Mbeya

It has been one of those weeks, where all I wanted was my own car and a microwave. To start things off last weekend like I said I went to Mbeya with the two other volunteers who living in the dirty dirty South about an hour and a half away from me. It was great I was able to by some of the things I really needed and could only find in a “big” city. We went to the gas station/truck stop that randomly sells American products and I was able to buy peanut butter and chocolate, the two things I had been dearly missing. While we were in Mbeya I was even able to break with my daily feeding of rice and beans and got some pizza and iced sweet tea!! It was amazing to say the least, the pizza tasted like one of those ones you buy at the grocery store and then warm up but at this point I wasn’t complaining. While we were in Mbeya we also meet with some of the Peace Corps volunteers who are living around Mbeya. They were pretty cool, although the Peace Corps volunteers tend to have this superiority complex about them which can get annoying, but these guys were pretty chill.

Everything that weekend was going well until it was time to head home. On the way to Mbeya I had arranged a private car to sketchily drive me at 5 in the morning to Mbeya, and I was just going to take a bus back. Little did I know how hard it would be to get back. The bus station in Mbeya is kind of like the streets of Las Vegas in that all those annoying people in Las Vegas are out on the streets with their cards for strip clubs and prostitutes and want you to take them. The people around the bus station in Mbeya are just like that the minute you get out of your taxi the swarm you wanting to help you, wanting to know where you are going, they try and get you to go with them. Luckily we had an awesome cab driver who took us right to where we wanted to be. The first bus was okay it was just a normal bus with a typical amount of people on it. We then got to the town where we needed to change busses. This ois the part I was worried about because my two other friends were going to a bigger town and I was going to a smaller more remote town and wanted to be sure I had a ride there. All the sudden a land cruiser pulls up and this man tells us to get in, naturally we do and are super pumped not to be on a bus driving down the dirt roads. Our excitement quickly faded as we realized we were about to roll 19 deep in the land cruiser. Let me say I would like to think that I have piled the maximum capacity of people into a car, (one night in particular stands out sophomore year piling who knows how many into Stock’s hoe) but this was on a completely different level. At one point there was a guy holding on outside the car as we are pushing 65 miles an hour down t he unpaved rocky dirt roads. This went on for about an hour and a half, it was the most uncomfortable I had been in a long time I will sya that but in the end it was all about the experience. When we got to the town to drop the other volunteers off another problem arose. The car and driver that had reassured me would get to my small town was in fact not going there. The driver did make a deal with me he would drive me half way there and then we would arrange for a piki piki to take me the rest of the way. At this point I hated the driver but as the ride continued just me and him and a 91 year old lady he actually became really cool and wants me to hire him to drive us to Malawi when we go in a few weeks. The drive to Mbeya took me only 2 and a half hours the way back took me close to 10, by the time I got home I was exhausted and cursing Africa.

Other than that adventure the week was pretty chill. I subsequently got sick this week probably due to all the weather changes that have been happening here. I continue to eat rice and beans daily with a little flavor thrown in there to spice things up sometimes. I have gotten pretty good at cooking the green bananas and making them taste like potatoes and this week I even learned how to make the good kind of chipati (picture a cross between a tortilla and a crepe). This week our school is supposed to be getting 10 new teachers from the university to do their teaching practicum for the next month, I ma really hoping there are some girl teachers that come. For now that is all hopefully next week I can put some pictures up.

My first Place

This past weekend marked two monumental moments in my life. First a saga a decade in the making came to an end and I have yet to get my closure. If you guessed Harry Potter you would be correct. While the rest of the world gets to have some closure I am left wondering how the last movie was until Ican illegally buy it off the street. The second and more important event that happened was I moved into my first house. It took a week of living in Isoko but finally our place was ready. Without any further adieu I will give you the description of the place.

