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