First full day

Chai taken this morning with my guesti dada at the chai mama's up the road. Steaming spiced sugared tea, fresh chapati, and a bowl of beans cooked into deliciousness. We spent the late morning in the sitting room next to the drugstore my dada runs, in addition to the guest rooms in the back courtyard, one of which I'm staying in. I did exercises in my Swahili book while she pored over my dictionaries and folded tiny envelopes to dispense pills in. The sun made its way slowly through the clouds that remained after rain this morning. It was probably in the sixties all day, quite cool. 

We went to Bwana Shamba's (literally "mister farm", village agricultural officer) for lunch. As soon as I walked in my eyes were drawn to two images on the wall: the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the Last Supper with the slightly awkward but even more poignant translation "I am that Bread of Life" inscribed below. Funny how some pictures on a wall and a familiar blessing before a meal can make you feel at home instantly. Also, the chicken I was served was probably the best I've ever eaten. (Although that might not be saying much, coming from someone who was vegetarian most of her life. :) )

Had soda and cookies at the nurse's house, watched kids play a complicated game for what seemed like hours, was taken by a slightly intoxicated woman to drink tea and talk about God and her children at her house, and then was rescued by my dada to take dinner at Bwana Shamba's again. 

The pressure's on to learn Chasi, the main tribal language here. There is another tribe here in the village that speaks Kirangi, but the majority speak Chasi. Everyone speaks Swahili as well, but when they are conversing it is usually in tribal. Even if I learn a few words it will delight them to no end. I'm on the lookout for a good teacher. :)

All by my onesie

I have been dropped off on my village. I cannot live in my house yet because the latrine isn't finished, so my village chairman is putting me up in the guesti here until I can move into my house. My guesti dada is an awesome girl who's taken me under her wing. My chairman and "bwana shamba" agriculture officer have been attentive to my needs today, namely food and potable water. 

It is raining a lot today. I have been told that I have brought the rain, as it is raining a lot today, a lot more than usual. Many places in this country are struggling at the tail end of a very long dry season and rains that are starting late and light. 

I can't help but feel a bit cosmic and purposeful what with my role as rainmaker. Hopefully this is a good omen of fruitful things to come. :)

Travel days

Yesterday we signed a written oath at the Peace corps office, had our swear-in ceremony at the U.S. embassy, and wrapped up travel logistics for the following day. Our day today started in the wee hours, as our bus from the center we were staying at departed for the main bus station at 3:30 in the morning. We arrived at the bus station, with dark buses turned off and dark kiosks and chai stalls, many people and little light to see by. Peace corps staff ushered us through puddles and past people to our bus, which we boarded and waited until 6:30 to depart on. Our district supervisors boarded this bus as well, as they will be accompanying us to site. 

Needless to say, I did not get much sleep last night, so our bus ride went by in a very long and hot blur of changing scenery, decreasing humidity, and Tanzanian pop music. We found a PCV in town whom we had met before, so we hung out with him for the rest of the afternoon and evening. 

A cool night is calling me to a good night's sleep. 

Changing days

The sun has set on the last day of training. Tomorrow we will become volunteers. 

The day was filled with meeting our district supervisors, attending workshop type lectures, and hanging out with these fellow trainees who in a few short days will be spread throughout Tanzania. 

I wrote letters, we practiced our song medley performance for our ceremony, and one of my fellow trainees gave me some clothing she no longer wants. 

It is hot and humid, and the lethargy of the day caused us to move more slowly than usual. The glass bottles of drinks sweat faster. 

Long sips, slow conversation. Soon we will all be apart. 

We are the waiting

Back to the friendly surrounds of the compound where we first stayed upon arrival to Tanzania. We arrived yesterday evening, after a long journey, the second half of which seemed to be spent sitting in city traffic. It is pretty surreal to have electricity and running (if not entirely potable) water again, after about two months of homestay. Those of us who will be continuing to live without these luxuries are savoring every moment of these short few days before installation at our sites. 

