Sunday, August 29, 2010

Ayayayayay....

So here’s a recap of last week’s events, during which time I probably underwent just about every human emotion you can imagine…

This past weekend I left on Friday at 9am from my house at Dakawa to go to Dar for the weekend. I left my house so early in anticipation of being able to make it to Dar by the early afternoon so that when I arrived it would still be broad daylight. I arrived in Morogoro around 10:30am and went to grab some early lunch at my favorite place to eat: The Blue Room. I was at the bus station ready to take off for Dar by 12:00pm. As soon as I got to the bus station everyone was calling after me, “Unaenda wapi?” (“Where are you going?”). When I replied “Dar” a guy led me by the arm to a bus and before I knew it I’d paid the 5,000 shillings at the door and been pushed onto the bus. A split second after I knew I’d made the wrong decision to get on that bus.

I looked around and there were only four people on the whole bus! It was almost totally empty and with the way the buses work here, with everyone paying for their tickets at the door and buses not leaving until they’re packed with people, I knew it was going to be a long wait. The bus I was on was called, “Islam” on the front. To my right there was a “Hood” bus and beyond that there was an “Abood” bus. All three buses were going to Dar. The bus I was on was pretty old and rickety compared to the Hood and Abood buses which looked more polished and like they functioned better. Alas, I ended up waiting on my bus to leave for more than three hours during which time three Hood buses and five Abood buses had already left for Dar since the time I’d arrived at the bus station. By the time we left I was at the end of my wits already…I was getting really impatient and cranky and felt like I’d been ripped off. In the time it took me to even leave Morogoro, two friends of mine who are also volunteers had gotten on their Abood bus and had already arrived in Dar! Ayayay. Needless to say I was a little pissed, haha. So much for trying to arrive fairly early in Dar. After the time we left Morogoro around 3:00pm it ended up taking a little over four hours to actually get to the bus stop in Dar! It usually takes about two and a half to three hours on a normal bus, eish! My bus was so old and run down that we could barely chug our way up all the big hills on the highway. I saw way too many 18-wheeler trucks and even larger Abood and Hood buses whoosh by us, even up hills, than I was happy with. I finally arrived in Dar at 7pm and it was already dark out. I was awfully sore because I hadn’t even stood up out of my seat or walker around at all since I’d boarded the bus at noon.

As soon as I arrived in Dar a smidgeon of good luck reigned on me. My friend, Pendo, who owns his own car said that he was on his way to pick me up from the bus station and that he was going to bring me to his house where he and his girlfriend were preparing dinner for me already and had set up their bathroom for me to take a refreshing shower. Holy cow I was ecstatic…after a journey like that even a meal off the street and a bucket bath with dirty water would’ve made me feel better, haha. Luckily, I ran into better luck than that though. On our way back to his house we picked up my other friend, Roman, who I’d ended up staying the whole last week with. We all went back to Pendo’s house for dinner and drinks. Apparently one of Pendo’s housemates had seen a small black snake in her bedroom for a split second and had totally freaked out and told the whole house about it. By the time we got to the house everyone had evacuated to the outdoors! We spent about an hour looking for the snake with no success and finally called it quits, even though our eyes were still as alert as hawks when we went back inside. Later on we had a scrumptious homemade dinner and sat outside and chilled and talked. Aside from the snake scare, it was a great start to a much-needed night out after all that traveling!

After dinner we stopped by another friend’s house to pay our respects since his father had passed away 40 days ago. According to Tanzanian culture, once someone you know has been deceased for 40 days you unite with friends and family and have a final celebration and remembrance party in honor of that person’s life. After 40 days passes you culturally expected to lessen your grieving, pick yourself back up again, and move on as you continue living your life. It was a nice celebration and it was great to see my friend, Kiki. I’d met him while I was studying abroad at the University of Cape Town more than two years ago.

From there we shifted gears and headed to my favorite club in Dar which I hadn’t yet been to since I got to Tanzania more than two months ago! The club is called Bilicanas, but it’s called “Billz” for short. I went with Pendo, Roman, and two other of their guy friends. It always seems like I’m the only lady that goes out with a ton of guys, haha. At least I always have an abundance of dance partners to choose from. We got to the club around 2am and danced the night away until about 4:30am. The place was emptier than usual because a lot of people who would have been at the club are staying home for this month while they celebrate Ramadan. Even so I had a ton of fun and it was such great stress relief to dance after having been cooped up in a bus all day! We called it and night and Roman and I headed home and went straight to bed.

On Saturday morning I was extremely happy to wake up at Roman’s house. It’s a really cozy two-bedroom apartment right in the center of Dar es Salaam. When I woke up Roman’s mom, whom I refer to as Mama Lemi (because Roman’s older brother’s name is Lemi), had already made us stacks of fresh Tanzanian style pancakes with fresh berry jam. I can’t even explain how good they were. After having standard oatmeal, cereal, and fruit for breakfast for the past month, I was more than delighted to feast on pancakes. We ate pancakes as we watched television and got up to date on all the news that was circulating around the globe. I hadn’t been able to watch television in such a long time since I arrived at Dakawa, so it was truly a luxury! We mainly watched Aljazeera, CNN, and the BBC. It’s really interesting watching Aljazeera in particular because it’s a very Eastern perspective of what’s going on in the world. Most of the time at home all of the news stations are so Western focused, so it’s been really nice to see a change in perspective. There was certainly a lot of news this past week, most of which was really horrible: terrible floods have destroyed thousands of people’s lives in Pakistan and China; a bus hostage crisis in the Philippines ended up killing 8 tourists from Hong Kong before police could gun down the Philippino ex-police officer holding them hostage who was demanding to get his job back; two plane crashes killed dozens in China and Nepal; bombings and fighting in Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan killed a ton of people, ayayay I could go on and on. Although I certainly felt informed after watching the news, it was really depressing watching it. Since I haven’t seen the news in such a long time I’d forgotten how saliently the saying “All news is bad news” applies to the news today. I was disgusted and appalled and totally shocked. After watching the news I just thanked my lucky stars that I’ve been safe and mostly happy in Tanzania since I arrived and that everyone I love and care about is doing well in the world. I know that’s super mushy to say, but you should just eat it up and thank your lucky stars too, haha.

