It shocks me that it’s been nearly a month since I left home! Time surely has flown by! Orientation felt like a vacation, besides all the sessions we had to go to and Swahili classes we had to take. We were mostly free in the evenings and sometimes on the weekends so we got to relax a little bit! Now we are getting into the full swing of things!
Right now I staying in Morogoro at a hotel called Amabilis, which is run by nuns. It’s a really nice place to stay. All of last week we were staying at the Morogoro Teacher’s College which is very different from this hotel! It was quite run down. There were lots of cracks in the ceilings and in between the walls, the bathrooms were pretty dirty and icky, and there were a lot of bugs everywhere! I saw a couple small lizards on my walls before I went to bed, but I tucked myself tightly into my mosquito net so I was safe, haha. Lizards are harmless, anyway. What was more worrisome was all the hornets that hung around the dining table where we had our orientation training sessions and ate our meals! One of our volunteers got stung twice – once on the foot and another time on top of her wrist – and she swelled up big time!! I felt so bad for her! It sounded like it really, really hurt!! I’m so glad I didn’t get stung! Luckily I brought some hydracortizone cream with me and when she put that on the stings the swelling went way down and she felt a lot better.
Being at the Teacher’s College was such an interesting environment. Most of the volunteers were really unhappy there because it was so dirty, but I was actually ok with it. I’m a very relaxed traveller and I’m very understanding of the fact that some places have different preferences and standards for the ways people live, especially in terms of cleanliness and what it means to be comfortable. I’m a really low maintenance traveller. As long as I’m safe and I have a roof over my head and a bed to sleep in I am happy. The way that place was is the way a lot of places are where people live here!! I mean some of them were really judgmental and ungrateful for living there, which really irks me because a lot of people in Tanzania aren’t fortunate enough to have even that kind of accommodation! I know everyone is different and we all want to feel comfortable, but one of the major points of travelling is to push your comfort zone and be willing to experience other cultures with an open and understanding perspective!!! I knew that Tanzania would be really different from home coming into this program so I think that’s why it’s been easier for me to adjust. I really love making connections with people here. That’s one of the most valuable things about travelling – getting to know people from the culture that hosts you. You know how social I am so you can imagine that I don’t have a problem meeting people here. Meeting them has made me feel more at home and it’s also made me feel more comfortable when I can the people I knew before, too.
This weekend I went to Dar es Salaam to visit. Two of the WorldTeach volunteers had to go back to Dar anyway with our field director on Friday in order to leave from Dar to go to their teaching site in Kibiti, which is three hours south of Dar. I got free transport with them through the Ministry of Education and stayed at a hotel near one of my friends who just came back home to Dar a little bit ago for his vacation from his graduate program. I went out to a nice club Friday night called the Garden Bistro, which is a really nice outdoor club right on the beach. It felt so good to dance and let loose - being in Morogoro for the past week and not having gone out at all in the evening made me antsy to get out! Saturday I took the day to sleep in for once and just relax all day in my hotel room. It was nice to have a day to unwind after being so busy for all of orientation. I spent the day with one of my friends hanging out and talking. That night we went to dinner and then later on I went out with some other friends to chill out at a couple bars in town. I got back late that evening. Sunday I woke up and met a friend at the mall who I lived next door to when I did my research for my thesis in December and January. We hung for a bit and it was really nice to catch up with him! Around lunch time he took me to the bus station and I got a bus ticket home to Morogoro. The bus terminal was all outdoors and it was super crowded and chaotic! We had to ask someone to help us find the right place for me to buy a ticket. In the bus terminal I felt like such a fish in a fishbowl the whole time – I was the only white person I could see for miles and miles around! Everyone was staring at me, probably wondering why, as a white person, I would be taking the cheapest way of transportation to Morogoro, since most white people here tend to be very welathy ex-patriots who live really luxuriously alongside the really nice beaches in Dar. They tend to take more upper class travelling methods like trains, planes, or use private transport with their own drivers if they need to go anywhere. It’s actually weird being a white person here who doesn’t have a lot of money. I’ve really tried to stretch my money as far as I possibly can while I’ve been here. It’s really rough though. All the small costs of living here really do add up! So that was my weekend in Dar. When I finally got back to my hotel in Morogoro I watched the 40 year old virgin with some of the people in the program and then went right to bed.
On Monday I went to my teaching site for the first time since I’ve been in Tanzania! Two of my fellow volunteers – Abby and Alice (who will also be teaching and living with me there) came with me. We took a bus from the city center in Morogoro to the Dakawa High School. We went from the mountainous area of the city center to the complete flatlands in the bush! Dawaka is nestled in the valley between the Uluguru mountains in the Morogoro region. The high school is part of the Dakawa Development Center (DDC), which encompasses the all girls’ Dakawa high school where I’ll be teaching, a Teacher’s College, and a Primary (Elementary) school. The DDC is totally isolated from everything else. It really is in the bush in Tanzania! The whole ride there took about an hour or a little more and throughout the whole trip we only saw a few Maasai villages and a couple small stores on the side of the road. I’m not sure how I’ll do being so isolated from the city, especially since I requested that I wanted to be in a city, but I hope I’ll be able to manage well.
When we arrived at the high school we were escorted to our Headmistress’s office. Her name is Madam Miriam Mtima, although we address here solely as Madam Mtima. She is one hell of a woman! She is a widow who has two daughters – one of which just had a baby one year ago. She is a strong woman who lives on her own on the DDC right next to the high school. She’s very friendly, motherly, and welcoming. She really cares about the students and wants them to do well. She’s incredibly excited to have three native English speakers at the school. She said last year out of over 400 schools in the region the girls at Dakawa ranked at number 13! That’s really great! I was really anxious to meet the girls since there’s been so much anticipation to teach the whole time I’ve been here. I’m saying girls, but really they’re young women. Madam Mtima even said they are adults. They’re all very grown up and know the value of education and hence they take their studies really seriously and are good students.
On Monday we got to see our house for the first time, too! It is really pretty. It’s freshly painted yellow on the outside and is all one floor. The floors are cement but they have a plastic covering over them that is patterned with look-alike linoleum tiles – it’s like someone took it out of a 1970’s American home! Haha. We have a couch and two plush chairs as well as a large dining room table. Although our field director asked Madam Mtima not to, she got us a television for our living room which picks up satellite TV. I still can’t believe we’ll be able to watch television! I’ll probably just end up watching the news and/or getting addicted to a ridiculous Spanish soap opera that’s dubbed over in English with Swahili subtitles, haha. I’ve seen it before! Our kitchen has an electric stove with two burners on the top of it – a luxury here! We have a charcoal stove for backup as well…which is what most Tanzanians use to cook food – they prefer the taste it gives the food over what an electric stove does. We also have a refrigerator and a freezer! Those will definitely come in handy since we live an hour away from where we can get food from the city center in Morogoro. We have a nice bathroom equipped with a shower and a new western toilet (woohoo!). Although the showers will be cold, it will just be nice to have a shower in general. I do like bucket baths, too, though. The house also has three bedrooms, two of which have two windows and one which has one. We are going to do a lottery system and randomly select who gets what room, since one of them isn’t as nice as the other two. The one with only window is also a bit smaller than the other two. We’ll work it out though. Each room has a big twin bed frame with a new mattress and a huge armoire. We have a front porch with a cement sink that we can use to wash our clothes in and we also have a back porch that leads into a nice little back yard. Overall I was absolutely stunned with how nice the house is! Madam Mtima was able to furnish the house with the budget for only one teacher, even though there’s three of us living in the house! She’s a master bargainer! You bargain for everything here! Even furniture like plush couches and chairs and coffee tables are usually stacked up on the side of the dusty road and you can just come by, bargain for a piece and take it home with you. I’m really happy that Madam Mtima made our house so nice. Having a nice and comfortable place to live will definitely make our adjustment to the school much easier. Life’s always better when you have a good place to come home to.
Madam Mtima invited us into her house as well – we are actually neighbours (we live right across from her)! She made us ugali (sort of like grits or really fine hardened oatmeal...sounds weird but it’s good), fish stew, beef stew, and cooked vegetables and gave us bananas and clementines. She is incredibly welcoming and generous with offering food, as all Tanzanians are here. Before we left for Dakawa we had lunch in the city, so by the time we got there and Madam Mtima offered us all the food we weren’t really that hungry, but it’s rude in Tanzanian society to reject food that is offered to you. Eating someone’s food means you respect them a lot and you have a good relationship with them. If you object to eating someone’s food you do a real number on his or her ego. So even though we weren’t hungry, we stomached down the food. It was soooooooo tasty! I ate so much though that I opted out of eating dinner that night when we got back to the hotel because I was way too stuffed to even think about eating food!!!! Haha.
We went back to the school on Tuesday to meet with the English department, which right now only has 3 teachers for 300+ students! Crazy, huh?! I know we’re going to be a huge help to the English staff! We met the head of the English department and he seems really nice and supportive. He said he’s thrilled to have us there and he and the other teachers in the department want to be nothing but cooperative with us. It feels really amazing to have such a welcoming environment to come into as a first time teacher. I feel really blessed that the whole staff has been wonderful so far. We set up our teaching timetable and I will be teaching Form 5 for the whole year, which is roughly equivalent to Grade 11 in the U.S. I will teach one class on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday every week to my class of roughly 40 students. I teach from 7:30-8:50 on T and TH and 12:10-1:30 on W. It’s nice that I’ll finish classes quite early in the day so that I can have time to lesson plan, cook, clean the house, or go to Morogoro city if I need to. Also, since I don’t have class on Fridays or Mondays I can always go to Dar es Salaam for a long weekend, too!