Today several other trainees and I were able to go to a nearby mall to do some shopping. I got a SIM card and groceries - here in Tanzania, when you see an actual grocery store, the it-might-be-weeks-before-I-see-one-of-these-again mentality sets in, and you find yourself reveling in the sprawl of the aisles and the (seemingly) lavish selection of products. There was also a mini bookstore of books in ENGLISH and Swahili, and I picked up a book because I am in desperate need of reading material. Collected popping corn, some brown rice, instant breakfast porridge packets, and all ingredients for a proper cup of tea, and I was on my way. 

When I get to site, as long as I have the necessities to make a good cup of tea and some semblance of breakfast, I have confidence that everything else will fall into place. :)

Last homestay day

Today, it rained. I think today is officially the first day of long rain season. It rained at four in the morning and woke me up, it rained as I took a bucket bath, it rained when I ate breakfast, chai, and lunch, it rained when I washed my dishes. 

As I ate breakfast, it was downpouring, and a small dilapidated chicken came to stand just inside our doorway. Our hall is about ten or fifteen feet long, and connects our front and back doors. On any given day, there are chickens parading through our hall, as it's their favorite shortcut from the courtyard to the great outdoors for some reason. 

This chicken was somewhere between being a pullet and being full grown. It had wet feathers, big feet, and a small, forlorn head that looked at me distrustfully. Mama has been cracking down on the hallway chicken parade because they make the hall all dirty. 

But I drank my tea and the chicken stood there and we both waited out the rain. 

There were between one and two dozen women filtering in and out of our kitchen all morning until afternoon when we went to the party. At any given moment, there were approximately six women helping to cook. Women took turns cracking open coconuts with machetes and scraping the meat out on an mbuzi, or "goat": a small stool with a sharp serrated protrusion on which you scrape coconuts. A very specific tool which is oh so necessary if you live in this part of Tanzania where there are coconuts everywhere. Mamas washing kilos upon kilos of rice, mamas sifting flour for ugali. 

All the morning I was pretty much completely useless because my mama insisted I reapply henna AGAIN, so there I was sitting helplessly, waiting for my henna to dry so I could brush it off. 

We had lunch and went to the party at the village up the road. The village executive officer had bought us matching striped polo shirts which we had to wear today, so there the eight of us were in a row, wearing our matching shirts, and we were plied with Anjari (Tanga soda) and had the seats of honor. There were drums, a dance troupe, and a microphone involved. We all had to introduce ourselves, and presented our framed photos of us with our host families as gifts, and then each of our families gave us gifts to take to site, which was so generous of them. Most of the items are cooking ware, which will be SO useful to have right away. 

We were cajoled into joining the dancers for a few dances, much to the delight of everyone in attendance - at least a hundred people, probably more. 

The party actually ended in a timely manner; I was planning on settling in for the long haul, but I returned home and had a fairly low-key rest of the evening. 

Tomorrow is an early start. 

The readying

We finished our training here in homestay land today. Tomorrow we have our packing/ saying goodbye day, and the day after, we leave. I think we are all ready for homestay to be over - we know we have bigger fish to fry elsewhere. 

My mama insisted once again that I reapply henna tonight. She says I have to do it again tomorrow too. She will not be satisfied until it is literally black. It's a dark reddish brown currently. So once again I have kanga paw, which of course gets sweaty and awkward in the hot African night. 

This morning, around three a.m., there was a torrential downpour. Like tropical downpour serious. So intense it actually woke me up - that and a few huge drops splat on my cheek; there must be a leak in our roof somewhere. 

Humidity, singing, riding in land cruisers on bumpy red dirt roads. 

A walk in the dark

Never underestimate the odds of having something little and unexpected and awesome interrupt what you anticipated your routine would be. 

Tonight I was resting a bit in my room when my mama called me out. One of my favorite older mamas was there, and was asking me when I had to leave, because she didn't think she'd see me again. We clarified that I'm not leaving for a few days, so we will see each other, but, as they say, one thing leads to another and my mama and I decide to walk her home. We get halfway and my mama turns back, but I'm undecided and our friend laughs and decides I'm going to come visit her. 

My mama gives me her small flashlight, and our friend takes my hand. We walk in pitch darkness, past houses with the front door open, lit only by small oil lamps inside. She greets neighbors as we walk into a part of the village I never actually knew existed. 