Our house is situated on the topish of the mountain and looks out to banana trees and the lush mountain landscape. Right across the street there is a primary school that provides me with a daily wake up call in the form of a two minute long ringing of a cow bell at seven am. Moving down the hill you come to the front door of our compound. Yes thats right I live on a compound, not everyone gets this lucky with their first house. Once you enter the front door you are immediately in our living room/ dining room/ den. It is complete with two comfy chairs, a wood table and 4 wood chairs, its pretty roomy if I may say so. Right off of the living room/ dining room/ den is my roommate Gretchen's room. As you continue to move throught the house you come to the kitchen and right across fromt he kitchen is my room. The kitchen is a piece of work. Our host school was nice enough to provide us with lots of food to start out with along with two stoves. Our counter space is lacking slightly as is our storage. My room is great it faces out toward the compound. I have a desk and my bed and a lovely place to keep all of my clothes. Moving out the back door to the compound you see our washing machine and dishwasher as well as our dryer. Many may question how i got so lucky in Africa to get a dishwasher and a washing machine, its because the people like me so much. There are also four doors which lead to our extra kitchen, storage area, shower and bathroom. My first house is one I am sure I will never forget. One of the most unique featurs of my house is that it has what I have termed the veranda which offers a great view of the mountains at sunset. One other fun fact is that this lovely piece of work does not have electricity. It is going to be a learning process but I will survive.

This week was also a long week at school. Lots of teaching and getting to know the students took place as well as the people in town. We now have a boy who comes over almost every night. He just walks in the front door and hangs out while we cook dinner. He speaks little english and my Swahili is minimal at best but I have found out he is 11, his name is Autpele and he loves Micheal Jackson and my headlamp. He helps me start fires and teaches me how to cook some of the local food.

Another fun event that took place was the school blood drive yesterday. No matter where I go I cannot get away from blood drives. Due to an unfortuneate experience freshman year of college at a blood drive, I refuse to give. The people in charge of the blood drive could not comprehend this. They kept telling Me I had good American blood and I should help the Tanzanian's who need it. The blkood drive consisted of one land cruiser pulling up with a huge load on top. Underneath the tarp on top were 2 normal chairs you would find a blood drive and all the other supplies. One look at that and all i could think was disease. Needless to say I threw out every excuse I knew and they finally left me alone.

Today I ventured to Mbeya to get some much needed supplies, seeing as how they are severly lacking in Isoko and because of this get to use the fast internet and can upload some pictures of my house and some other stuff. Enjoy!!!

Welcome to Isoko....Be free

Well I made it to my site finally after the 13 hour bus ride and 4 hour off road adventure. My site is pretty much the furthest south you can get in Tanzania. On the ride here the driver stopped and made us get out at this skank bamboo bridge across an intense rive and said on the other side is Malawi. I have decided to refer to this area as the dirty dirty south due in part to its location and also because there is not a paved road in site, it is all red dirt roads. The area around here is AMAZING though it is absolutly beautiful. The mountains are extremely lush and there are banana trees and avacado trees everywhere. On the down side however, the person who has put the lies in our heads from a young age that all of Africa is perma hot needs to be put in their place. It is FRIGID here. I am rocking my sexy long skirts with leggings underneath a top and my patagonia and a scarf everyday and im still cold. The mornings are the worst on the way to school, but it does eventually warm up I am told.
I mentioned htat we had made it to our site, that is in fact partially true. This being Tanzania and all something had go wrong. On Sunday we arrived at our school and meet our headmaster who is extremely smart and conversational in English. He took us to our house and right as we were about to get settled informed us that our house was not done and that we would need to go stay at the hospital in town for 2 or 3 days. We had no other choice but to agree. They told us we should only take a few things and that we could come back to the house as needed. Our ride down the mountain was ridding three deep on the back of a piki piki aka a dirtbike, it was a scene. We arrived at our temporary home only to find out that it was actually a mission hosptial..that was weird in the first place. Before you go thinking we are sleeping in hospital beds I will tell you we are staying off to the side in this guesthouse like place that we have all to ourselves. It has electricity a tv and best of all internet at this point I don't even care that it is slow.
Monday morning we got to meet various peopel in Isoko town before heading up to the school. At school we were given our timetables I am going to be teaching form 2 and form 3, it adds up to 6 differnt classes of kids which have about 50 kids each in them. Tuesday was my first real day of teaching, I taught the form two kids and of course they found my name extremely funny and laughed at me multiple times during class when I was giving examples of words.
Today my roommate and I got done with schol early and decided to go exploring. On our way out of town we ran into a man who had been showing us around and his friend a pastor, the pastor infomred us there was a market and was going to take us to it. Let me preface this story by saying that today was a big eating day. So we get to the market and he buys us this huge bunch of bay bay bananas and makes us eat all fo them. Then he buys us sprites because he thinks we are thristy. By this point I am starting to feel real sick, but this is not even the end of it. We are walking and talking and he then invites us to his home because we were passing it. In Tanzania if someone invites you into their house you go in and they always must provide you with something to eat or drink. We knew this going into and were dreading it. We sat down and he is talking he intorduced us to his mother who looked like the the grim reeper was knocking on her door. He brought us this big plate of this starchy root and a glass that looked like it was filled with milk. I am not a huge milk drinker in the states, needless to say I am not about to drink milk at some strange mans house. Well he is urging us to drink it and so i took two sips. This was the CHUNKIEST and most SOUR milk iIhave ever tasted. My roommate vomed in her mouth twice. It took all I had not to projectile vom all voer the 90 year old mother. She knew what was up though and was tellling the son we did not like their milk. She then criticized me for writing with my left hand..I was over her.
We finally got out of the house and thought we were going to able to continue our walk alone...but no he wanted to show us more we met all these people in "town" one of whom was a lady with a beard (weird yet strangely awesome at this point), finally he left us on our own informing us to be free and enjoy Isoko. We got kinda lost and ended up at another house with people outside who again invited us in. My stomach was dreading another native concoction but they only served us coffee and again welcomed us to Tanzania and informed us that we just need to be free. Everyone here is obsessed with telling you to be free and enjoy things. They also have no idea where America is but the moment you mention Obama they freak out. They had Obama flashlights (which im thinking about buying because they also feature the American flag) Obama gum, Obama backpacks, Obama beltbuckles etc. Its craziness. Today has been one crazy yet typical day. I hope everyone at home is doing well and love getting emails from everyone there. I miss everyone and will update again soon.