Last night coming home in the daladala was a bit rough. I was sitting by the window on the inside of three seats and my housemates Abby and Alice were sitting next to me. The ride from Dakawa to Morogoro city usually takes about an hour or a little more, but this time it took us 3 hours to get back home. We ended up stopping at some tiny village on our way back to pick up huge burlap bags of rice. It took quite a while for the men on the daladala to load them! On our way back we kept stopping to pick up new people along the side of the road, too, so that they could also come to the city. Just when we were finally right outside of the city, the daladala took a turn down this really bumpy and narrow dirt road that has tons of pot holes (which are more like craters) in it. The bus got stuck and some guys on it had to get out and help push it over one of the craters! I got so claustrophobic at that point that I had to change my seat. All the dust from just outside the window and being smooshed up against the side of the bus the whole time drove me to the end of my wits! I moved to the back of the bus and felt a lot better. We finally arrived at another little village and unloaded the sacks of rice we’d brought from Dakawa. There were about 10 or more little kids standing outside the bus staring at me and the other two white girls I was with. They were in total awe of us being there and they kept saying “Wazungu!” hahahaha. It was a bit awkward, but funny nonetheless. We made it all right back up the road and finally made it to the city center – thank god! I was so happy to finally get out of the daladala!!! I went to the internet cafe quickly and then went back to the hotel. We watched some of the Lord of the Rings and I went to bed shortly after.
Today I'm hoping to run to the post office to pick up my contacts (hurray!) and do some laundry - by hand of course! Because our school is treating its water storage this week, I won't be able to move into my house until this coming Sunday. So, for the next couple of days, I will be in Morogoro hanging out and getting ready to make the big move to Dakawa!
That's all for now. Cheers everyone!
<3 Megan
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Morogoro Living, My Weekend in Dar, and Visiting the Dakawa High School
It shocks me that it’s been nearly a month since I left home! Time surely has flown by! Orientation felt like a vacation, besides all the sessions we had to go to and Swahili classes we had to take. We were mostly free in the evenings and sometimes on the weekends so we got to relax a little bit! Now we are getting into the full swing of things!
Right now I staying in Morogoro at a hotel called Amabilis, which is run by nuns. It’s a really nice place to stay. All of last week we were staying at the Morogoro Teacher’s College which is very different from this hotel! It was quite run down. There were lots of cracks in the ceilings and in between the walls, the bathrooms were pretty dirty and icky, and there were a lot of bugs everywhere! I saw a couple small lizards on my walls before I went to bed, but I tucked myself tightly into my mosquito net so I was safe, haha. Lizards are harmless, anyway. What was more worrisome was all the hornets that hung around the dining table where we had our orientation training sessions and ate our meals! One of our volunteers got stung twice – once on the foot and another time on top of her wrist – and she swelled up big time!! I felt so bad for her! It sounded like it really, really hurt!! I’m so glad I didn’t get stung! Luckily I brought some hydracortizone cream with me and when she put that on the stings the swelling went way down and she felt a lot better.
Being at the Teacher’s College was such an interesting environment. Most of the volunteers were really unhappy there because it was so dirty, but I was actually ok with it. I’m a very relaxed traveller and I’m very understanding of the fact that some places have different preferences and standards for the ways people live, especially in terms of cleanliness and what it means to be comfortable. I’m a really low maintenance traveller. As long as I’m safe and I have a roof over my head and a bed to sleep in I am happy. The way that place was is the way a lot of places are where people live here!! I mean some of them were really judgmental and ungrateful for living there, which really irks me because a lot of people in Tanzania aren’t fortunate enough to have even that kind of accommodation! I know everyone is different and we all want to feel comfortable, but one of the major points of travelling is to push your comfort zone and be willing to experience other cultures with an open and understanding perspective!!! I knew that Tanzania would be really different from home coming into this program so I think that’s why it’s been easier for me to adjust. I really love making connections with people here. That’s one of the most valuable things about travelling – getting to know people from the culture that hosts you. You know how social I am so you can imagine that I don’t have a problem meeting people here. Meeting them has made me feel more at home and it’s also made me feel more comfortable when I can the people I knew before, too.
This weekend I went to Dar es Salaam to visit. Two of the WorldTeach volunteers had to go back to Dar anyway with our field director on Friday in order to leave from Dar to go to their teaching site in Kibiti, which is three hours south of Dar. I got free transport with them through the Ministry of Education and stayed at a hotel near one of my friends who just came back home to Dar a little bit ago for his vacation from his graduate program. I went out to a nice club Friday night called the Garden Bistro, which is a really nice outdoor club right on the beach. It felt so good to dance and let loose - being in Morogoro for the past week and not having gone out at all in the evening made me antsy to get out! Saturday I took the day to sleep in for once and just relax all day in my hotel room. It was nice to have a day to unwind after being so busy for all of orientation. I spent the day with one of my friends hanging out and talking. That night we went to dinner and then later on I went out with some other friends to chill out at a couple bars in town. I got back late that evening. Sunday I woke up and met a friend at the mall who I lived next door to when I did my research for my thesis in December and January. We hung for a bit and it was really nice to catch up with him! Around lunch time he took me to the bus station and I got a bus ticket home to Morogoro. The bus terminal was all outdoors and it was super crowded and chaotic! We had to ask someone to help us find the right place for me to buy a ticket. In the bus terminal I felt like such a fish in a fishbowl the whole time – I was the only white person I could see for miles and miles around! Everyone was staring at me, probably wondering why, as a white person, I would be taking the cheapest way of transportation to Morogoro, since most white people here tend to be very welathy ex-patriots who live really luxuriously alongside the really nice beaches in Dar. They tend to take more upper class travelling methods like trains, planes, or use private transport with their own drivers if they need to go anywhere. It’s actually weird being a white person here who doesn’t have a lot of money. I’ve really tried to stretch my money as far as I possibly can while I’ve been here. It’s really rough though. All the small costs of living here really do add up! So that was my weekend in Dar. When I finally got back to my hotel in Morogoro I watched the 40 year old virgin with some of the people in the program and then went right to bed.
On Monday I went to my teaching site for the first time since I’ve been in Tanzania! Two of my fellow volunteers – Abby and Alice (who will also be teaching and living with me there) came with me. We took a bus from the city center in Morogoro to the Dakawa High School. We went from the mountainous area of the city center to the complete flatlands in the bush! Dawaka is nestled in the valley between the Uluguru mountains in the Morogoro region. The high school is part of the Dakawa Development Center (DDC), which encompasses the all girls’ Dakawa high school where I’ll be teaching, a Teacher’s College, and a Primary (Elementary) school. The DDC is totally isolated from everything else. It really is in the bush in Tanzania! The whole ride there took about an hour or a little more and throughout the whole trip we only saw a few Maasai villages and a couple small stores on the side of the road. I’m not sure how I’ll do being so isolated from the city, especially since I requested that I wanted to be in a city, but I hope I’ll be able to manage well.
When we arrived at the high school we were escorted to our Headmistress’s office. Her name is Madam Miriam Mtima, although we address here solely as Madam Mtima. She is one hell of a woman! She is a widow who has two daughters – one of which just had a baby one year ago. She is a strong woman who lives on her own on the DDC right next to the high school. She’s very friendly, motherly, and welcoming. She really cares about the students and wants them to do well. She’s incredibly excited to have three native English speakers at the school. She said last year out of over 400 schools in the region the girls at Dakawa ranked at number 13! That’s really great! I was really anxious to meet the girls since there’s been so much anticipation to teach the whole time I’ve been here. I’m saying girls, but really they’re young women. Madam Mtima even said they are adults. They’re all very grown up and know the value of education and hence they take their studies really seriously and are good students.
On Monday we got to see our house for the first time, too! It is really pretty. It’s freshly painted yellow on the outside and is all one floor. The floors are cement but they have a plastic covering over them that is patterned with look-alike linoleum tiles – it’s like someone took it out of a 1970’s American home! Haha. We have a couch and two plush chairs as well as a large dining room table. Although our field director asked Madam Mtima not to, she got us a television for our living room which picks up satellite TV. I still can’t believe we’ll be able to watch television! I’ll probably just end up watching the news and/or getting addicted to a ridiculous Spanish soap opera that’s dubbed over in English with Swahili subtitles, haha. I’ve seen it before! Our kitchen has an electric stove with two burners on the top of it – a luxury here! We have a charcoal stove for backup as well…which is what most Tanzanians use to cook food – they prefer the taste it gives the food over what an electric stove does. We also have a refrigerator and a freezer! Those will definitely come in handy since we live an hour away from where we can get food from the city center in Morogoro. We have a nice bathroom equipped with a shower and a new western toilet (woohoo!). Although the showers will be cold, it will just be nice to have a shower in general. I do like bucket baths, too, though. The house also has three bedrooms, two of which have two windows and one which has one. We are going to do a lottery system and randomly select who gets what room, since one of them isn’t as nice as the other two. The one with only window is also a bit smaller than the other two. We’ll work it out though. Each room has a big twin bed frame with a new mattress and a huge armoire. We have a front porch with a cement sink that we can use to wash our clothes in and we also have a back porch that leads into a nice little back yard. Overall I was absolutely stunned with how nice the house is! Madam Mtima was able to furnish the house with the budget for only one teacher, even though there’s three of us living in the house! She’s a master bargainer! You bargain for everything here! Even furniture like plush couches and chairs and coffee tables are usually stacked up on the side of the dusty road and you can just come by, bargain for a piece and take it home with you. I’m really happy that Madam Mtima made our house so nice. Having a nice and comfortable place to live will definitely make our adjustment to the school much easier. Life’s always better when you have a good place to come home to.