In addition to vegging to television this past week, Roman and I also went to the beach with Pendo and met a few of the other volunteers in the program at the beach off the coast of Dar this last Saturday. It was such a lovely day outside and it was really great to relax on the beach, swim in the ocean, and catch up with good friends of mine. The last time I’d been at the beach I had a wicked case of pink eye, or Nairobi Lady Eyes, so I can’t even tell you how happy I was that I could see clearly this time and fully enjoy the beach in good health. We stayed there all afternoon and came back home that night. We had dinner at Roman’s house and then got ready to go out with some more friends on Saturday evening. We met up at this nice place by the ocean to have a couple of drinks and then we all piled in our cars to go to a new club that just opened up in Dar called “Sun Cirro.” The club was ok…it sort of looked like an oversized basement warehouse in which the space for the balconies could have been majorly expanded to accommodate even more people on the top floor, but the main dance floor on the first floor was pretty cool. At certain points bubbles showered onto the dance floor from above. I got so excited about dancing in bubbles, haha. The music was pretty good, too. It was a mix of American pop and hip hop for a while, then some native Tanzanian Bongo Flava, then some South African tunes. For some peculiar reason, whenever any South African music comes on at the clubs here in Dar nearly everyone in the whole club gets up to do the electric slide dance over and over and over again. I swear everyone did it for even longer than half an hour straight. Now, I would totally enjoy this event if I could actually do the electric slide correctly, haha. However, I somehow seem to be electric slide-challenged. One of my small goals this year is to become a pro at the electric slide to the point where I’m not fumbling around the dance floor when I’m doing it with everyone else, haha. I’ll keep you posted on that progress…

Sunday I slept in late and met two of my volunteer friends at one of the more ritzy places in Dar es Salaam that’s usually where a lot of wealthy tourists stay. It’s called SlipWay and it’s right on the harbor in Dar. My friends grabbed lunch there and we went to the bookshop and a few stores to browse around. Most of the things at SlipWay are outrageously overpriced. I’ve gotten so good at bargaining these days that I’m barely willing to go into a closed off shop where the prices are already marked…especially at SlipWay. Luckily there was an outdoor market with Tanzanian crafts where you could bargain for different things so I went there for a bit. I ended up getting a few gifts for my friend Roman and his mother as thank yous for hosting me this past weekend. I got Roman a wooden pic since he’s got a big afro now and I got his mom a carved and painted fish to decorate her bathroom. I also got a few other items and was happy that I got some good deals because I was able to bargain solely in Swahili with the vendors. Once they knew I spoke Swahili they were more inclined to give me fairer prices, which I am definitely a fan of. After SlipWay my friends headed to the bus station to go back to Dar and I headed to the giant mall on the way. We took a bajaji, which is pretty much like a motorized tricycle that can get up to about 30 mph, haha. They come in handy when you’re looking for cheap and quick transportation. The guy was going to charge us 9,000 Tsh but I talked him down to 6,000 for the three of us. Another prideful bargaining moment, haha. I departed from my friends and headed into the mall to purchase a few things for back home. I met up with a Tanzanian friend of mine at the mall and then headed home to Roman’s place. All of a sudden I had gotten a wicked stomach ache and had to go home right away to lay down. Roman was out having dinner with his dad so it was just me and his mom at home for a while.

Although I was set to go back to Dakawa on Monday, I felt way too sick to even think about going back as I had planned. I went to sleep Sunday night and by Monday morning I felt like there was a war going on inside my stomach. I’m not sure what caused my horrible stomach pains (it could have been dirty water, spoiled food, etc.), but I hope I don’t have to go through that again. Luckily I was in the right place at the right time when I got sick because Mama Lemi is a pharmacist. Pharmacists here are pretty much like doctors who you go see, tell your symptoms to, and they give you medicine. It’s much easier to go see a pharmacist and cut out the doctor as the middle person if you can. Mama Lemi is very loving and motherly and also a very wise pharmacist…she’s seen it all. At fight she thought I had malaria and then she thought it was worms (eww), but finally she decided that I had a bad bacterial stomach infection. By the time we figured out what I was actually sick with I’d taken drugs for malaria and worms without starting to feel better. However, once I started taking an antibiotic for the bacterial infection I slowly began feeling better. The first part of this past week was pretty lame because I could do little more than just lay down for hours straight at Roman’s house on his living room couch. Fortunately I got to watch a few movies and all the news I could stomach (no pun intended) during the hours I was awake so I wasn’t too bored. By Wednesday my stomach began feeling ok but I was still totally drained and wiped out from being so sick during the first couple days of the week. By Wednesday evening I had already missed my Tuesday and Wednesday classes at Dakawa and I was going to miss my Thursday morning class as well the next day. At that point I’d decided it would be in my best interest to just wait out my sickness and lay low in Dar through the weekend until I was feeling all better. That was until Thursday morning, however.

On Thursday the program director from the U.S. was visiting our site at Dakawa with our field director and they wanted to see me there with my other two housemates. In addition, my two housemates claimed if I wasn’t back by Friday for the computer class that would take place late Friday afternoon then one of them would have to teach it and that would ruin their joint plan to leave Dakawa early Friday to go to Dar for the whole weekend. Under pressure I made the spur of the moment decision Thursday morning to go back to Dakawa, even though I wasn’t feeling 100%. By the time I reached home on Thursday I was utterly exhausted and only spent a few minutes with our guests. I laid down the rest of the evening and got up to write the bulk of this post.

On Friday I went to Morogoro on a whim in the morning and picked up my package that my mom sent me...finally! I don't think I've ever been so happy to open one piece of mail in my entire life as when I opened that package!! I got oodles of awesome things from the States and I'm so grateful! :) On Friday night I decided to stay overnight in Morogoro and then Saturday afternoon I returned home. Now it's Sunday and I'm back in town again...I had to come back to pick up more groceries and things from the market here that I can't get at Dakawa. Now I'm about to head home again and teach for another week. It will be nice teaching again after being gone all last week. I've really missed my students!

Friday, August 20, 2010

Life Always Has Its Hiccups

I’ve gotta say I’ve had better weeks than this past one, but I’ll go through it for you…

I ended up getting really homesick at the beginning of the week, which until then hadn’t been debilitating at all. It sort of snuck up on me out of nowhere. I really do miss home, my old lifestyle, and my family and friends most of all (which probably includes you!).

In order to get over my homesickness I decided instead of working in the closed off English department office I would instead do my work outside in the open and fresh air at the wooden tables that are just outside the students’ dormitories. When I first sat there on Monday this past week I was immediately swarmed by some of the kids who live next door to me. Until then they had been too shy to say anything more than really soft “hello’s” back to me when I greeted them. All of a sudden they came to life! I gave them some paper and pens to use and they went to town, so to speak. It was really adorable and they were probably the best cure I could’ve asked for that would lift my spirits back up. After they left a swarm of students (a mix of my own students and others I hadn’t met yet) approached me, introduced themselves, and asked me all about myself. I made the silly mistake of telling them I’d dated a Tanzanian before because after I told them his name there were a few girls around who share the same last name as him and they were like “Oooooh you’re my sister-in-law then! We’re sisters!” Haha. It was sort of hilarious. I tried to explain the concept that he and I are just friends now, but the concept didn’t really sink in because they’ve continued to call me their sister since that first encounter. It’s pretty cute, I have to admit. I love that everyone here is so open and welcoming to new people, even to the point that they’d gladly accept you into their families. It’s a really great feeling knowing that you can really connect with local people when you travel somewhere. It makes it seem you’re your effort to live there is more worth while. Since Monday was such a mood booster I’ve gone to sit at a table outside every day this week and it’s really been amazing. I’ve gotten to know so many wonderful students and they’ve even taken up a hobby of trying to teach me Swahili. They try to talk to me in Swahili as much as they can when they see me there and I also try my hardest to understand and respond to what they say. My Swahili has actually improved quite a bit already just from sitting with them for one week! At least my listening skills and level of comprehension for fast local speakers is improving. I’m excited to see what a couple more months of me sitting there will teach me!