We get to her house and meet her neighbor relatives. She invites me inside and summons her thirteen-or-so year old great nephew (is that a thing? Side note: at this stage of my Swahili and cultural comprehension, understanding how people are related to each other is nigh on impossible.) she asks me what kind of soda I want, and I quaver. "Anjari?" The boy asks, and I agree. She unties a bill from the corner of her kanga, and hands it to the boy who goes off. 

We perch on the edge of her bed and I look around her room. She has a beautiful cabinet full of dishes and cookware, and I ask her about the corrugated tin rolls propped against the wall. She says they are for roofing a building nearby. 

Young teen returns with soda - it's cream soda. He is instructed to find me a glass, and rummages through the cabinet by the light of his phone until he finds a small German-style beer stein. It's hard to tell in the light of oil lamps but I think the cream soda is green. It tastes pretty delicious and I can't remember the last time I had two sodas in one day. 

Once I finish, she says that my mama will start to worry if I don't come back soon. We make a quick stop at my mama's sister's house, and she shows me photos of trainees she has hosted - two of them. 

We walk back, the stars incredibly bright on this clear humid night. We stop to greet an old woman near a house, and a tiny child is instructed to greet me. She proffers her hand shyly - her grasp doesn't reach past three of my fingers. 

Dark nights, oil lamps, women full of grace.

School's out

Let me describe my situation right now: I'm typing this with one hand on my phone, because my left hand is swaddled in a kanga. My mama insisted a third installment of henna application was necessary, so about half past six, in the fading light, I reapplied henna to the designs on my left hand. We moved inside as it got dark, my mama brought food from mama Fatuma's house, and I ate with one hand (which is pretty normal because it's considered rude to eat with your left hand, which is your choo or bathroom hand). Then I retired to my room, and since henna is most effective if you let it dry completely and then brush it off, my hand is now wrapped up to keep it from getting on my off-white bedsheets. So this is a little challenging to write. :)

Today was the rather uneventful last day of language classes. To think that we're done with that portion! Only two more days of wrapping up loose ends and presenting our community reports, then host family farewell, and we mobilize for swear-in and installation!

Rains on and off throughout the day. Dramatic skies behind hills and coconut trees.

The last free Sunday in village

Today was the last day we will have, until the day before we leave, that was completely unstructured, where we could hang out with our homestay families and not have to go to class. My mama decided that today was henna day, and prepared two types of henna. Women here use henna to dye their fingernails, as well as make patterns on their skin. The base henna is a light brown, and the second henna you apply is orange, going to almost black the more times you apply it and let it dry on your skin. My mama dyed the tips of my fingers on one hand, and then I decorated my palm. 

My mama also made me pinky swear that I would come back to the village to visit. Now that's a promise I can't break now. :)

My fellow trainees and I got cold soda today, then tried to find certain people to interview for a report we have to write, but none of them were to be found. 

A lazy day. Laundry, henna, cold soda, a tiny cloud rainbow, one of the coolest I've seen.

My toad friend is back! I thought my cats might have eaten him. But no, he's here. :)

Study hard dance harder

Yesterday not a lot happened except for I got LETTERS in the mail (thanks to two people, you know who you are!), which completely made my day better because yesterday was a hard day. We had our LPIs, or Language Proficiency Interviews. These are our interviews where we are expected to have reached a certain level of Swahili, and we are assessed and scored on how well we speak. Luckily I was able to sign up for the second time slot, so I took it in the morning and had the rest of the day to relax. I think it went okay, we will probably get results on Monday. 

Yesterday I was eating dinner and heard something walking on the roof. Then we heard meowing, and it turns out our teenage kitten couldn't figure out how to get out of the rain gutter. I tried to help him, but he's still scared of me, and every time I reached for him he would duck back into the gutter. So I gave up, and I guess he eventually figured out how to get down, because in the morning I saw him walking around on the courtyard wall. My mama and I laughed about that poor cat.

This afternoon we all got together for a talent/ fashion show and cultural exchange. It was an awesome time of decompressing together as a group, relaxing, and dancing. Now if you know me, you know that I'm not a big dancer. But this music, man! Granted I cannot hold a candle to Tanzanians' dancing abilities, but the music is so good, and no one is judgmental, you just have to dance. And it feels great. :)

The speed of village

Today my three fellow trainees in my village and I found out that technically, we don't live in a village - we live in a hamlet. A HAMLET! It sounds pretty mystical and brings lots of images of medieval/ feudal Europe to mind. I must say the reality of our hamlet isn't nearly so glamorous, but it's a fun fact to know. 