Madam Mtima invited us into her house as well – we are actually neighbours (we live right across from her)! She made us ugali (sort of like grits or really fine hardened oatmeal...sounds weird but it’s good), fish stew, beef stew, and cooked vegetables and gave us bananas and clementines. She is incredibly welcoming and generous with offering food, as all Tanzanians are here. Before we left for Dakawa we had lunch in the city, so by the time we got there and Madam Mtima offered us all the food we weren’t really that hungry, but it’s rude in Tanzanian society to reject food that is offered to you. Eating someone’s food means you respect them a lot and you have a good relationship with them. If you object to eating someone’s food you do a real number on his or her ego. So even though we weren’t hungry, we stomached down the food. It was soooooooo tasty! I ate so much though that I opted out of eating dinner that night when we got back to the hotel because I was way too stuffed to even think about eating food!!!! Haha.
We went back to the school on Tuesday to meet with the English department, which right now only has 3 teachers for 300+ students! Crazy, huh?! I know we’re going to be a huge help to the English staff! We met the head of the English department and he seems really nice and supportive. He said he’s thrilled to have us there and he and the other teachers in the department want to be nothing but cooperative with us. It feels really amazing to have such a welcoming environment to come into as a first time teacher. I feel really blessed that the whole staff has been wonderful so far. We set up our teaching timetable and I will be teaching Form 5 for the whole year, which is roughly equivalent to Grade 11 in the U.S. I will teach one class on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday every week to my class of roughly 40 students. I teach from 7:30-8:50 on T and TH and 12:10-1:30 on W. It’s nice that I’ll finish classes quite early in the day so that I can have time to lesson plan, cook, clean the house, or go to Morogoro city if I need to. Also, since I don’t have class on Fridays or Mondays I can always go to Dar es Salaam for a long weekend, too!
Last night coming home in the daladala was a bit rough. I was sitting by the window on the inside of three seats and my housemates Abby and Alice were sitting next to me. The ride from Dakawa to Morogoro city usually takes about an hour or a little more, but this time it took us 3 hours to get back home. We ended up stopping at some tiny village on our way back to pick up huge burlap bags of rice. It took quite a while for the men on the daladala to load them! On our way back we kept stopping to pick up new people along the side of the road, too, so that they could also come to the city. Just when we were finally right outside of the city, the daladala took a turn down this really bumpy and narrow dirt road that has tons of pot holes (which are more like craters) in it. The bus got stuck and some guys on it had to get out and help push it over one of the craters! I got so claustrophobic at that point that I had to change my seat. All the dust from just outside the window and being smooshed up against the side of the bus the whole time drove me to the end of my wits! I moved to the back of the bus and felt a lot better. We finally arrived at another little village and unloaded the sacks of rice we’d brought from Dakawa. There were about 10 or more little kids standing outside the bus staring at me and the other two white girls I was with. They were in total awe of us being there and they kept saying “Wazungu!” hahahaha. It was a bit awkward, but funny nonetheless. We made it all right back up the road and finally made it to the city center – thank god! I was so happy to finally get out of the daladala!!! I went to the internet cafe quickly and then went back to the hotel. We watched some of the Lord of the Rings and I went to bed shortly after.
Today I'm hoping to run to the post office to pick up my contacts (hurray!) and do some laundry - by hand of course! Because our school is treating its water storage this week, I won't be able to move into my house until this coming Sunday. So, for the next couple of days, I will be in Morogoro hanging out and getting ready to make the big move to Dakawa!
That's all for now. Cheers everyone!
<3 Megan
Right now I staying in Morogoro at a hotel called Amabilis, which is run by nuns. It’s a really nice place to stay. All of last week we were staying at the Morogoro Teacher’s College which is very different from this hotel! It was quite run down. There were lots of cracks in the ceilings and in between the walls, the bathrooms were pretty dirty and icky, and there were a lot of bugs everywhere! I saw a couple small lizards on my walls before I went to bed, but I tucked myself tightly into my mosquito net so I was safe, haha. Lizards are harmless, anyway. What was more worrisome was all the hornets that hung around the dining table where we had our orientation training sessions and ate our meals! One of our volunteers got stung twice – once on the foot and another time on top of her wrist – and she swelled up big time!! I felt so bad for her! It sounded like it really, really hurt!! I’m so glad I didn’t get stung! Luckily I brought some hydracortizone cream with me and when she put that on the stings the swelling went way down and she felt a lot better.
Being at the Teacher’s College was such an interesting environment. Most of the volunteers were really unhappy there because it was so dirty, but I was actually ok with it. I’m a very relaxed traveller and I’m very understanding of the fact that some places have different preferences and standards for the ways people live, especially in terms of cleanliness and what it means to be comfortable. I’m a really low maintenance traveller. As long as I’m safe and I have a roof over my head and a bed to sleep in I am happy. The way that place was is the way a lot of places are where people live here!! I mean some of them were really judgmental and ungrateful for living there, which really irks me because a lot of people in Tanzania aren’t fortunate enough to have even that kind of accommodation! I know everyone is different and we all want to feel comfortable, but one of the major points of travelling is to push your comfort zone and be willing to experience other cultures with an open and understanding perspective!!! I knew that Tanzania would be really different from home coming into this program so I think that’s why it’s been easier for me to adjust. I really love making connections with people here. That’s one of the most valuable things about travelling – getting to know people from the culture that hosts you. You know how social I am so you can imagine that I don’t have a problem meeting people here. Meeting them has made me feel more at home and it’s also made me feel more comfortable when I can the people I knew before, too.
This weekend I went to Dar es Salaam to visit. Two of the WorldTeach volunteers had to go back to Dar anyway with our field director on Friday in order to leave from Dar to go to their teaching site in Kibiti, which is three hours south of Dar. I got free transport with them through the Ministry of Education and stayed at a hotel near one of my friends who just came back home to Dar a little bit ago for his vacation from his graduate program. I went out to a nice club Friday night called the Garden Bistro, which is a really nice outdoor club right on the beach. It felt so good to dance and let loose - being in Morogoro for the past week and not having gone out at all in the evening made me antsy to get out! Saturday I took the day to sleep in for once and just relax all day in my hotel room. It was nice to have a day to unwind after being so busy for all of orientation. I spent the day with one of my friends hanging out and talking. That night we went to dinner and then later on I went out with some other friends to chill out at a couple bars in town. I got back late that evening. Sunday I woke up and met a friend at the mall who I lived next door to when I did my research for my thesis in December and January. We hung for a bit and it was really nice to catch up with him! Around lunch time he took me to the bus station and I got a bus ticket home to Morogoro. The bus terminal was all outdoors and it was super crowded and chaotic! We had to ask someone to help us find the right place for me to buy a ticket. In the bus terminal I felt like such a fish in a fishbowl the whole time – I was the only white person I could see for miles and miles around! Everyone was staring at me, probably wondering why, as a white person, I would be taking the cheapest way of transportation to Morogoro, since most white people here tend to be very welathy ex-patriots who live really luxuriously alongside the really nice beaches in Dar. They tend to take more upper class travelling methods like trains, planes, or use private transport with their own drivers if they need to go anywhere. It’s actually weird being a white person here who doesn’t have a lot of money. I’ve really tried to stretch my money as far as I possibly can while I’ve been here. It’s really rough though. All the small costs of living here really do add up! So that was my weekend in Dar. When I finally got back to my hotel in Morogoro I watched the 40 year old virgin with some of the people in the program and then went right to bed.
On Monday I went to my teaching site for the first time since I’ve been in Tanzania! Two of my fellow volunteers – Abby and Alice (who will also be teaching and living with me there) came with me. We took a bus from the city center in Morogoro to the Dakawa High School. We went from the mountainous area of the city center to the complete flatlands in the bush! Dawaka is nestled in the valley between the Uluguru mountains in the Morogoro region. The high school is part of the Dakawa Development Center (DDC), which encompasses the all girls’ Dakawa high school where I’ll be teaching, a Teacher’s College, and a Primary (Elementary) school. The DDC is totally isolated from everything else. It really is in the bush in Tanzania! The whole ride there took about an hour or a little more and throughout the whole trip we only saw a few Maasai villages and a couple small stores on the side of the road. I’m not sure how I’ll do being so isolated from the city, especially since I requested that I wanted to be in a city, but I hope I’ll be able to manage well.
When we arrived at the high school we were escorted to our Headmistress’s office. Her name is Madam Miriam Mtima, although we address here solely as Madam Mtima. She is one hell of a woman! She is a widow who has two daughters – one of which just had a baby one year ago. She is a strong woman who lives on her own on the DDC right next to the high school. She’s very friendly, motherly, and welcoming. She really cares about the students and wants them to do well. She’s incredibly excited to have three native English speakers at the school. She said last year out of over 400 schools in the region the girls at Dakawa ranked at number 13! That’s really great! I was really anxious to meet the girls since there’s been so much anticipation to teach the whole time I’ve been here. I’m saying girls, but really they’re young women. Madam Mtima even said they are adults. They’re all very grown up and know the value of education and hence they take their studies really seriously and are good students.
On Monday we got to see our house for the first time, too! It is really pretty. It’s freshly painted yellow on the outside and is all one floor. The floors are cement but they have a plastic covering over them that is patterned with look-alike linoleum tiles – it’s like someone took it out of a 1970’s American home! Haha. We have a couch and two plush chairs as well as a large dining room table. Although our field director asked Madam Mtima not to, she got us a television for our living room which picks up satellite TV. I still can’t believe we’ll be able to watch television! I’ll probably just end up watching the news and/or getting addicted to a ridiculous Spanish soap opera that’s dubbed over in English with Swahili subtitles, haha. I’ve seen it before! Our kitchen has an electric stove with two burners on the top of it – a luxury here! We have a charcoal stove for backup as well…which is what most Tanzanians use to cook food – they prefer the taste it gives the food over what an electric stove does. We also have a refrigerator and a freezer! Those will definitely come in handy since we live an hour away from where we can get food from the city center in Morogoro. We have a nice bathroom equipped with a shower and a new western toilet (woohoo!). Although the showers will be cold, it will just be nice to have a shower in general. I do like bucket baths, too, though. The house also has three bedrooms, two of which have two windows and one which has one. We are going to do a lottery system and randomly select who gets what room, since one of them isn’t as nice as the other two. The one with only window is also a bit smaller than the other two. We’ll work it out though. Each room has a big twin bed frame with a new mattress and a huge armoire. We have a front porch with a cement sink that we can use to wash our clothes in and we also have a back porch that leads into a nice little back yard. Overall I was absolutely stunned with how nice the house is! Madam Mtima was able to furnish the house with the budget for only one teacher, even though there’s three of us living in the house! She’s a master bargainer! You bargain for everything here! Even furniture like plush couches and chairs and coffee tables are usually stacked up on the side of the dusty road and you can just come by, bargain for a piece and take it home with you. I’m really happy that Madam Mtima made our house so nice. Having a nice and comfortable place to live will definitely make our adjustment to the school much easier. Life’s always better when you have a good place to come home to.