On Tuesday this week I got to teach my very first computer classes to about half of my students. For some of them it was the first time they’d ever seen a computer, while for others they had learned to use computers well because they had them at home before they came to Dakawa. It was pretty fun explaining them first off. I was trying to explain the most basic elements of a computer: the modem, monitor, mouse, and keyboard. Even though I’ve never considered myself very tech-savvy, compared to most people here I have a vast knowledge of computers that I can share with them. I taught all my students how to login, open and use the word processor, and also how to play a game that will help them practice their English. They seemed to enjoy the class a lot. It was nice seeing all of the students in a different context outside of our normal English classes as well. On the down side, our computer lab here only has five working computers that all of the students have to share. During my first computer class on Tuesday there were fifteen students in the lab and during my second session there were only 9 students. Even though the small number of computers doesn’t accommodate all of the students at once, it helps to encourage them to share their knowledge with each other and teach their fellow classmates what they know as they share the computers together. Their willingness to teach each other definitely came in handy during my first classes because I could only be with one group at a computer at a time. Fortunately, some of my students had already learned how to perform the basic functions on the computers because they had taken beginner classes with the girl who came to set them up initially a few weeks ago. I tried to let them take charge as much as they wanted to. As a teacher, I believe in empowering my students to teach themselves and each other and to look to me as an extra resource or a checking point if they need me. All in all, it was super fun teaching the computer classes. One downer was that the power went out half way through my second session so we had to cancel it and we’ll just have to pick up where we left off next week.

On that note, the power goes out a lot, usually nearly once a day! On Sunday this past weekend after my housemates and I had returned from Morogoro the power went out around 7:30 in the morning and it didn’t come back on until 9:30 at night! We all just spent the day being rather lazy. We all get kind of mopey when the power goes out, haha. I ended up reading 300 pages of a book I’d started called, “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.” Luckily it was a really captivating read so I hardly put the book down the whole day. I’d really recommend it if you’re looking for a good page-turner to take on. It’s a really well written mystery that’ll really pull you for a loop. (I swear I didn’t get paid to advertise the book, haha. I just liked it a lot!). I’ve just started the second book in the series now and I’m already having trouble stopping reading in the evenings when I go to bed, even if I can barely keep my eyes open. It’s just so good!

I played a group game with my students on Wednesday to help them practice the 12 tenses in English and I have them a quiz on Thursday to test their knowledge of the tenses. I’d say just short of five students out of all of my 39 (I got another new student this week!) got 100 percent on the quiz! I’m really proud of them! Their success also implies that my teaching style is working well for them, which makes me really happy at the end of the day. Even though one might think it’s juvenile, I always put smiley faces on their assignments when they’ve done a good job. Even though they’re in high school, I still have to admit that seeing some sort of visual representation that implies you did well, like seeing a star or a smiley face, always made me feel happy and laugh a little when I got assignments back when I was in school, no matter how old I was. Since many of the students are weary about their English skills (although I have to say I think they’re all quite good), it’s good to find ways to boost their confidence and make them feel really good when they’ve done tasks well. So, I think I might stick with the smiley faces.

Three other events in class this week really helped highlight my whole week. The first is rather a conglomerate of little events. Four of my students this week wrote me little notes, made me cards, and drew me pictures and gave them to me after class. Every time I get one of them I’m absolutely on my heels laughing with a huge grin on my face. Some of my students are so sweet it’s hard not to smile at what they write for me. For instance, one of my students chose to write me a get-well note. Earlier this week on Tuesday I chose to go running in the evening for the first time in about two weeks. I ended up running rather far and when I got home I felt pretty good. However, that night my left heel started throbbing like crazy all of a sudden and when I woke up on Wednesday morning I couldn’t even put a smidgeon of pressure on my left heel without experiencing excruciating pain. I’ve never experienced that kind of pain no matter how long I’ve taken in between runs in the past, but the ground here is rather rough on your feet to be honest. It’s really packed down solid dirt with a ton of near-bowling ball sized rocks mixed in. All of the rocks are sticking out fo the surface of the dirt and when you run over them they really do a number on the bottoms of your feet. As a result of the pain I ended up limping and hobbling around for most of Wednesday. Even though how I’d hurt myself was rather pathetic, my student still chose to write me a nice note at the end of class telling me that she was so sorry I’d hurt my foot and that she would pray for me to feel better soon. I’m not quite sure if her praying or even well-wishing in the first place is what made me feel better, but by Thursday I only had a little pain left and I could finally put a normal amount of weight on my foot without cringing.

The second highlight of my week was when I sang Beyonce’s song, “Halo” for my class on Thursday morning. Ever since I’d started bringing music to class to play for them they’ve been asking me to sing them something. I’m not really the performing type and if I do perform I usually prefer to be somewhat in the background rather that front and center, or let alone by myself. However, after much pestering from them about my tendency to push back when I said I would sing for them (I kept saying “Tomorrow…”), I finally mustered up the courage to sing for them on my own to the tune of “Halo.” Although they’re just high school girls, they’re really impressionable and it seems like every little thing I’ve done in class so far has really affected all of them (hence most of their little notes), so if for some reason they thought I didn’t have a good singing voice I was nervous about how that would affect class, haha. It sounds ridiculous, but I felt like it was a legitimate concern. I was almost shaking like a leaf when I started singing, but by the time I got into the chorus I was fine and I was moving around the room semi-dancing as I sang. After I stopped they all cheered and clapped and were smiling a lot, haha. So I guess that means I passed their vocals test, haha. On another positive note, my singing made them happy enough that it gave them all a good boost of energy before they started the quiz.

The third high point of my week came from all the times I played with the children who live next door to us. There are sooooo many little kids who live around us and somehow our house has become as desirable to spend time at as the ball pit at McDonald’s Playhouse, haha (that’s how my housemate described it). The kids are all four years old with the exception of a ten year old, Ima, a three year old, and a couple of 5 year olds. They’re super adorable! They try to speak Swahili with us and we try to understand them and converse with them as best as we can in reply. On Wednesday when they came over I pulled out the two picture books I brought with me of Vermont and they loved looking at them. I sat wedged in a chair in our living room and the tidal wave of kids poured over my lap, squishing me further into the seat, as I went page by and page and tried to explain that Vermont was my “nyumbani” (“home”) in America. Every time they saw something they recognized (a cow, flowers, trees, birds, houses) they would belt out the Swahili word for it in unison. It was hilarious. After I finished the books I went outside with them with my computer and pulled up some pictures of my family and friends from back home and also some of the pictures I’d taken in Morogoro and also here at Dakawa. They really enjoyed looking at the pictures. While I was showing them the photos I played some Bongo Flava music that they knew and they were all singing along to the lyrics. My heart nearly melted at the sound of their little squeaky voices singing Swahili pop and love songs, haha. There’s a really famous song by Marlaw called “Peep, Peep” where the singer basically says, “Peep! Peep! Move out of the way. I’m tired of waiting in traffic. I have to get home to my baby…” Every time the words “Peep Peep” came on in the song all the kids would pipe up and scream “PEEP! PEEP!” haha. Ah it was great. I also got to talk with one of the kid’s mothers for a while who lives right next to us. She was very nice and talkative – all in Swahili! – although I couldn’t form some of the replies I wanted to, I understand most of what she was saying and could speak a little in Swahili. After she said, “Unasoma Kiswahili vizuri!” (“You speak Swahili well!). That piped up my confidence a bit. It’s nice everyone around here is so encouraging!