After lunch and taking a quick test regarding our readiness to serve, I walked back to my house to get some cord we needed to build a tippy tap at our "school". No one was in my house, but as I was leaving to head back to school I was summoned by my mama, who was sitting inside mama Fatuma's front door, having lunch. (I think my mama, like me, likes vantage points where she can see everything that's going on. :) ) "Kata! NJOO!" Come! My mama yells after me. A lot of people call me Kata, which is actually a verb meaning "to cut", along with several other meanings. 

So I enter mama Fatuma's house, where I find my mama, mama Fatuma, her husband, their son Mustafa, and some other teenage boy who might work for them (there are so many teenage boys everywhere and often it's hard to tell where they come from and what they do exactly). Mama Fatuma tells me I must sit down and eat (this being just about an hour after I already ate lunch at school), and I know it would be a losing battle for me, and there's fresh-cooked ugali and beans so I cave. After a fair amount of ugali and a small bowl of beans, and after chatting and watching Mustafa struggle determinedly and good-naturedly to peel an orange, they finally let me go, probably almost half an hour later, when my mama realizes that my teachers might have wondered where I went off to.

The moral is: never expect to get anywhere or do anything in a timely manner, and if someone is offering you good food, take advantage of it. Especially if they're good company, too. :) 

Transect walk

Today the agriculture trainees took a transect walk with our Peace corps agriculture expert. We started on our training grounds, looking at interesting and important trees, then walked to a water source, then walked to a nearby village to look at farming practices there. 

One of the most interesting trees here is the neem tree, whose name in Swahili translates to "forty" tree, because it is believed that parts of the tree can cure forty different diseases. The second half of the day we learned about integrated pest management, and you can create a tincture or solution from crushing the leaves in water that can be sprayed or applied on plants as a natural pesticide. It also prevents intestinal parasites in goats who eat the leaves, and I believe our instructor said that you can also dry and crush the seeds and feed them to chickens, for the same purpose. We also made different solutions from the giricidia tree leaves, onions, garlic, and vegetable-based soap, as well as learned about using wood ash as a means of controlling pests. 

We walked to a pond that was originally built in the 1970s by foreigners who owned the sisal plantations nearby. Their main purpose for it was to grow fish, which must have at least partially succeeded, because there were some teenagers sitting on the bank across from us today, waiting to fish. The only water source to the reservoir is rainwater, and it has never gone dry, even in the dry season, so it must have been designed and sited well. 

Then we walked to one of the nearby villages, where we mostly looked at methods of raising livestock in confined areas: dairy cattle and donkeys, goats housed "second story" to reduce disease and mite prevalence, and rabbit hutches. Chickens are everywhere, as usual, and ducks are around but less common. 

Learning lessons under the hot sun.

Easter Monday, Easter Tuesday

Yesterday was Easter Monday, and although we had class, we finished after lunch, so a few of us headed into town to hang out before returning to our villages. Riding on the daladala is always interesting: I was the last one to fit into the tiny bus (more like a van, really), and I was pressed against another trainee and several strangers, standing practically in the sliding door well, hunched over with my neck bent because the ceilings in daladalas do lot allow for tall people to stand upright. Luckily, about halfway to our destination, one of the other trainees and I were summoned to go sit up front, so there we were sharing the slightly-wide seat, me in the middle, the driver bumping my knee every time he shifted gears. 

I bought more kitenge (fabric), this time because its pattern reminds me of the Camino. Once I get to site, I will find a fundi to make something out of it - maybe a skirt or shirt. We walked around in the heat, shopping languidly, and eventually making our way to the duka that has ice cream and cold soda and juice. 

I followed the trainees who knew a back way, slightly uphill, almost into the residential part of town: clay buildings, melting brick, thatched roofs. Palm and banana trees everywhere. Wooden boards bridge small ruts and ravines, and suddenly you see more vendors along the path, tucked in small corridors alongside buildings and among the tropical vegetation. It is a very strange juxtaposition of nature and the world of brightly-colored plastics, shortwave radios, and cheap clothing. We climbed some more and found ourselves at a corner of the bus stand. We got ice cream and found we still had time to kill, so we headed to a bar, where we got cold Safaris and relaxed in the shade, a football match playing on the tv several yards away with many young boys watching, sitting in plastic chairs they pulled up close. 