Madam Mtima invited us into her house as well – we are actually neighbours (we live right across from her)! She made us ugali (sort of like grits or really fine hardened oatmeal...sounds weird but it’s good), fish stew, beef stew, and cooked vegetables and gave us bananas and clementines. She is incredibly welcoming and generous with offering food, as all Tanzanians are here. Before we left for Dakawa we had lunch in the city, so by the time we got there and Madam Mtima offered us all the food we weren’t really that hungry, but it’s rude in Tanzanian society to reject food that is offered to you. Eating someone’s food means you respect them a lot and you have a good relationship with them. If you object to eating someone’s food you do a real number on his or her ego. So even though we weren’t hungry, we stomached down the food. It was soooooooo tasty! I ate so much though that I opted out of eating dinner that night when we got back to the hotel because I was way too stuffed to even think about eating food!!!! Haha.
We went back to the school on Tuesday to meet with the English department, which right now only has 3 teachers for 300+ students! Crazy, huh?! I know we’re going to be a huge help to the English staff! We met the head of the English department and he seems really nice and supportive. He said he’s thrilled to have us there and he and the other teachers in the department want to be nothing but cooperative with us. It feels really amazing to have such a welcoming environment to come into as a first time teacher. I feel really blessed that the whole staff has been wonderful so far. We set up our teaching timetable and I will be teaching Form 5 for the whole year, which is roughly equivalent to Grade 11 in the U.S. I will teach one class on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday every week to my class of roughly 40 students. I teach from 7:30-8:50 on T and TH and 12:10-1:30 on W. It’s nice that I’ll finish classes quite early in the day so that I can have time to lesson plan, cook, clean the house, or go to Morogoro city if I need to. Also, since I don’t have class on Fridays or Mondays I can always go to Dar es Salaam for a long weekend, too!
Last night coming home in the daladala was a bit rough. I was sitting by the window on the inside of three seats and my housemates Abby and Alice were sitting next to me. The ride from Dakawa to Morogoro city usually takes about an hour or a little more, but this time it took us 3 hours to get back home. We ended up stopping at some tiny village on our way back to pick up huge burlap bags of rice. It took quite a while for the men on the daladala to load them! On our way back we kept stopping to pick up new people along the side of the road, too, so that they could also come to the city. Just when we were finally right outside of the city, the daladala took a turn down this really bumpy and narrow dirt road that has tons of pot holes (which are more like craters) in it. The bus got stuck and some guys on it had to get out and help push it over one of the craters! I got so claustrophobic at that point that I had to change my seat. All the dust from just outside the window and being smooshed up against the side of the bus the whole time drove me to the end of my wits! I moved to the back of the bus and felt a lot better. We finally arrived at another little village and unloaded the sacks of rice we’d brought from Dakawa. There were about 10 or more little kids standing outside the bus staring at me and the other two white girls I was with. They were in total awe of us being there and they kept saying “Wazungu!” hahahaha. It was a bit awkward, but funny nonetheless. We made it all right back up the road and finally made it to the city center – thank god! I was so happy to finally get out of the daladala!!! I went to the internet cafe quickly and then went back to the hotel. We watched some of the Lord of the Rings and I went to bed shortly after.
Today I'm hoping to run to the post office to pick up my contacts (hurray!) and do some laundry - by hand of course! Because our school is treating its water storage this week, I won't be able to move into my house until this coming Sunday. So, for the next couple of days, I will be in Morogoro hanging out and getting ready to make the big move to Dakawa!
That's all for now. Cheers everyone!
<3 Megan
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Orientation is Complete!
I just checked my blog and was sad to see that the last post I wrote did not end up loading correctly to make it on the site! I'll do my best to catch you up to speed about what's been going on.
This past week I taught four different English classes at the Lupanga Secondary School in Morogoro, Tanzania. I taught Forms 3 and 4, which are equivalent to 9th and 10th graders in the U.S. I taught two classes that were Form 3 and two classes that were Form 4. Each class I taught was 40 minutes long and I did a different lessons for each. On Tuesday I taught a Form 4 class about transportation vocabulary, I read them a story about transportation, and I had them write short paragraphs about the kind of transportation they use every day. On Wednesday I taught a Form 3 class about vocabulary having to do with jobs and I had my students practice speaking by interviewing one another about what jobs they would like to have in their futures. Today (Thursday) I taught two classes with a break in between. For my two classes today I wrote a story about decision making - it was a sort of fable where a girl finds a couple thousand dollars and must decide whether she wants to use the money to go to a University and improve her education or use the money to pay off her mom's medical bills (since she's sick in the story). I had a ton of fun writing it! I gave everyone in my Form 4 class a sentence from the story to read aloud and then I asked comprehension questions about the story afterward. I then taught them a grammar lesson on the conditional tense ("I would...") and asked them to fill in the blank "If I were the character in the story, then I would choose to...with the money." It was a successful class :). My last class of the day went extremely well. I read my story aloud to the students in the Form 3 class and had them answer questions about it as well. I taught them about pro's and con's and about decisions and consequences. I split the group into two teams and one team had to argue the pro's for the main character using the money for the University and the other team had to argue against the same outcome with the con's. After they brainstormed together I had them debate and then had three students judge which side won the debate. It was a fun class. :) I've really enjoyed teaching so far! The classes were about 30-40 students each and although sometimes it was rough commanding all of their attention, I managed quite well and was able to produce some really successful lessons!
I'm so excited to finally get to Dakawa soon! We are supposed to move there tomorrow, but there's a chance that we might still be in Morogoro for a while while they finish up fixing up our house! We should start teaching on Monday, but we'll see how that goes with the housing situation! I'll keep you updated!
I'm out of internet time at this cafe, but I'll write more soon! :)
Much love!
This past week I taught four different English classes at the Lupanga Secondary School in Morogoro, Tanzania. I taught Forms 3 and 4, which are equivalent to 9th and 10th graders in the U.S. I taught two classes that were Form 3 and two classes that were Form 4. Each class I taught was 40 minutes long and I did a different lessons for each. On Tuesday I taught a Form 4 class about transportation vocabulary, I read them a story about transportation, and I had them write short paragraphs about the kind of transportation they use every day. On Wednesday I taught a Form 3 class about vocabulary having to do with jobs and I had my students practice speaking by interviewing one another about what jobs they would like to have in their futures. Today (Thursday) I taught two classes with a break in between. For my two classes today I wrote a story about decision making - it was a sort of fable where a girl finds a couple thousand dollars and must decide whether she wants to use the money to go to a University and improve her education or use the money to pay off her mom's medical bills (since she's sick in the story). I had a ton of fun writing it! I gave everyone in my Form 4 class a sentence from the story to read aloud and then I asked comprehension questions about the story afterward. I then taught them a grammar lesson on the conditional tense ("I would...") and asked them to fill in the blank "If I were the character in the story, then I would choose to...with the money." It was a successful class :). My last class of the day went extremely well. I read my story aloud to the students in the Form 3 class and had them answer questions about it as well. I taught them about pro's and con's and about decisions and consequences. I split the group into two teams and one team had to argue the pro's for the main character using the money for the University and the other team had to argue against the same outcome with the con's. After they brainstormed together I had them debate and then had three students judge which side won the debate. It was a fun class. :) I've really enjoyed teaching so far! The classes were about 30-40 students each and although sometimes it was rough commanding all of their attention, I managed quite well and was able to produce some really successful lessons!
I'm so excited to finally get to Dakawa soon! We are supposed to move there tomorrow, but there's a chance that we might still be in Morogoro for a while while they finish up fixing up our house! We should start teaching on Monday, but we'll see how that goes with the housing situation! I'll keep you updated!
I'm out of internet time at this cafe, but I'll write more soon! :)
Much love!
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Monday, July 12, 2010
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Morogoro!
I arrived in Morogoro on Friday night. We took a bus from Dar es Salaam and drove for about four and a half hours. The trip usually takes about 3 hours from Dar to Moro, but we got caught in some early weekend traffic on our way. The environment is so much different in Morogoro! It is very mountainous, which makes it a bit cooler than Dar, and the air is so much cleaner here. It's much less crowded and the city center is quite small - I'm at an internet cafe in the center of town now. We are staying at the Morogoro Teacher's College until Friday where we are wrapping up our orientation. The accommodation is quite different than that in Dar es Salaam.
Ayayay...there is a white woman here, probably from America because she has a southern accent, and she just popped her head into this internet cafe and screamed in english "Is Yahoo working today?!!" hahahahahaha I just burst out laughing with all the other Tanzanian customers. She's the type of American tourist I fear coming off as - she thinks if she speaks english really loud then people will understand her better, even though it's really no different than speaking softly. I'm still sitting here laughing about it as I'm typing this. That totally made my day! Haha.