On Thursday we also started what will be our regular Swahili lessons with a Swahili teacher at our school. It was funny to be a student in one of the classrooms! Usually we’re the one’s teaching, but when we started our lesson we were seated at the desks listening, writing notes, and responding. Our teacher, Sophia, reviewed the three verb tenses and taught us new vocabulary for body parts. I enjoyed the lesson. Now in order to actually learn the new vocabulary I have to study it!

Randomly on Thursday night we had a huge infestations of bees overtake our house. It felt like I was in some horrible horror film like Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds,” except this version was “The Bees.” They were swarming the lights outside of our house and they kept crawling underneath our doors at both ends of our living room. They looked sick for some reason. They couldn’t actually fly, they just buzzed and spun in circles on the floor. With a phobia of bees like mine I was definitely not happy. I took my sandal to all of them when they crawled under the door. I must’ve killed more than 50 bees last night, no exaggeration! I have no idea why they were all possessed to come through our doors – they’re never done that before… We have bug spray killer that kills on contact. We bought it mostly for the cockroaches and mosquitoes that hang around inside our house, but it works for bees too. You really don’t want to mess with the bees here. They’re a huge problem especially near the dormitories where the students stay. This type of African bee can actually kill you quite easily if you manage to get attacked by a hole hive. There’s something especially poisonous about the poison it injects into you with its stinger. That said, I have no desire to get stung even accidentally last night. I took my sandal and bug killer spray to them and after two hours most of them had died. They started coming into the house right around dinnertime and our dining table happens to be right in between the two doors they were coming through. We had to carry all of our stuff for dinner into one of my housemate’s room’s and eat dinner while sitting on the floor as we waited for the bug spray to take action and kill all the bees during our meal. It definitely worked because when we came back out to the living room there were about 25 bees dead on the floor! I even sprayed the foot of both doors and apparently the poison leaked outside and killed a bunch of bees that were buzzing around the lights outside. I swear I’ve never seen so many dead bees in all my life! I rather have them dead than alive though. Sorry bees, but I gotta look out for number 1! Haha. Luckily this morning there aren’t any bees around that I can tell…so far…

Today is Friday and I’m going to Dar es Salaam this weekend. A Tanzanian friend of mine has to leave to go back to his Masters Program in Sweden next Wednesday and I wanted to see him before he leaves. Two of the other WorldTeach volunteers are going to Dar this weekend and they’ve booked a really swanky resort at a place called “South Beach” where there’s a pool, Jacuzzi, and obviously the ocean. I’m going to try and meet them there to hang out on Saturday. Tonight I’m going to try to go to my favorite club in Dar which is called, “Billicanas,” or “Billz” for short. I haven’t been to that club yet since I arrived in Tanzania this time around so I’m hoping tonight’s plans will work out! Fun times ahead. For sure, it’ll be nice to unwind after this week. Dancing’s always a good cure for me when I’m feeling kinda down, so bring on the medicine! I’ll try to post updates when I can about my weekend when I return.

Also, I have a package from my family waiting for me to fetch it at the post office in Morogoro! I am so excited I can hardly wait. It wouldn’t even matter if they’d sent coal and an ugly letter – the fact that something actually got from my home in the U.S. all the way to Morogoro, Tanzanian is astonishing and wonderful to me. Way to go regular snail mail for delivering my package! I think I’ll pick it up on Monday when I come back from Dar. I don’t teach classes until Tuesdays so I figured I would stay through Monday in Dar since I have the time to do it. Again, I’ll report back when I can. Ciao for now! I hope you’re all doing super well!

Saturday, August 14, 2010

I saw a lizard on my wall eat a bug! :)

This past week seemed to blow by really quickly!

On Sunday night last week I returned from Morogoro after staying a night in town with a friend. Sunday evening when I got back home I made homemade whole wheat bread and took the night off to relax by studying a bit of Swahili and then playing a rather unhealthy amount of minesweeper over and over again on my computer.

Monday I went to the English office and checked in with our Headmistress after she’d been gone in Dar for the weekend. We asked her if there’s anything else we can do around here…after all we each only teach about 4 hours a week and we can be of much more use beyond that! Under a deal with a non-profit company called “No PC” our school received five brand new PC’s rather run off the Linux operating system. Although they can potentially be of great use to the students and faculty here…no one knows how to use them and dare I say mostly everyone is too intimidated or too caught up in sticking to the old fashioned pen and paper method of doing things that hardly anyone has tried to learn how to use them. Thus, Madam Mtima, our Headmistress, asked that we begin holding computer classes with the students and faculty to teach them how to use the computers so they’re more technologically savvy. Sounds good to me! I never thought computer knowledge was a strong suit of mine, but lo and behold I can teach someone what a mouse, modem, and monitor are and how you can do simple things like use a word processor. It should be fun! Also Madam Mtima mentioned that the students play sports like football (soccer) and netball (similar to basketball). I’m hoping I can at least watch the students playing sports, if not join in myself. Although I’ve been running along our dirt road near home, it’d be nice to get some other physical activity in.

I taught class this past Tuesday through Thursday as usual. This week I chose to teach my students about the 12 tenses in English because a lot of them mix up when to use certain tenses when they write essays and other assignments. I taught them about the present, past, and future tenses in their simple, progressive/continuous, and perfect forms and next week I’ll finish up by teaching them about the present, past, and future perfect progressive tenses. So far the students understand the tenses all right after I explain them. I’ve made sure to really take my time in explaining them and giving a lot of examples and formulas for how to make sentences in each tense. I’m confident that by the end of next week my students will be experts on all the tenses. I’m going to give them a quiz next week on the tenses so that they really try to memorize and learn them all.

This week in class I was surprised to see three new faces that I hadn’t seen before in my class! When I first arrived to Dakawa and started teaching I was never given a class roster or attendance list, I was simple told, “This is your classroom and this is where you teach at these times...” Every time I get to class all of my students are already seated in their desks so it’s sort of hard to tell who’s in class and who’s not. Luckily the students always sit in the same places every day, though, which had made my life easier in trying to learn their names and recognize their faces. The first week I was in class I tried to do account for who was in class by having all the students write their names on classwork that I had them turn in at the end of the period. After the first week I had counted 34 students in my class…now I’m up to 37! I think that’s it though…unless some other students transfer from other schools and join my class. Fortunately I brought a roll book from home to keep track of attendance easily. So far it’s made my attendance taking much more manageable.