After long chats and relaxation, we headed back to our bus station, and were happily reunited with the daladala that drove us here and the sweet young boy who was manning its door and fares. We found seats and watched the outdoors fly by: row upon row of sisal, cows grazing by the road, teenage boys on motorcycles passing by us. The upper half of the daladala windows block out light, so you dip your head to see outside, then raise your head, losing vistas, and seeing only asphalt speeding by. 

Today is Easter Tuesday. I watched one of my language teachers kill and clean a chicken. Seeing someone take an animal's life capably, knowledgeably, and respectfully is a pretty amazing thing. Although I prefer not to eat animals, seeing him slaughter a chicken today instilled in me a lot of respect, maybe even awe, for people with this capability. 

Then I went home and ate potatoes. :)

Today was a day just like any other

Today is Easter. I would never have known, except I found out on Friday that it was Good Friday. The only sign of Easter I have experienced today is it being mentioned a few times on the Tanzanian radio station my baba was playing most of the day ("Pasaka" is Easter in Swahili).

So since it was a normal day off, I did much-needed laundry (hadn't been able to since two weeks ago, before site visits), cleaned and mopped my room, helped cook, and tried to study but ended up napping sweatily in the heat of the day.

What I ate today: breakfast: tea, mandazi (slightly sweet fried bread), and a hard-boiled egg. Elevenses: tea, a bread roll, mandazi. Lunch: beef broth soup, ugali, potatoes with beef, and mchunga (bitter spinach-like plant). Dinner: stewed plantains with potato, a banana, tea. 

A few notes on the food: yes, it's pretty much carbs, carbs, and more carbs. Also, when I say "plantain" I really mean just green banana. I find it a little funny that cooked plantains and ripe bananas often have a way of appearing in the same meal. :)

Typical food, typical day, in a tiny Muslim village in the heat of Tanzania. 

Reptile ramblings

We were sitting in our school today and it was raining. Now that we're in long rain season, when it rains, it pours. It will rain for a while and then stop, and you go outside and the top three inches of red clay is saturated, your shoes sinking in and sliding every which way. 

Today, when it was still raining, we heard someone outside and our teacher went to see who it was. She came back in, asking if we had talked to someone about a turtle. We all laugh, remembering yesterday, and go outside to see the man from yesterday, who apparently had found a turtle and brought it to us! It was a small box turtle, very cute and sturdy. He placed it on our railing, told us we could take it, and left a few minutes later. 

So then we had two class animals for a few hours: the turtle, and Mhitaji, our dear house cat (the name we gave him translates to "Needy", because whenever we are eating he comes in and begs incessantly).

We took turns checking on the turtle, who mostly hung out on our front porch, getting stuck in the holes between the bricks of the railing wall. After class was over, one of my fellow trainees took the turtle back to the river from whence he came. 

Another day of finishing class early and none of us wanting to go home just yet. We followed the pattern of yesterday: heading to the village up the way for some of us to play Settlers of Catan, heading back down through my village after for cold soda, then heading to the river, to poke around, look at tadpoles, and breathe river air. 

The insects are loud tonight.

All weather, no seasons

It is a very strange thing to realize that Lent is over, and that I wasn't really aware of it at all. I realized it was Good Friday today around noon. It is strange to be so distant from and unaware of the passing of the Church year. Maybe my failure to observe Lent this year can be made up for, in part, by joining in Ramadan this year, as I will be in a very Muslim community, similar to the village I am living in now.

When you are living on the other side of the equator in a different culture with different religions and holidays, all of a sudden all the markers of the passage of time, such as winter, spring, Lent, and Easter, aren't relevant anymore. You think in terms of hunger seasons, long rain seasons, mango seasons, and the season the river will be so high that the crocodiles will come back. 

Every day is only a little less hot than the tea you drink, cup by cup, sweating and thinking you made a mistake, until all of a sudden you don't feel quite so hot anymore.