When we got to Morogoro on Friday we settled into our rooms and walked to town in the complete darkness to this really good pizza and chinese restaurant called Dragonaires. It's soooooo good there! They only serve pizza on Fridays and Sundays, so we totally lucked out going there :). We came back home early and all went straight to bed because we were so tired from traveling! Yesterday we went with this guy named Bill who prefers to be called "Babu Bill" (grandfather Bill) because he's 69 years old. He's a Peace Corps volunteer who's been here in Morogoro for 20 months now teaching computer tech classes and engineering. He's an avid hiker and yesterday he took all of us up the Uluguru Mountains. We climbed alongside a really nice river the whole time and it was really nice! I got some great pictures that I'll hopefully be able to share with you all soon! Last night we just stayed in at the Teacher's College and played Bananagrams and read our books - we took the night to relax! We've been so tired lately. Today we have the morning free so we came to town and we have to be back in a little bit to get lunch at the Teacher's College.
I have to run now, but hope to hear from you all soon! Much love, Meg.
Ayayay...there is a white woman here, probably from America because she has a southern accent, and she just popped her head into this internet cafe and screamed in english "Is Yahoo working today?!!" hahahahahaha I just burst out laughing with all the other Tanzanian customers. She's the type of American tourist I fear coming off as - she thinks if she speaks english really loud then people will understand her better, even though it's really no different than speaking softly. I'm still sitting here laughing about it as I'm typing this. That totally made my day! Haha.
When we got to Morogoro on Friday we settled into our rooms and walked to town in the complete darkness to this really good pizza and chinese restaurant called Dragonaires. It's soooooo good there! They only serve pizza on Fridays and Sundays, so we totally lucked out going there :). We came back home early and all went straight to bed because we were so tired from traveling! Yesterday we went with this guy named Bill who prefers to be called "Babu Bill" (grandfather Bill) because he's 69 years old. He's a Peace Corps volunteer who's been here in Morogoro for 20 months now teaching computer tech classes and engineering. He's an avid hiker and yesterday he took all of us up the Uluguru Mountains. We climbed alongside a really nice river the whole time and it was really nice! I got some great pictures that I'll hopefully be able to share with you all soon! Last night we just stayed in at the Teacher's College and played Bananagrams and read our books - we took the night to relax! We've been so tired lately. Today we have the morning free so we came to town and we have to be back in a little bit to get lunch at the Teacher's College.
I have to run now, but hope to hear from you all soon! Much love, Meg.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Nairobi Lady Eyes...
Hello All!
I have pink eye right now for the first time ever, which is awfullllll. I have medicine though so I'm getting better and it was only $5...score! :) Six out of the eight volunteers in my program have gotten pink eye(s) in the last week - it spreads so easily!!! I was the 5th one to get it. I thought I was fine and then I woke up and was like Oh shitttttt. Haha. I'll be ok though. My Swahili teacher said that they call pink eye here "Nairobi lady eyes." That sounds so much prettier than what it's actually describing...I had to throw away my only pair of contacts here and I'm stuck wearing my glasses until I get my contacts from my family, which I accidentally forgot to bring with me when I left the States...so I guess I'll just have to embrace my nerd gear for the next week or so...
Btdubs, just to reiterate, my mailing address is the following if you ever wanna send me anything!
Megan Randall - WorldTeach Volunteer
Dakawa High School
PO Box 414
Morogoro, Tanzania
I just got back with my volunteer group from doing an overnight stay at a beach here in an area called Kigamboni. You have to take a small ferry from one side of the Dar es Salaam coast line to get to Kigamboni - it's still on the mainland of tanzania but it's just around the corner and only take 2.5 minutes to get from one side to the other on the ferry. We stayed in little beach huts and got to swim and sunbathe! IT WAS SO SUPER NICE! We've also been working hard, too, though! We got a talk today on the schooling system in Tanzania and it was somewhat helpful. Tomorrow morning we're leaving early to drive on a bus to Morogoro - the small city that's an hour away from my actual teaching site. We're going to spend a week there doing teaching practicums and then we'll travel to our teaching sites on Friday. I'm so excited to teach finally! I'm also a bit terrified, but it really should be amazing. It'll be a great opportunity for me to grow as a leader and really get to know myself and my students in ways that I can't even anticipate now! :)
We had our last Swahili lesson today with our fabulous teacher! :) I'll miss him, but he might be able to teach us a bit in Morogoro when we get there since he's going there this weekend and will be there for two weeks teaching other volunteers Swahili. Tonight we're having dinner at a fly Ethipian restuarant called "Addis in Dar" which I've heard is amazing!!!! :) We're going to Sweet Easy again after dinner for dancing and jamming to live out our last night in Dar. Just because I've got Nairobi Lady Eyes doesn't mean I can enjoy myself if I have the energy - I'm not contagious anymore either so don't sweat it.
Well that's all the updates I have for you now. Hope to hear from you soon! We're leaving for Morogoro in the morning and I'm not sure what the internet connection there will be like, but I'll try to update you all again as much and as soon as I can when I get there safely.
Talk to you soon! <3 ya!
Meg
I have pink eye right now for the first time ever, which is awfullllll. I have medicine though so I'm getting better and it was only $5...score! :) Six out of the eight volunteers in my program have gotten pink eye(s) in the last week - it spreads so easily!!! I was the 5th one to get it. I thought I was fine and then I woke up and was like Oh shitttttt. Haha. I'll be ok though. My Swahili teacher said that they call pink eye here "Nairobi lady eyes." That sounds so much prettier than what it's actually describing...I had to throw away my only pair of contacts here and I'm stuck wearing my glasses until I get my contacts from my family, which I accidentally forgot to bring with me when I left the States...so I guess I'll just have to embrace my nerd gear for the next week or so...
Btdubs, just to reiterate, my mailing address is the following if you ever wanna send me anything!
Megan Randall - WorldTeach Volunteer
Dakawa High School
PO Box 414
Morogoro, Tanzania
I just got back with my volunteer group from doing an overnight stay at a beach here in an area called Kigamboni. You have to take a small ferry from one side of the Dar es Salaam coast line to get to Kigamboni - it's still on the mainland of tanzania but it's just around the corner and only take 2.5 minutes to get from one side to the other on the ferry. We stayed in little beach huts and got to swim and sunbathe! IT WAS SO SUPER NICE! We've also been working hard, too, though! We got a talk today on the schooling system in Tanzania and it was somewhat helpful. Tomorrow morning we're leaving early to drive on a bus to Morogoro - the small city that's an hour away from my actual teaching site. We're going to spend a week there doing teaching practicums and then we'll travel to our teaching sites on Friday. I'm so excited to teach finally! I'm also a bit terrified, but it really should be amazing. It'll be a great opportunity for me to grow as a leader and really get to know myself and my students in ways that I can't even anticipate now! :)
We had our last Swahili lesson today with our fabulous teacher! :) I'll miss him, but he might be able to teach us a bit in Morogoro when we get there since he's going there this weekend and will be there for two weeks teaching other volunteers Swahili. Tonight we're having dinner at a fly Ethipian restuarant called "Addis in Dar" which I've heard is amazing!!!! :) We're going to Sweet Easy again after dinner for dancing and jamming to live out our last night in Dar. Just because I've got Nairobi Lady Eyes doesn't mean I can enjoy myself if I have the energy - I'm not contagious anymore either so don't sweat it.
Well that's all the updates I have for you now. Hope to hear from you soon! We're leaving for Morogoro in the morning and I'm not sure what the internet connection there will be like, but I'll try to update you all again as much and as soon as I can when I get there safely.
Talk to you soon! <3 ya!
Meg
Saturday, July 3, 2010
T.i.T. (This is Tanzania)...hurry up and wait!
I'm starting to think that my computer might not be the best at picking up wireless! I've tried and tried over the past few days to use the hostel's internet connection so that I could post to my blog, but to no avail I have failed and failed - until now!!! :) As Tanzanians say, "T.i.T" - or 'This is Tanzania.' By that they mean you should just take every little fluke with a grain of salt and realize that sometimes you do have to hurry up and wait. It's a different culture and you have to adjust!
So on to updates...I have been soooooooo busy lately!!! We had sessions all day Thursday for teacher training and in the evening we went to this awesome bar/pub/dance place called the Sweet Easy. It was super fun because there was a live band that was singing songs ranging from "I feel good" to Justin Bieber's song "Baby" and some local Swahili music which is lumped into one category of music know here as "Bongo (slang for "Tanzania") Flava. :) I danced and danced! We met some really cool Indian guys from Dubai and it was one of their birthday's. They are suuuuuuuper rich - like billionaires!!!!! Their family owns ALL the cotton farms in Tanzania and it also owns one of the two gold mines in Dubai. One of the three guys I was talking to had a diamond ring on his finger and also a white gold bracelet. They were looking to party and invited us on to their cousin's yacht for the night which was right near Sweet Easy. Although it was such a crazy idea, five of us volunteers went and had the time of our lives!!!! It was super fun!!! The yacht was crazy nice! I have pictures of it and hopefully I will be able to load them and post them soon! We had to take a small speed boat to get to the yacht and once we got there we danced and hung out in their private club on the boat! It was so surreal because I've never even been on a yacht before!!!!!! Haha...We had so much fun chatting and dancing that we didn't get back to our hostel until 6am! We had to be up by 9am Friday though (which was awful we were all so tired!) and we had Swahili language class and a bunch of training.
Our swahili teacher is the funniest and cutest man alive, I swear! :) Whenever we're in class (which is an hour and a half every day) and we accidentally pronounce something a little bit wrong, he will say "kidogo" (the swahili word for "a little bit") in a really high pitched sing songy voice, which is absolutely hilarious. We're laughing in that class more than anything! He's actually going to Morogoro where we'll all be by next Friday (less than a week from now!) to start a once week training course at our actual placements. We're going to see if we can continue lessons with him while he's there because we all like him so much. I'm learning A TON of Swahili!!!!! :D I am so happy about that! I was pretty nervous before I left about not knowing anything but the classes have been super helpful! I'm learning about the grammar too which helps to figure out what everyone is saying here!