I’ve realized lately that as much as I want my students to practice their English for homework every night, I also have to portion out only as much homework as I can grade in a timely fashion so that by the time I can grade it all the material is still fresh in my students’ minds so when I go over the answers they’ll still know what I’m talking about! The first two weeks I gave them a homework assignment every night, albeit even if it was a small one, but thanks to my zealous instruction I’ve begun to weigh myself down with all the grading I’ve had to do. Even if I ask the students to write just 10 sentences practicing what we’ve learned, that means I have to read 35 papers of 10 sentences each! From now on I think I’ll limit homework to one or two assignments a week. I’ll see if that makes my life easier. As of now I still have about 3 homework assignments I haven’t even begun grading! More fun for this weekend, I suppose…

Thursday’s class was especially enjoyable this week. My students asked me to bring in pictures of my family and since I didn’t print any out to bring with me I was forced to bring in my laptop to show all the pictures I’d just taken from my graduation. It was quite funny because as soon as I showed my students photos of my brother they were all like “Oooooooh how old is he?!” hahahahaha. I was laughing soooo hard. They were like, “He is so handsome!”…so kudos to you, Nate! They were even referring to you in a picture that showed off your burly man untrimmed facial hair and scruffy uncut moptop on your head! When I told them you were 20 going on 21 this November some of the students perked up and were like, “Oh well he’s 20 and I’m 18…!” as if that age combination was a match made up in Heaven or something. So congrats Nate, you now have 30+ young Tanzanian women swooning over you over here and the more they think about you the less they pay attention to what I’m staying in class, haha. I’m just kidding, but ah I got a kick out of their reactions. I also showed my students pictures of my sister, my parents, my pets, my house, my road, and what the surrounding environment around where I live looks like. They all lit up when they saw my house, maybe because it was the first picture I showed them, but maybe because my house just is really pretty. When I showed them my sister they were like “Awww!” and when I showed them pictures of me with my parents they were like, “Wowwww!” and “You look like your mom! She’s very pretty” – so you scored some points with the kids as well, mom! Haha.

I have to say I got a little homesick while I was showing the pictures because I hadn’t looked at pictures of my house or my family or just my “home” in general since I got to Tanzania in June. Seeing me smiling with my family on my graduation day really made me miss how good it feels to be with family, even if they drive you to the end of your wits sometimes. Up until now I haven’t really been struck with homesickness and quite honestly I’m trying to muster up the willpower to not let it bog me down much. Of course I miss home and of course I miss my family (only a really crazy and cold hearted person might not), but I have to stay strong for my students and remind myself that my family, my home, and all the other lovely people I know will most likely be at home when I return so I just have to be patient now until I can see them again. Besides, for now I get to reap the benefits of getting to know even more new wonderful people while still constantly holding fond memories and thoughts of everyone back home in my heart!

Speaking of fond memories, I wanted to share this with you. One of my students made me a card this week and gave it to me on Wednesday afternoon. I think it is simply the sweetest, weirdest, cutest, and most welcoming card I have ever received. After my student gave this to me I was laughing and smiling for hours, totally tickled by her gesture. Because of its rather obscure and genuine nature, I wanted to share with you what my student wrote to me. I hope you get a kick out of it too. The front of the card reads, “Message: ‘True Love Never Die.’ Megan You are welcome! In Tanzania as well as Dakawa!” Then the inside of the card says, “Dear Megan, I always likes to seeing you smile, talking, walking. I may say that I likes you and love u. You have a nice voice! You are attractive! You have a nice shape! And ur Beautiful at all. You teachs well, at the first time it was not easy for me to understand you but now I am feeling better because I can understand you. You change my life some how! By showing my mistakes, I likes that! And also I like friends because always I likes to know many people and share ideas. That’s all. I love u much! From Tunosye!!!!!” Then on the back of the card she wrote, “Megan, Ma gift to you!” and she drew me a picture of a bouquet of flowers. She then asked me, “Do you like ugali chicken or rice and chicken?” and she drew pictures of ugali and chicken together and then rice and chicken together above the questions. All over each side of the card she drew very pretty and intricate designs along the. Aside from all the grammatical mistakes, which I should go over with her at some point, the card is absolutely perfect in my eyes and it made me really happy! What’s funny is that of all the students in the class I have the hardest time pronouncing this student’s name, but even though I often pronounce her name funnily she still loves me, haha. Ah, I love it. It’s awesome how the smallest acts of kindness can make you the happiest!

So here’s just a couple of random paragraphs about some interesting updates from this week:

My cell phone somehow became possessed on Thursday and my SIM card randomly stopped working and told me I was restricted from using it, hence I’m now on a mission to find a new phone and try to redeem my number from my SIM card in the process. It’s going to be a bit of a pain!

A giant cockroach about 2.5 inches long scrambled around the floor on Wednesday night and kept me company as I played an hour of mine sweeper. I guess they’re harmless so I didn’t quite mind, although admittedly I lifted my feet off the floor and got a little ab workout in the process. Somehow I was reminded of the old flick, “Beetlejuice,” too, haha. It’s not usual for us to see cockroaches, lizards about 4 inches long, moths, spiders, little beetles, or even these really ugly and dangerous giant hornets inside our house. Talk about home sweet home…but as long as they don’t end up hurting me, I’m cool with their presence because they kill mosquitoes! The other night actually I saw a small lizard on our living room wall stalk and kill a beetle and I dare say it was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. When the lizard killed the beetle I was almost temped to shout, “Go team lizard,” as if the lizard and I are on the same team because I don’t want little flying beetles on my walls, either. A lot of times my housemates and I sit in the living room in the evenings and it sounds like we’re playing intermittent games of patty cake from when we were young because we smack our hands together to try and kill as many mosquitoes as we can. It’s become a bit of a game and our only real form of late night entertainment, since our TV is out of commission.

On that note, our satellite dish still has yet to get fixed! Apparently there’s a broken cable or something that we need to replace for it to work again. We had a working television the first night we arrived at home and were “fortunate” enough to catch an awful 1970s American movie that night about this woman who had a 10 year long affair with an uncommitted married man before she decided to leave him when she finally figured out that he would never leave his wife to completely be with her. Let me tell you, it was oh so riveting and probably one of the most confusing movies I’ve ever seen. It cracked me up that a movie with such a ridiculous and indecipherable plot line was being shown on Tanzanian television where most people’s first language isn’t even English. Way to entertain, or confuse, most of your population, TZ, haha…and also to give a really whacky perception of what American movies are like. The woman had a mullet after all, for crying out loud. Most women in America today wouldn’t get caught dead with a mullet! Haha. All in all, we’re still trying to grasp someone’s attention long enough here to remind him or her of our need for a new cable so he or she will do something about it. If we knew where to get a new cable we would, but for now we’ll continue to be squatting ducks without a working television until someone comes to our rescue. I say “rescue” only because we’re in such a rural part of Tanzania that whenever we tell someone we don’t have a working television we usually get a gasp in response followed by a concerned, “What do you do all day!? Aren’t you bored!? Eish, pole sana (I’m very sorry!)” as if not having a working T.V. is a tragedy. Really, though, if someone doesn’t come fix it soon I might have a mini breakdown from missing my Bongo Flava (Tanzanian hip hop music genre) music videos! Haha. But really, I really do love them!