We had the afternoon off, so the eight of us (from our village and the next) decided it was time to go to the river and look for the crocodiles we heard live there. Red clay rutted trails through the bright greenery, downhill all the way, getting cooler as we descended into shade and cool air, and we saw the river. A group of women downstream washing their clothes greeted us. A dog rested next to a pile of harvested sticks and a machete. We peered into the slow water, then walked along a trail upriver, finding a man and two boys washing their clothes too. The man was gutting two catfish he caught, and told us the river was too low for crocodiles, but that there were turtles around. He offered to go get one, leaving his catfish on the flat rock and running up the trail.

We chatted with the young boys for a few minutes, waiting until the man returned, empty handed. "The turtle ran away," he told us. We laughed, thanked him, and made our way back to our villages.

This is Tanzania, where life slows down so much that even tortoises have a fighting chance. :)

Simulation day

"Don't forget that everything you deal with is only one thing and nothing else."

-Paulo Coelho, "The Alchemist"

Today was simulation day, also known as a somewhat stressful day for us trainees. Peace corps brings in professionals for these exercises: immigration officers to interrogate us, police officers to write up the "crimes" we are reporting, and "youth out of school", or young adults who we give mini-lessons to about life skills or other fun topics. 

It was a little stressful waiting for my turn and trying to keep all the Swahili I would need in the front lines in my head. But all went fairly well, and although we were scored on our performance, we couldn't have really failed as it doesn't really count for anything. 

This is the final stretch of training, where the assignments are piled on, the activities are more intense, and you're trying to find time and energy to do everything that needs to get done. When you look at the whole picture, it seems nigh on impossible that in three weeks we'll be sworn in (God willing) and departing for our sites. 

It's too much when you look at it all together, so you have to remember that everything you deal with is only one thing and nothing else. And then it starts to look a little more feasible.

These are the days

We did our family picture this morning. As soon as the volunteers from down the road arrived with their camera, my mama hurriedly put her pretty black shawl on, and summoned my baba from his room. We waited a few more minutes, to get our neighbor couple and their daughter into the picture. The six of us posed, me with the only toothy smile (many adults here take having their picture taken very seriously).

We had more Swahili lessons this morning, then went up the road to the next village to learn how to make tippy taps. Tippy taps are a simple construction to provide hand-washing stations wherever needed, such as a home or school. It is basically a water jug with strategic holes that is suspended on a simple frame, that, when made properly, will tip out a sprinkle of water when you step on a foot pedal. My homestay actually already has one, but it was good to see how one is made from scratch.

Today was very hot, and after our learning session several of us decided it was a soda baridi day. So we walked the mile or so to get cold soda. Always worth it.

My village trainees split off on the way back to take our last trainee's family picture, as we need to submit them tomorrow, to be sent to the city, printed, and framed to be gifts for our host family. The sun fell hot on his courtyard, but we spent a few minutes relaxing on the mat on his front porch, the breeze and shade taking away the heat.

Our final task for the day was to build a fence for the garden we have started to build near our "school". We gathered our tools and started to formulate our plan, hammering poles into the ground surrounding our garden. We were soon assisted by a young boy, probably ten or eleven, and another guy about our age, who live nearby. The boy schooled us on machete skills, and the guy took charge of our slow decision-making and directed us in the construction. Building a fence had never been so much fun as the six of us speaking two different languages, not really understanding what one another was saying, but understanding the project we were working on.

The sun set and we headed home. The mountains were beautiful in the distance. 

Someone noticed

Today we got "report cards" regarding how we have performed on various assessments so far in training. Mine was pretty good news, and there was even a note on it that said I had "wonderful flexibility in where to be placed". I must admit I was a little happy to see that they acknowledged and appreciated that. 

As we had site visit debriefing today and as I heard more about everyone's sites, I am very thankful for the living situation I will have (God willing). I will be living in my own new house, with my own new courtyard I won't have to share with any other people, and there is no one currently occupying my house who I will have to worry about moving out before I move in. My community seems enthusiastic and up for the experience of being home to a Peace corps volunteer. In general, everything I have heard and experienced about my future village has been positive.

One of our ducks hatched her eggs today. She rested in the coop today, and I caught glimpses of bright yellow ducklings huddling under her.