Later on, on Friday, we went to a health clinic to see a doctor who told us all the scary medical stuff that can happen to us while we're here. She freaked the shit out of all of us, but she was still helpful. Don't worry - I know I can get very good preventative meds here to protect me from malaria and dengue fever and I can also get treatment very quickly if I need it, so please please don't worry I will be safe and keep healthy. I probably will get sick here at some point, but who doesn't get sick over a whole year? During the session with her I was so tired from lack of sleep I kept nodding off, but I heard everything she was saying so I'll be all set. She told us that we can even buy treatment pills for malaria now in case we ever feel like we've gotten it. She seemed like a real pessimist who assumed that all of us would get malaria, but who knows. Either way, I am going to buy a self-given test and a treatment pack of pills now so that if I ever feel weird or actually do get malaria I can treat it right away and get back to health as soon as possible.
Friday night we went to this BOMB Indian restaurant that's outside. It was full of Indian people (there's a big population of them here) and the food was absolutely stellar!!!!!! We were outside during our meal and we got to watch the Ghana versus Uruguay football (soccer) game. We left right before the first half ended and just as we were getting in taxis to go home Ghana scored!! It was soooo exciting! As we drove home we could see nearly 25 people crowded around teensie tiny T.V.'s trying to catch the game on practically every street we passed!!! It was so cool to see a whole community of people coming together to watch the game! When we got back to the hostel it was nearly 11:30 but I stayed up to watch the game even though I was incredibly tired!!!!! I was soooooo heartbroken when Ghana finally lost - the whole town went quiet and it was just awful!!!! In Swahili, whenever you ask someone how he or she is, he or she will NEVER say that he or she is bad....NEVER EVER. Even if a close relative of yours dies, you still respond that you are good when someone asks you - it is just the Tanzanian way. However, today (Saturday) when we were asking people how they were they were like "Not good" or "Bad" - so you can just imagine how horrible the loss was for everyone! :( Even though Ghana lost, I'm glad I was rooting for them the previous time when they beat the U.S. - that was a huuuuuge win for Ghana!
This morning we had Swahili class at 8:00am!!! It was tough to wake up for that time on a Saturday, especially since we've been so busy and sleep deprived, but it was a really good lesson. Benjamin, our Swahili teacher, taught us how to bargain in Swahili at the local markets. He says that in Tanzania there are three kinds of prices at the markets: the wazungu (white people/foreigner price - the highest) price, the rich price (for local Tanzanians and Africans whom venders can tell come from money because of the way they dress and act), and the normal price (for those who dress in normal clothes and who are African and/or Tanzanian). He taught us this phrase "Sina pesa hiyo" which means "I cannot pay that price" and he said that it would wow venders when we were trying to bargain down our wazungu price. I used it today at a market and I in fact shaved down the price! It was my first time bargaining in Swahili and it went quite well :). I got a dress and a skirt (each originally priced at 10,000 Tsh each) for 15,000 together - not so bad (that's like $7.50 an item). After Swahili class today we had a bunch of teaching sessions, went to lunch at the beach (like usual), and we rode on a daladala for an hour to get to the "Saba Saba" festival, which is an international trade fair. It was so cool to be on the daladala. I spoke the whole way over with a guy who was a lawyer in Dar es Salaam. He gave me his business card and told me whenever I am in trouble to give him a call. Tanzanians are very friendly and always willing to help you out. They love it if you ask questions to get to know them. Family is absolutely important to them, which is very different from the more individualistically-focused culture of the U.S. This guy was on his way to Saba Saba to see his Uncle who always has a stand there at his bar every weekend the fair goes on. It was neat talking with him the whole way. The actual fair was pretty cool and we got to watch most of the game between Germany and Argentina! I can't believe Argentina lost! Spain is playing Paraguay right now and it's tied at 0 to 0. I'm going to go into the living room right now and watch the second half of the game! I will check back with you later about what I'm up to! I'll be heading out of this hostel in Dar es Salaam (where there is semi-stable internet) next Friday, as I said, to go to Morogoro, where I will be living an hour away from internet access (which is in the main city). I will try my best to do often updates as time permits!
Oh - HAPPY 4th of July!!!!!!!! Tomorrow I'm going to Mbudya Island, which is a short boat ride away from the Dar es Salaam main coast. It's going to be absolutely beautiful! We're going there with a few of my Tanzanian friends for the day to celebrate the 4th of July since we can't all be home to celebrate it! I hope you enjoy your holiday and I certainly will as well! :) It'll be nice to finally go to the beach and swim in the ocean, since I haven't been able to do that yet since I got here! Much love to you all and I will be in touch soon! XO...cheers!
So on to updates...I have been soooooooo busy lately!!! We had sessions all day Thursday for teacher training and in the evening we went to this awesome bar/pub/dance place called the Sweet Easy. It was super fun because there was a live band that was singing songs ranging from "I feel good" to Justin Bieber's song "Baby" and some local Swahili music which is lumped into one category of music know here as "Bongo (slang for "Tanzania") Flava. :) I danced and danced! We met some really cool Indian guys from Dubai and it was one of their birthday's. They are suuuuuuuper rich - like billionaires!!!!! Their family owns ALL the cotton farms in Tanzania and it also owns one of the two gold mines in Dubai. One of the three guys I was talking to had a diamond ring on his finger and also a white gold bracelet. They were looking to party and invited us on to their cousin's yacht for the night which was right near Sweet Easy. Although it was such a crazy idea, five of us volunteers went and had the time of our lives!!!! It was super fun!!! The yacht was crazy nice! I have pictures of it and hopefully I will be able to load them and post them soon! We had to take a small speed boat to get to the yacht and once we got there we danced and hung out in their private club on the boat! It was so surreal because I've never even been on a yacht before!!!!!! Haha...We had so much fun chatting and dancing that we didn't get back to our hostel until 6am! We had to be up by 9am Friday though (which was awful we were all so tired!) and we had Swahili language class and a bunch of training.
Our swahili teacher is the funniest and cutest man alive, I swear! :) Whenever we're in class (which is an hour and a half every day) and we accidentally pronounce something a little bit wrong, he will say "kidogo" (the swahili word for "a little bit") in a really high pitched sing songy voice, which is absolutely hilarious. We're laughing in that class more than anything! He's actually going to Morogoro where we'll all be by next Friday (less than a week from now!) to start a once week training course at our actual placements. We're going to see if we can continue lessons with him while he's there because we all like him so much. I'm learning A TON of Swahili!!!!! :D I am so happy about that! I was pretty nervous before I left about not knowing anything but the classes have been super helpful! I'm learning about the grammar too which helps to figure out what everyone is saying here!
Later on, on Friday, we went to a health clinic to see a doctor who told us all the scary medical stuff that can happen to us while we're here. She freaked the shit out of all of us, but she was still helpful. Don't worry - I know I can get very good preventative meds here to protect me from malaria and dengue fever and I can also get treatment very quickly if I need it, so please please don't worry I will be safe and keep healthy. I probably will get sick here at some point, but who doesn't get sick over a whole year? During the session with her I was so tired from lack of sleep I kept nodding off, but I heard everything she was saying so I'll be all set. She told us that we can even buy treatment pills for malaria now in case we ever feel like we've gotten it. She seemed like a real pessimist who assumed that all of us would get malaria, but who knows. Either way, I am going to buy a self-given test and a treatment pack of pills now so that if I ever feel weird or actually do get malaria I can treat it right away and get back to health as soon as possible.
Friday night we went to this BOMB Indian restaurant that's outside. It was full of Indian people (there's a big population of them here) and the food was absolutely stellar!!!!!! We were outside during our meal and we got to watch the Ghana versus Uruguay football (soccer) game. We left right before the first half ended and just as we were getting in taxis to go home Ghana scored!! It was soooo exciting! As we drove home we could see nearly 25 people crowded around teensie tiny T.V.'s trying to catch the game on practically every street we passed!!! It was so cool to see a whole community of people coming together to watch the game! When we got back to the hostel it was nearly 11:30 but I stayed up to watch the game even though I was incredibly tired!!!!! I was soooooo heartbroken when Ghana finally lost - the whole town went quiet and it was just awful!!!! In Swahili, whenever you ask someone how he or she is, he or she will NEVER say that he or she is bad....NEVER EVER. Even if a close relative of yours dies, you still respond that you are good when someone asks you - it is just the Tanzanian way. However, today (Saturday) when we were asking people how they were they were like "Not good" or "Bad" - so you can just imagine how horrible the loss was for everyone! :( Even though Ghana lost, I'm glad I was rooting for them the previous time when they beat the U.S. - that was a huuuuuge win for Ghana!