I’ve realized I need to be really methodical about when I wash clothes and hang them out to dry on the line in front of our house because when our neighbors sweep up the leaves in their backyard and burn them, usually in the afternoons, all the smoke suffocates the clean air and are drying clothes soak up the smoke-saturated air. Hence, your once clean and laundry soap-smelling clothes are clean and aromatic no more! It’s almost become somewhat of a game for me. After I’ve washed my clothes and hung them out to dry and I can see a small pile of burning leaves in our shared back yard I jolt out the door and awkwardly swipe my damp clothes off the line and put them in a bucket to sit until the smoke dissipates and I can hang them up again on the line once the air becomes clean. This strategy might seem a little drastic, but the last time I washed my bed sheets they got smothered in smoke from burning leaves for over an hour so by the time I brought them in and tried to put them on my bed my room smelt like a giant fire pit. Even though they were clean in theory the smell was too much for me to handle so I slept without sheets that night and rewashed them the following day. If you knew how much of a pain it is to wash huge queen size sheets by hand and somehow wring out all of the soapy water out of them, I think you’d run out to the line and grab your things off of it temporarily too whenever your neighbor starts burning leaves nearby! It may seem trivial, but the smell of fresh and clean sheets is enough to give me a great night’s sleep on its own. Haha.

This weekend my housemates and I have decided to stay overnight in Morogoro for one night so that we can make a bunch of outstanding purchases for our house. We still need to get a couple rugs for our floors because some of our floors don’t have the fancy fake-tile linoleum and they’re just exposed concrete. We’re also going to get a shelf for our food in the kitchen. Until now we’ve stuck our food in a box on the floor in the pantry because it doesn’t have shelves and we’ve also piled as much food as we could on top of the fridge, but a shelf would be really nice. We’re also going to go on a hunt for mirrors for our rooms. Since we’re teachers it’s important that we look at least somewhat presentable for our students and until now my little 3 inch by 3 inch vanity mirror isn’t quite cutting it, haha. I’m not ashamed to say, also, that we’re just self-obsessed Americans, too, and that we like to look at ourselves every once in a while. A girl’s gotta make sure she looks good! Haha. I think personally I might also buy myself a shelving unit for my room as well because everything that can’t fit on my bedside table or in my wardrobe has been shoved into my smallest suitcase and left to sit on the floor until I figure out what to do with it. It’d be nice to put my suitcases away for good, especially since I’ll actually be living here for a year. I might also invest in a bedside light that I can put on my nightstand because the only overhead light I have in my room in a fluorescent light, which is quite harsh on my eyes in the evenings. It does help to wake me up early in the morning though, so I think I’ll still use it then.

So I’ll admit that for most of this post I’ve been rambling about rather important things, albeit they’re all relevant to my life. You might be wondering how I’ve possibly managed to write nearly five pages in Word about literally nothing that’s been going on. Well, if you consider my knack for procrastination (I really should be grading right now…) and also the fact that we don’t have a TV or any other real form of entertainment, that leaves a ton of time to fill up doing something else. Since I’ve always liked writing, I figure I should just pass the time by going on and on about the many details of my life here. I just hope I haven’t bored you too much! All in all, thanks for reading!

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Ahh it's the weekend!!

Written Friday, 6 August, 2010

This week went by pretty fast it seems! My classes went well this week. I went over grammar with my students based on the minor mistakes they made in their first essays. We played a grammar game on Wednesday and I had everyone take a turn correcting a grammatical error that came up in the papers. I wrote example sentences with the mistakes and the students had to identify the errors and correct them for the class. Thursday I put the students in groups and they got to work together to make sentences using infinitives and gerunds. It’s funny because before I left for WorldTeach I didn’t even know what a gerund was – lo and behold it’s actually a verb that’s been turned into a noun by adding –ing to its ending (e.g. in the sentence, “She is cooking a pie,” “cooking” is the gerund). I feel like I’m learning much more about the structure of the English language and the rules for how our language works more than I ever have in my life. To be a teacher here you really need to know all the rules in case your students ask you, “Why is this word or this sentence like this?” Luckily I haven’t gotten any questions that have totally stumped me in class yet from my students, but that’s probably because I teach the grammar rules right off the bat in class. One question I did get is if I could bring in pictures of where I’m from and that’s definitely an easy one for me to satisfy.

On Thursday I brought in two picture books of Vermont and flipped through them trying to explain what the environment in my state is like during all four seasons. Right now it’s winter here and the students mentioned that they sometimes have to wear sweaters or long sleeves because they get cold. When I showed them pictures of our Vermont winters and all the snow we get, though, they were totally boggled! They asked me if I’m ever cold here and I said absolutely not – this is more like summer or spring weather for me so relative to them I’m not cold. I have to say, though, the mornings here when I have to get up at 6:30 for my 7:30 classes are pretty cold. I usually run to the kitchen to start boiling some hot water that I can dump into a bucket and mix with the room temperature tap water from our bathroom to take a bucket bath to warm up a bit. Usuall I can put up with the tap water by itself because it’s not too cold, but in the mornings I rather chicken out and heat up the water. We don’t have a hot water heater here so if you ever want hot water you have to heat it up on the stove. We have an electric stove which most of the time works great, but it’s pretty common for the electricity to go out here so sometimes we can’t even get hot water when we want it. Our Headmistress, Madam Mtima, gave us a charcoal stove which most people here use to cook with, but we never really figured out how to use it so she took it back for herself. Maybe if she’s willing to teach us how to use it then we can borrow it or just keep it so we can boil water and cook when the power’s out. For some reason the power always seems to go out around dinnertime, I’m not really sure why. I’ll have to ask Ms. Mtima about that.

My housemates, Alice and Abby, just left on Friday afternoon to go to Dar es Salaam this weekend. I wanted to go with them, but I decided to wait to go to Dar another weekend once I get my first teaching stipend from the Ministry of Education here. My finances are really tight right now so I want to wait until I have enough cushion money to comfortably travel to Dar and back. We have a month-long vacation coming up in the middle of September and I figure I can spend plenty of time in Dar then while I have time off. So this weekend I’m alone in our little house in Dakawa, but I’ve managed to keep myself pretty busy so far.

I’ve begun intensively studying Kiswahili again because I really do want to learn the language here. Last night I studied for an hour and a half before bed. I was filling out the exercise book I got from that girl in Dar es Salaam who is working for the U.S. Embassy here. I was happy to find out that I actually know a ton of words so far, even though I really didn’t think I did. I was able to fill out quite a bit of the book before bed and I continued working on it this morning. Right now I’m trying to learn as many verbs as I can because I know how to use the four tenses really well (past, immediate past, present, and future), so now it’s just a matter of learning more vocabulary to use those tenses with. Kiswahili is a pretty easy language to learn, especially in terms of tenses, but the hardest things to learn are the nouns. Kiswahili has seven noun classes and they all start with different prefixes in their singular and plural forms. Although sometimes it’s easy to figure out what the pronoun is for a certain noun because it falls into a certain noun class (e.g. there’s a class for all living things, which includes all people and animals), sometimes it’s really confusing because most of the noun classes have rather arbitrary differences between them. If you want to learn the nouns, you really just have to memorize them for the most part. Believe me, I’m working on it! I don’t have a Kiswahili teacher here in Dakawa so it’s a lot of self-teaching, but hopefully I’ll get to know someone who might be interested in teaching me more Kiswahili. I have a feeling I’m going to learn quite a bit of Kiswahili this weekend while my housemates are away. Usually we spend a lot of time chatting together as we’re lesson planning for our classes or grading assignments, but since it’s just me this weekend I can spend all that would be chatting time studying Kiswahili instead.

