

We left early this morning so we could beat the traffic. However, I'm beginning to think that there is no such thing as "beating the traffic" in Dar es Salaam.

We arrived about an hour later to the beautiful compound that is the Peace Corps Tanzania Office. The day proceeded with more lectures, vaccinations, and a tour of the grounds and offices.

The most outstanding thing that struck me today was how approachable all of the staff are - from the drivers and medical officers all the way up to the country director. 

The PCV leaders (volunteers who have extended for a third year and now work at the TZ office) and other volunteers who are here this week to help with training continue to be a great resource for all of us trainees whose questions are spontaneously coming to the surface.

I got a phone with a SIM that is in a network with other trainers, volunteers, and PC staff. It doesn't actually work yet because the carrier has to activate it or something, but the reality of communication is setting in. Today I had pretty much exactly five minutes of wifi - enough for sixteen emails and a few iMessages to come pouring in.

It will definitely be a challenge to balance the being-present I have experienced without the distraction of cell phones with the reality of the necessity and importance of communication via said devices. (But more on that later, once I have phones that actually do their job. :) )

Deep Seats

Today was a full day of classes, starting with more "welcome"-type presentations and a safety and security briefing, with medical sessions and language classes in the afternoon.

We spent some of the time in the common training room, and my Swahili class was held outside on a patio shaded by a thatched roof, with a slight breeze picking up the poster paper that our instructor was writing greetings in Swahili on. A cat with a tail that had an abrupt end lounged under our feet, then went to pounce on a tiny lizard.

We sat in those school chairs with the tiny swivel desk surface attached. The chairs are deep and wooden. You have to scoot back further than normal to sit on them, your writing surface a mere afterthought as you practice Swahili words, prompted by your instructor.

These chairs want us to stay awhile.

I am going to stay awhile.

Day zero of week zero

We have arrived. It is humid in Dar es Salaam and feels wonderful. All our luggage made it, too, and we all cleared immigration with no problems.

For the first week, we are staying in a compound that is run by a Catholic mission. I have a roommate and a mosquito net over my head as I write this. The fan is whirring overhead in the complete darkness. The only light is the glow from my phone.

We were given our first malarial prophylaxis today (doxycycline 100mg), and tomorrow we meet individually with the medical officer to choose which prophylactic medication would be best for us for the duration of our service. I will probably opt for Malarone.

There was a whirlwind of introductions as we arrived, and then we had dinner and were shown our rooms. Showers are only cold (rather, lukewarm) but the fact is that you don't actually need hot showers when it doesn't get below 70 even at night.

Tomorrow is a very busy day. I am quite literally tucked in (thank you mosquito net), and ready to turn in.

"Never Hide"

"I've got a wall around me you can't even see / It took a little time to get to me"

-Paul Simon

Who forgets to bring sunglasses to Africa with them? Like, seriously?

This girl. Haha.

I have a sinking feeling that I left my Ray-bans sitting despondently somewhere in the house. My mom even insisted that I take them out of the car and into the house. "If you leave them in the car," she said a day or two ago, "you're going to forget them." She put them into my hand. I think I was on the phone, my mind a million miles away.

It is now Tuesday the tenth of February. Sunday went by in a flash of a short flight to Philadelphia, followed by a whirlwind of Peace Corps initiation, greetings, and paperwork. Went out for a sandwich and a cold beer with a large group of my fellow trainees, then slept maybe forty minutes before awaking for departure to JFK.

I regret to say I slept through most of my last exposure to my home state of New Jersey, as seen from the NJ turnpike as we sped along in the night towards NYC.

Long and thankfully uneventful flight to Johannesburg, where we are waiting for our connecting flight to Dar es Salaam.

Due to sleep deprivation I did not trust myself to continue this blog post until now, since I was able to get some sleep on the way here.

Ray-ban's slogan, "never hide", has been on mind since I was thinking about my missing sunglasses. The company promoted this concept, presumably meaning (based on my recollections of sepia-toned ads featuring beachy-haired Caucasians) that anyone, from celebrity to hung-over party animal to aloof hipster, can benefit from the air of indifference and detachment that wearing Ray-bans provides.

Maybe I internalized my sunglasses. Whether emotional detachment is an "innate" trait of mine or whether I've adopted it as a coping mechanism for various parts of my life is probably irrelevant. The point is that what I went a long time considering being my greatest strength is probably my greatest weakness. 

So maybe now, without my sunglasses, I will learn what it really means to never hide. Emotional attachment might not be easier than detachment, but maybe it will feel richer.

One of the last things our staging director said to us is that she hopes we fall in love with Tanzania, because when you are in love with something, you can let go of the little things. And there will be little things.

Tanzania, I'm coming for you - without my sunglasses and with my heart open a crack.

kx