This morning we had Swahili class at 8:00am!!! It was tough to wake up for that time on a Saturday, especially since we've been so busy and sleep deprived, but it was a really good lesson. Benjamin, our Swahili teacher, taught us how to bargain in Swahili at the local markets. He says that in Tanzania there are three kinds of prices at the markets: the wazungu (white people/foreigner price - the highest) price, the rich price (for local Tanzanians and Africans whom venders can tell come from money because of the way they dress and act), and the normal price (for those who dress in normal clothes and who are African and/or Tanzanian). He taught us this phrase "Sina pesa hiyo" which means "I cannot pay that price" and he said that it would wow venders when we were trying to bargain down our wazungu price. I used it today at a market and I in fact shaved down the price! It was my first time bargaining in Swahili and it went quite well :). I got a dress and a skirt (each originally priced at 10,000 Tsh each) for 15,000 together - not so bad (that's like $7.50 an item). After Swahili class today we had a bunch of teaching sessions, went to lunch at the beach (like usual), and we rode on a daladala for an hour to get to the "Saba Saba" festival, which is an international trade fair. It was so cool to be on the daladala. I spoke the whole way over with a guy who was a lawyer in Dar es Salaam. He gave me his business card and told me whenever I am in trouble to give him a call. Tanzanians are very friendly and always willing to help you out. They love it if you ask questions to get to know them. Family is absolutely important to them, which is very different from the more individualistically-focused culture of the U.S. This guy was on his way to Saba Saba to see his Uncle who always has a stand there at his bar every weekend the fair goes on. It was neat talking with him the whole way. The actual fair was pretty cool and we got to watch most of the game between Germany and Argentina! I can't believe Argentina lost! Spain is playing Paraguay right now and it's tied at 0 to 0. I'm going to go into the living room right now and watch the second half of the game! I will check back with you later about what I'm up to! I'll be heading out of this hostel in Dar es Salaam (where there is semi-stable internet) next Friday, as I said, to go to Morogoro, where I will be living an hour away from internet access (which is in the main city). I will try my best to do often updates as time permits!
Oh - HAPPY 4th of July!!!!!!!! Tomorrow I'm going to Mbudya Island, which is a short boat ride away from the Dar es Salaam main coast. It's going to be absolutely beautiful! We're going there with a few of my Tanzanian friends for the day to celebrate the 4th of July since we can't all be home to celebrate it! I hope you enjoy your holiday and I certainly will as well! :) It'll be nice to finally go to the beach and swim in the ocean, since I haven't been able to do that yet since I got here! Much love to you all and I will be in touch soon! XO...cheers!
Thursday, July 1, 2010
TANZANIA ADDRESS!
In case you want to send me anything while I am in Tanzania, this is my mailing address:
Megan Randall, WorldTeach Volunteer
Dakawa High School
P.O. Box 414
Morogoro, Tanzania
There's no zip code so don't worry about that!
Thanks and love you all! I will try to get postcards out to you soon!
Love, Meg
Megan Randall, WorldTeach Volunteer
Dakawa High School
P.O. Box 414
Morogoro, Tanzania
There's no zip code so don't worry about that!
Thanks and love you all! I will try to get postcards out to you soon!
Love, Meg
Getting Into the Orientation Rhythm
Hello all!
More interesting updates for you...!
We go to lunch every day at this place by the beach that's right near the hostel we're staying at. Apparently you're not supposed to bring your own food or drinks into the premises because that takes away from the place's business...it makes sense. However, we eat lunch there every day at 1:00pm and we've brought water before and it hasn't been much of a problem, since we're giving them service for 9 people every time (the 8 of us volunteers and our field director). Every day we walk in there is a Maasai guard (you can look them up on the internet to see a picture of them) there who checks what you bring in. They guard a lot of things here, like if you go into a club in the evening they'll watch over your car and when you leave you give them a couple hundred shillings in return. They're always very nice and polite and carry around walking sticks with them. They wear traditional kanga material (you can also look that up online) and always wrap one around their waists and another around their chests. But back to the story...even though we hadn't had any problems bringing water on the weekend and on Monday, the Maasai guard that was there on Tuesday got into a tiffy about us bringing water in. He said he might lose his job if he let us in. Ashley, our field director, had to speak with him in Swahili and ended up talking to the general manager of the whole restaurant and beach resort. She went into his office and said it looked like a 1970's disco, haha. We all got a kick out of that. He cleared us so we were finally able to each lunch...45 minutes late!
Time moves very slowly here, or maybe it's that people move slowly and don't really give a hoot about time. You do what you intend to do, but expect to wait and wait and waaaaaiiitttt to do everything. It's really easy to be overly ambitious when you first arrive. Like you might assume that going to the bank takes one second just to do a small transaction with a teller, especially in the U.S., but given any time of day during business hours in Dar es Salaam any bank you choose (like NMB for example) will be chocked full with people in a rather illusive, unorganized line that you have to somehow cram your way into in order to get service. It's always insane going to the bank and it's really hot to stand in line because there are so many people here. But people here really don't worry about it, they just wait because they're used to waiting. I'm telling you, if you ever want to test your patience and improve it then you should come to Tanzania. Even waiting in line for an atm can be a hassle and the line can get up to 30 feet long sometimes! It's normal protocol here for people to cut you because lines are so abstract sometimes that you can't even really claim a spot in them! You just have to understand the culture and take everything with a grain of salt and understand that this culture is just different from yours.
I went for a run on Tuesday for the first time since I've been in Tanzania. It was only my second run in over a month because after my dad partially ran over my left ankle with his car tire on my graduation day, I didn't want to run on it and strain it (sorry dad to publicize that...but it's the truth!). I ran with 2 other of the volunteers, Tracy and Matt, as well as with Ashley and her friend here, Katherine. I was definitely the slowest in the bunch, but that's ok. Nothing here is a race! It was super dusty the whole time we were running because we were mostly stirring up loose dirt that cushioned the side of the paved roads. I went about 3 miles, but I had to stop and walk a few times. It was soooo unbelievably hot, I thought I was going to melt! It was nice to get exercise though, so I'm hoping to do it again soon!
On Tuesday night after continuing with orientation we went out to a place called Q Bar. It's a more local hangout compared to the Irish Pub, but surprisingly they still serve hamburgers and chips (fries) and I've heard they're really good! We watched Spain play Portugal in football. Everyone there seemed to really be rooting for Spain, although our table was unofficially rooting for Portugal because she loves Christiano Ronaldo's Armani underwear ads, lol. When Spain finally scored in the second half the guys sitting behind us we so excited they leaped up joyously and embraced each other, jumped up and down, and then one of the guys banged his fist on their table 3 times super hard, knocking over 3 of their beers which spilled all over Matt (one of the volunteers) and I. Joyous for them - sure, but great for us - NOPE. We smelled like beer, cheap cigarettes (you can smoke in the bars here where ever you want, even ones that are all indoors), mosquito repellant (we almost OD on applying that at night!), and sweat because it was sooo hot. Lovely...hahaha. When I got back to the hostel I took a shower and God I can't even express how wonderful it was. Gotta love TZ. As our Swahili Teacher, Benjamin, says "T.i.T" - "This is Tanzania" lol.
Funny fact: when a girl or a woman here is wearing a short skirt at a club or something (which is definitely noottttttt appropriate during everyday wear - women especially have to cover up their shoulders and knees every day), if she bends over and people can see her underwear (a MAJOR faux pas!) then Tanzanian people say "Free Movie!!!!!" hahahahaha. I think that's hilarious. I don't plan to show any free movies while I'm here...
Wednesday morning we had Kiswahili (K/S) Class. Benjamin is a joy to learn from - he's always upbeat and extremely encouraging. We learned numbers, which I'd already learned previously, as well as how to structure the past and future tenses. It feels so good to know how to put together words now, even though we just know a couple verbs so far. It's much easier to try and figure out what people are saying now that we have some sense of K/S grammar. I was able to introduce myself and have a verrrrrry brief conversation with a couple of Maasai guards who were at the Irish Pub last night. It felt really good.
After K/S class we went to lunch without Ashley this time and were luckily able to bring water in no problem :). We ate really good pilau (almost like fried rice but not as greasy, it's just rice that has a lot of good spices in it), beef stew, pea stew (ish), fresh vegetable salad (some of the best I've ever had!!!!) and cooked kale. Once we were done lunch Becky, Liz (other volunteers) and I went on a daladala (bus-like taxi here) for the first time by ourselves in Tanzania. I'd ridden them in South Africa so I wasn't scared, but I think being on the daladala really freaked Becky out. We asked the guy at the door to the van if he was going to the mall, Mlimani City, and he said yes and shoved us on the bus. All the seats were taken so we were standing up the whole time. There were some windows open so it was a little breezy, but it was still pretty stuffy. We were pressed up against all the other people who were crowding the aisles of the bus. We were holding metal bars ahead of us so that we didn't fall. When we got off we realized we were in Ubungu, not near the mall at all! We had to get off at the bus station there which is really just an overcrowded marketplace with lots of small shops trying to sell backpacks, fruit, kangas, etc. We bustled our way to another daladala going to Mwenge which is much closer to the mall. It only costs 250 TZS to ride on a daladala per person, so it's much cheaper than a Taxi, even if it is more uncomfortable for some people. I actually sometimes feel safer in daladalas than I do in Taxis because there are more local Tanzanians and many more people around who can help out in a crisis, robbery, or hostage situation. Once we got off the second daladala we found a bajaji (I think that's how you spell it...) which is a little open motorized cart, almost like a golf cart. They go super fast and can weave in and out of traffic no problem since they're much smaller than cars. And they can go surprisingly fast, which is nice because then you get to cool down because of the wind. We paid 1,500 TZS for the ride to the mall, which turned out not to be very far away at all...but at least we made it...finally! We went to exchange Becky's phone which she had dropped in the sink in our hostel. I was trying to meet up with a cool guy who had helped me at Tigo the other day (he gave me his number on my receipt and I figured why not go for it), but we ran out of time and had to rush back to the hostel to attend our 4:00 session about constructing daily lesson plans with Ashley. We were all a bit frazzled when we got back because of all the transport we'd been on - we took a taxi back and he didn't really know where we were going so we had to walk part of the way which made us even later, but it was ok in the end. Everyone was super sluggish during that last session. They say that usually the 6th day you're in a place is when you really need a break from everything and to just relax and I think that was true for all of us!! Today (Thursday) we have a pretty relaxing day with just K/S Class and then a beach day with Katherine at her place just down the road at her pool! Woop woop! It'll be nice to finally go swimming!