That's all for now, folks.

Talk to you soon!

Always be Prepared!

Written: Sunday, August 1, 2010

Hi my lovely readers!

So funny story first – I was in the internet café in Morogoro city this past weekend on Sunday writing this very same post when all of a sudden the power went out. That has happened so much lately that it’s almost normal now for the power to be out, at least in the Morogoro city center! I only had about 5 minutes of computer time left and I was about to upload all I’d written during my half an hour session to my blog and then woosh – all the computers shut off. It was quite funny actually, but in light of that happening I’ve decided to come to Morogoro city this Tuesday to upload the second version of my blog for your eyes to see for the first time, just to keep you all updated. In order to prepare for any future post-erasing power outages at the internet café, I’ve realized I should probably write my posts for my blog on my own computer and save them to my flash drive so that I can just upload them on the rare occasion that I can get to the internet café. Hence, this is what I’ve chosen to do. It’s important to always be prepared, especially here.

So here’s what I’ve been up to…

Last week was the first week I taught English classes at the Dakawa Secondary School. It was really nice to finally start teaching, especially since I’ve been here for a month and a half now without teaching! I still can’t believe it’s August already – how did the last month and a half of my life blow by so quickly? It still feels like I just arrived in Tanzania only two weeks ago! Nevertheless, it was wonderful to start teaching. I have 35 girls in my Form 5 class (equivalent to Grade 11 in the USA) that I teach three times a week: Tuesdays and Thursdays 7:30-8:50 and Wednesdays 12:10-1:30. Although I never thought I’d be teaching so early in my life – I mean I’ve never even had to go to school before 8:00 before! – I actually like teaching the early classes better than my one afternoon class. It’s nice to get up and start the day off fresh with class and then have the whole rest of the day to do whatever I need to, especially to lesson plan for my future classes. Wednesday is definitely my toughest day of the week because I teach until 1:30, have a late lunch when I get home, then I unfortunately hit my afternoon slump in energy just as I should be lesson planning for my early Thursday morning class before dinner. Last Wednesday I was up until midnight lesson planning because I was so tired I had to take a nap in the afternoon before dinner, leaving all of my lesson planning chores until after dinner. If you’ve never lesson planned before, it actually takes a lot of time when you’re just starting to do it. Although I lesson planned for the class I taught at Skidmore once a week during my last semester, it’s a whole new experience lesson planning for my classes now. I do like the challenge though.

Overall I’m really happy with the way my class is going so far, even though we’ve only met three times so far. I’m even starting to learn most of the girls’ names because at the end of my class with them last Thursday I took a picture of each of them with the nametags I had them make for themselves so I could study their names and faces over the weekend to get to know them better. I’d say I’m roughly half way there with knowing all their names, which isn’t bad consider it’s only been a week! Ever since my first class I’ve made a huge effort to get to know my students as much as possible. I’ve also been very open with them about who I am because I believe the most effective teacher-student relationship is one that is built off of mutual knowledge and respect for who each other is. As a student, the more you know a teacher, the more you might be willing to talk to her or him about what you need help with; adversely the more you know a student as a teacher, the more you’ll know how best to teach your student based on who he or she is. I’m generally very open in general, not just when it comes to being a teacher, and this style seems to be working out well for me so far. The first day I let my students have an open question session with me in which they could ask me any question they wanted to. Some of them were normal, such as “How old are you?” and “What’re your hobbies?” but some of the other ones were quite peculiar and very reflective of how Tanzanians have little shame in asking you very personal questions even if they don’t know you for very long. For example, my students asked me “Do you have a boyfriend?” “Are you married?” “Have you even been in love?” and “What part of your physique do you like the best about yourself?” When I answered the boyfriend question with a “No” the students asked if I would ever consider dating a Tanzanian guy or marrying one. When I told them I’d already dated one literally all the students whooshed out of their chairs and stood up and cheered with big smiles on their faces. It was hysterical and I think I turned bright red, haha. They also asked me if I like Tanzania and I told them all how I am very happy to be here in Tanzania and that one of my future goals is to someday live along the coast of Dar es Salaam perhaps or another coastal part of Tanzania in a beach cabin along the ocean because I love the ocean. When I told them this all the students got up again and cheered! I was happy to have the students in such good spirits during our first class. Their laughs, smiles, and cheers during that first class definitely helped me feel more comfortable as a teacher in the class.

Aside from the getting-to-know-you first day, my actual lesson plans that I began on Wednesday last week went really well. As a young teacher I’m trying to use my age and knowledge of what girls my age like (such as music and pop culture) to teach in a “hip” way, if you will. I’m trying to teach my students English by incorporating their interests as young women into my lesson plans. I know from experience that when a teacher actually pays attention to what you care about when you’re in a certain life stage, the more you look forward to that class, pay attention, and want to do well in that class as a matter of appreciation for your teacher’s efforts. During our first class, for example, several of my students told me that they really like Chris Brown. Under the guidelines of the syllabus the English department here gave me to work from, I needed to teach the students about Word Formation and specifically about morphemes, roots, and stems for the first few lessons. Using the fact that the students like Chris Brown, I came to class last Wednesday with the lyrics to his song “Superhuman” with Keri Hilson written down on different sheets of paper. I split the class into seven groups and I had each group work together to use the vocabulary I taught them about word formation to identify what all the parts of the words in the song are called according to English grammar. I played the song for the class while they worked and they all sang along as they worked. It was really fun to hear them all singing. They tried to get me to sing for them and being shy I declined this time, but if they persist throughout the year I might be willing to sing a song or two with them, or even for them, in the future. Haha. On Thursday I tried to infuse music into my lesson plan again because they loved that on Wednesday. I got the students to practice their listening, writing, and grammar skills in English by splitting them into two teams and having one member of each team race each other to listen to a line of lyrics from Beyonce’s song “If I Were A Boy” and write the lyrics correctly on the board for one point, then race to use the correct word formation vocabulary to identify all the parts of the words in that line of lyrics for another point. I had a new member of each team take a turn up at the board until we made it through the whole song. The competition was fierce! All the other members of each team were yelling at the girl writing from their team about what the lyrics were and how she should label the words. It got a little out of hand at one point when one of the girls who lost her round got upset and threw chalk at the girl at the other time who finished first and got a point for her team, but I jumped on that quickly! I said there will be absolutely no chalk-throwing in the classroom and that if the students can’t be respectful on one another during fun activities like this then I would switch to boring lecture style teaching. The students definitely got the message and calmed down after that. Even though I’m a pretty relaxed teacher and I’m very open and friendly with my students, I believe it’s also important to step in as a real authority figure sometimes to maintain control in the classroom, especially when the students are being disrespectful of each other. I’m going to try my hardest this year to teach my students how to learn in a fun AND respectful environment. Hopefully it’ll work out!

