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.