Last night before dinner we did laundry by hand for the first time. I'd done this once in Tanzania when I was here last December/January, but it was certainly a refreshing experience! It is NOT easy to wash your clothes by hand - all those of you who have washing machines and dryers should be thanking your lucky stars! It's not that it's hard, it's just majorly time consuming. It took me over an hour to hand scrub my clothes in a basin filled with water and powder "Omo" (a dry laundry detergent here) and wash them out in a basin filled just with water. It was sort of a fun community experience though and I'm glad I finally got to wash my clothes. We hung them on the line last night so they should be dry in a day or two.
Last night we went to the Irish for their weekly karaoke night! It was pretty fun. I was about to debut my singing skills, but unfortunately the guy who was running it didn't have the song I had picked out from his sheet on file (Dido's "White Flag"). I was going to sign up again on the list but everyone was so tired that we went home before I got to go up again. I'll try it again next week and I'll keep you posted about whether I get cheered for or booed off stage, haha. Matt sang "She's Like the Wind" and Becky and Katherine sang "Like a Prayer." We got a ton of pictures of them having a hell of a time on stage. It was pretty fun. :)
I woke up early to post this blog this morning. Now I have to hurry to do my K/S homework from yesterday for our session that's in half an hour. For now, baadaye (later)!
More interesting updates for you...!
We go to lunch every day at this place by the beach that's right near the hostel we're staying at. Apparently you're not supposed to bring your own food or drinks into the premises because that takes away from the place's business...it makes sense. However, we eat lunch there every day at 1:00pm and we've brought water before and it hasn't been much of a problem, since we're giving them service for 9 people every time (the 8 of us volunteers and our field director). Every day we walk in there is a Maasai guard (you can look them up on the internet to see a picture of them) there who checks what you bring in. They guard a lot of things here, like if you go into a club in the evening they'll watch over your car and when you leave you give them a couple hundred shillings in return. They're always very nice and polite and carry around walking sticks with them. They wear traditional kanga material (you can also look that up online) and always wrap one around their waists and another around their chests. But back to the story...even though we hadn't had any problems bringing water on the weekend and on Monday, the Maasai guard that was there on Tuesday got into a tiffy about us bringing water in. He said he might lose his job if he let us in. Ashley, our field director, had to speak with him in Swahili and ended up talking to the general manager of the whole restaurant and beach resort. She went into his office and said it looked like a 1970's disco, haha. We all got a kick out of that. He cleared us so we were finally able to each lunch...45 minutes late!
Time moves very slowly here, or maybe it's that people move slowly and don't really give a hoot about time. You do what you intend to do, but expect to wait and wait and waaaaaiiitttt to do everything. It's really easy to be overly ambitious when you first arrive. Like you might assume that going to the bank takes one second just to do a small transaction with a teller, especially in the U.S., but given any time of day during business hours in Dar es Salaam any bank you choose (like NMB for example) will be chocked full with people in a rather illusive, unorganized line that you have to somehow cram your way into in order to get service. It's always insane going to the bank and it's really hot to stand in line because there are so many people here. But people here really don't worry about it, they just wait because they're used to waiting. I'm telling you, if you ever want to test your patience and improve it then you should come to Tanzania. Even waiting in line for an atm can be a hassle and the line can get up to 30 feet long sometimes! It's normal protocol here for people to cut you because lines are so abstract sometimes that you can't even really claim a spot in them! You just have to understand the culture and take everything with a grain of salt and understand that this culture is just different from yours.
I went for a run on Tuesday for the first time since I've been in Tanzania. It was only my second run in over a month because after my dad partially ran over my left ankle with his car tire on my graduation day, I didn't want to run on it and strain it (sorry dad to publicize that...but it's the truth!). I ran with 2 other of the volunteers, Tracy and Matt, as well as with Ashley and her friend here, Katherine. I was definitely the slowest in the bunch, but that's ok. Nothing here is a race! It was super dusty the whole time we were running because we were mostly stirring up loose dirt that cushioned the side of the paved roads. I went about 3 miles, but I had to stop and walk a few times. It was soooo unbelievably hot, I thought I was going to melt! It was nice to get exercise though, so I'm hoping to do it again soon!
On Tuesday night after continuing with orientation we went out to a place called Q Bar. It's a more local hangout compared to the Irish Pub, but surprisingly they still serve hamburgers and chips (fries) and I've heard they're really good! We watched Spain play Portugal in football. Everyone there seemed to really be rooting for Spain, although our table was unofficially rooting for Portugal because she loves Christiano Ronaldo's Armani underwear ads, lol. When Spain finally scored in the second half the guys sitting behind us we so excited they leaped up joyously and embraced each other, jumped up and down, and then one of the guys banged his fist on their table 3 times super hard, knocking over 3 of their beers which spilled all over Matt (one of the volunteers) and I. Joyous for them - sure, but great for us - NOPE. We smelled like beer, cheap cigarettes (you can smoke in the bars here where ever you want, even ones that are all indoors), mosquito repellant (we almost OD on applying that at night!), and sweat because it was sooo hot. Lovely...hahaha. When I got back to the hostel I took a shower and God I can't even express how wonderful it was. Gotta love TZ. As our Swahili Teacher, Benjamin, says "T.i.T" - "This is Tanzania" lol.
Funny fact: when a girl or a woman here is wearing a short skirt at a club or something (which is definitely noottttttt appropriate during everyday wear - women especially have to cover up their shoulders and knees every day), if she bends over and people can see her underwear (a MAJOR faux pas!) then Tanzanian people say "Free Movie!!!!!" hahahahaha. I think that's hilarious. I don't plan to show any free movies while I'm here...
Wednesday morning we had Kiswahili (K/S) Class. Benjamin is a joy to learn from - he's always upbeat and extremely encouraging. We learned numbers, which I'd already learned previously, as well as how to structure the past and future tenses. It feels so good to know how to put together words now, even though we just know a couple verbs so far. It's much easier to try and figure out what people are saying now that we have some sense of K/S grammar. I was able to introduce myself and have a verrrrrry brief conversation with a couple of Maasai guards who were at the Irish Pub last night. It felt really good.
After K/S class we went to lunch without Ashley this time and were luckily able to bring water in no problem :). We ate really good pilau (almost like fried rice but not as greasy, it's just rice that has a lot of good spices in it), beef stew, pea stew (ish), fresh vegetable salad (some of the best I've ever had!!!!) and cooked kale. Once we were done lunch Becky, Liz (other volunteers) and I went on a daladala (bus-like taxi here) for the first time by ourselves in Tanzania. I'd ridden them in South Africa so I wasn't scared, but I think being on the daladala really freaked Becky out. We asked the guy at the door to the van if he was going to the mall, Mlimani City, and he said yes and shoved us on the bus. All the seats were taken so we were standing up the whole time. There were some windows open so it was a little breezy, but it was still pretty stuffy. We were pressed up against all the other people who were crowding the aisles of the bus. We were holding metal bars ahead of us so that we didn't fall. When we got off we realized we were in Ubungu, not near the mall at all! We had to get off at the bus station there which is really just an overcrowded marketplace with lots of small shops trying to sell backpacks, fruit, kangas, etc. We bustled our way to another daladala going to Mwenge which is much closer to the mall. It only costs 250 TZS to ride on a daladala per person, so it's much cheaper than a Taxi, even if it is more uncomfortable for some people. I actually sometimes feel safer in daladalas than I do in Taxis because there are more local Tanzanians and many more people around who can help out in a crisis, robbery, or hostage situation. Once we got off the second daladala we found a bajaji (I think that's how you spell it...) which is a little open motorized cart, almost like a golf cart. They go super fast and can weave in and out of traffic no problem since they're much smaller than cars. And they can go surprisingly fast, which is nice because then you get to cool down because of the wind. We paid 1,500 TZS for the ride to the mall, which turned out not to be very far away at all...but at least we made it...finally! We went to exchange Becky's phone which she had dropped in the sink in our hostel. I was trying to meet up with a cool guy who had helped me at Tigo the other day (he gave me his number on my receipt and I figured why not go for it), but we ran out of time and had to rush back to the hostel to attend our 4:00 session about constructing daily lesson plans with Ashley. We were all a bit frazzled when we got back because of all the transport we'd been on - we took a taxi back and he didn't really know where we were going so we had to walk part of the way which made us even later, but it was ok in the end. Everyone was super sluggish during that last session. They say that usually the 6th day you're in a place is when you really need a break from everything and to just relax and I think that was true for all of us!! Today (Thursday) we have a pretty relaxing day with just K/S Class and then a beach day with Katherine at her place just down the road at her pool! Woop woop! It'll be nice to finally go swimming!
Last night before dinner we did laundry by hand for the first time. I'd done this once in Tanzania when I was here last December/January, but it was certainly a refreshing experience! It is NOT easy to wash your clothes by hand - all those of you who have washing machines and dryers should be thanking your lucky stars! It's not that it's hard, it's just majorly time consuming. It took me over an hour to hand scrub my clothes in a basin filled with water and powder "Omo" (a dry laundry detergent here) and wash them out in a basin filled just with water. It was sort of a fun community experience though and I'm glad I finally got to wash my clothes. We hung them on the line last night so they should be dry in a day or two.
Last night we went to the Irish for their weekly karaoke night! It was pretty fun. I was about to debut my singing skills, but unfortunately the guy who was running it didn't have the song I had picked out from his sheet on file (Dido's "White Flag"). I was going to sign up again on the list but everyone was so tired that we went home before I got to go up again. I'll try it again next week and I'll keep you posted about whether I get cheered for or booed off stage, haha. Matt sang "She's Like the Wind" and Becky and Katherine sang "Like a Prayer." We got a ton of pictures of them having a hell of a time on stage. It was pretty fun. :)
I woke up early to post this blog this morning. Now I have to hurry to do my K/S homework from yesterday for our session that's in half an hour. For now, baadaye (later)!
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