This weekend after finishing teaching for the week I went to the Morogoro city center to stay with some of the fellow WorldTeach volunteers who are teaching at a school right in town. My two housemates and I went to town on a daladala on Friday and we met up with the three volunteers who work in and just outside of town. One of the guys who got on the daladala we took to town gave the conductor who collects everyone’s money some trouble so he ended up kicking the guy off the daladala and they got in a brief fistfight! It was totally riveting. I don’t think I’ve ever actually witnessed a pure fistfight in person before. The conductor won the fight and pushed the dude down a hill and he came up running and banging on the outside of the daladala as we drove on. It was a little scary because we almost opened the sliding window next to my housemate before we took off again, but he was unsuccessful. You never know what’s going to happen on during the daladala ride. Last time we came to Morogoro from our house there was a very sick elder woman from a Maasai tribe who was put in the front seat while two members of the tribe came with her to town. I sure hope they were taking her to the hospital. I’ve wondered since then if she turned out ok, she might’ve had malaria really badly, been infected with HIV or AIDS, or just have been sick because of some complications that come with old age. Whatever the reason, I hope she’s well now or reached a better place.

When we arrived in Morogoro on Friday night safely we all went to dinner at a really nice place called Dragonaire’s where they’re known for having the best pizza in all of Morogoro! It was delicious! On Saturday we mulled around town, bought some items for our house to bring back with us, used the internet, and went to the market to pick up food for dinner. For those unfamiliar with it like us as white American volunteers, the market can be quite overbearing at times. We always have about 12 men run up to us from all directions to hold different produce and other kinds of food in front of our faces asking if we need it or want to buy it. Because we’re all white in a sea of blackness we stand out like sore thumbs, especially at the market since it’s a very non-touristy place usually – most tourists just go to Pira’s, which is the upscale downtown supermarket that has all sorts of often expensive goodies like cheese and a large wine selection. Since it’s assumed we’re foreign because we’re white when we’re at the market a lot of vendors come right to us with their goods or take us by the hands and lead us to the different stations they run so we’ll buy things from them. We try our best not to get ripped off too much and we’ve all gotten better at bargaining since we’ve learned some useful vocabulary like “Punguza bei” (Lower the price) and “Sina pesa hiyo” (I don’t have that kind of money). I’ve personally taken a liking to bargaining, which is helpful because rarely ever do you see something for sale here, even in an enclosed shop with windows and a door, that has pre-marked prices. I’m usually such a pushover so it wouldn’t seem like I’m good at bargaining, but it’s become something like a fun game to me. You have to do it in a sort of chipper and teasing kind of manner – never be short or rude to a vendor when they give you an expensive price. Bargaining is mostly done in good humor and you just go back and forth until you settle on a “fair” price. If a vendor doesn’t budge we usually just start walking away until they settle on what we were willing to offer for the item or we just move on to another vendor who’s seen that we won’t settle for a ridiculous price so he or she is more likely to offer us the same item for less than the first vendor. Usually we get the price down at least a little when we start bargaining, which for an mzungu (white person) is quite exciting and feels like somewhat of an accomplishment. Even though I’m sure we’re still paying more than we really should even when we settle on a price and buy something, as visitors here whom the exchange rate from the US Dollar to the Tanzanian Shilling benefits greatly, it almost seems fair that we contribute more of our money (if we can afford to) to the Tanzanian economy when we bargain. Although I don’t come from a wealthy background and I’m trying my hardest to be as frugal as possible here, I still understand the Tanzanian logic behind overcharging us because we’re white Americans.

We went back to the house and made a great dinner on Saturday night with rice, beans, and curried vegetables. We went out to one of the two night clubs in town called Kingston and enjoyed a brief night of live music and dancing and then retired early. On Sunday we went into town to eat lunch and get some groceries to take back with us to our house in Dakawa. We especially needed bottled water. We don’t drink the water from the tap at our house because it tastes really bad and it’s also not recommended since it might have bacteria or parasites in it that we wouldn’t want getting into our system, so we buy large jugs of water whenever we go to town to use for drinking water. We still use our tap water for cooking after boiling it and we use it to bathe and to brush our teeth – we figure that little bit shouldn’t hurt us, or at least we really reallllllly hope that it won’t! We got our bottled water and groceries from our favorite grocery store called Pira’s and then went to the internet café just before we left to go back home. As I shared with you in the beginning of this post, the power went out so I lost the post I’d already written, hence why I’ve chosen to rewrite it and upload it today. And hey – this time it worked!

It’s important to always be prepared here in any way you can be. As a Westerner used to using toilet paper and having soap and running water in bathrooms, I’ve learned to keep a roll of toilet paper, my own soap, and hand sanitizer as a back up with me wherever I go because most public bathrooms here don’t usually have toilet paper, soap, or sometimes even running water. I also always keep my camera with me all the time incase something happens where I’d want to take a picture of it. Recently I’ve been taking a lot of pictures of our house, the Dakawa school, and the environment we’re nestled in. It’s a total savanna out here – literally as soon as you go even five minutes drive outside of Morogoro city on your way to Dakawa you’re surrounded by nothing but savanna and the only people you seldom pass by on the one-hour-long drive are little pockets of Maasai people who live in villages that are speckled all around the rural areas of Tanzania. Eve though it sounds dull, it’s actually really beautiful out here.

I’ve been on a few runs around the paths that go between my High School, the neighboring villages that most of the teachers live in (there’s a Village 1 and a Village 2), the Teacher’s College and the Primary Schools. Last time I went for a run with my housemate we went just before sunset and since it’s so flat out here we got to see the sky change glorious shades of red, orange, pink and yellow. We were running in between really beautiful varieties of African flowers, one of which looks like a dark purple rose hanging upside down off of a bent stem. We also ran by a huge field of tomatoes where people were picking hoards of them. There are piles and piles of tomatoes underneath the trees and in wooden boxes all over the trails we run on. It’s generally quiet even though we run by a number of people who walk on the paths. Whenever we pass by them they usually look at us and smile and say something about how we are and we always respond that we’re good. Toward the end of our half hour run a man leaning outside of a daladala that was going down the main road we were running on yelled out “Umechoka” to me as he passed by, which means “You’re tired” and yes, I was! Although we’re not right near the coast so it’s not as hot out here as it gets in Dar es Salaam, it’s still really humid sometimes and the heat can really get to you, especially when you’re on a long run and we’d been running for nearly half an hour by the time that daladala passed! My housemate and I went on another run around 9am another day and even though we thought it would be cool enough it got really hot really fast all of a sudden! After running around dusk I think I’ll stick to that cooler schedule. Yet, no matter what time of day you run at here it’s always super dusty and dry – or at least for now until October when a short one-month rainy season will start. The main dirt road to Dakawa off the main paved road from Morogoro is chocked full of uneven jagged rocks that are really hard to run on so we’ve been running on all the little paths around, but come the short rainy season and then the long one from March to May we might have to face it and run on that road since our smaller running paths might be washed out in the flooding rain. Until then, though, I’m just going to enjoy running through my little piece of savanna heaven and try to keep my head up while I’m here.