Picture time

As promised here are some pics of what has been going on. I wanted to upload more but the internet goes EXTREMELY slow so I will upload a few at a time

the guesthouse we stayed in for 2 weeks in Lushoto

the Obrey family, my host parents for the weekend

My form 2 class during the Practicum

Standing at the top of the Irente view point in Lushoto

My Masai friend on the beach

This last week has been a busy one. Last Tuesday and Wednesday we got the chance to go into some local schools around the Lushoto region to do our teaching practicums. The first day i was kind of nervous until i got into the classroom and the kids were awesome!! there were 50 of them in the class. They thought i was especially funny and kept asking me to sing Rhiana songs for some reason they thought i could sing. The school we were teaching at was a new school and had only been open for 2 years. there were no glass windows or doors at the school, it took the phrase limited resources to a whole new level. After teaching there I am so ready to be at my site and meet my kids!
The final part of the journey to my site has started. I survived the 13 hour bus ride yesterday just barely. We stopped 4 times the entire time. It was weird we knew we were going tog et a stop for lunch but once we got tot he place we found out we had 10 minutes to get food and go to the bathroom. This "stop" we will call it was a madhouse every bus that is going south stops there because the drivers get free food. I barely made it back on the bus as it was pulling away. We stayed last night in Mbeya which is the closest big city to where I will be living. It seems like a pretty hopping place. In a little bit we will be meeting our district education officer who will take us to our sites. I am really hoping we get internet up there and be able to get electricity somehow. Thats all for now I will update once I get to my site and figure things out

Lushoto

I know it has been awhile since my last post and I apologize. Since my last post we have moved from Dar up into the mountains in Northern Tanzania to the town of Lushoto, which for the first week we were here the internet would not work and we are a good 30/45 minute walk down the mountain to town to get the internet. The climate in the mountains is crazy different from Dar. Dar=Africa hot. Lushoto on the other hand is like early spring in Arkansas/Oklahoma, cold int he mornings then it gets kinda warm in the afternoon and then once the sun sets its cold again. The first week here was jam packed with sessions on teaching english and learning Swahili. We did get to go on a hike int he mountains one of the first days we were here it was BEAUTIFUL (there are pictures at the end of the post from the hike).

The real fun in Lushoto came this weekend. All 15 of us in the program got assigned different home stays from friday afternoon until Sunday. Let me first just say i have not had the best home stay experience, many of you know the stories...lets just say i was kind of jaded about the whole sitch, but I was going to go along with it cause what can you do? So Friday rolls around and Sabean (the huge German lady who owns the guesthouse/runs the swahili lessons/called me culturally insensitive the first day here) tells me and 3 other girls we are going to follow this small child into town to meet our families. An hour later we arrived in town only to find out my family was not meeting me there and i was going to ride a pikipiki (dirt bike/public transportation) to their house. I dont even question it at this point adn hope on with my skirt on and all my bags. When I got to the house the parents and i ate a traditional Tanzanian dish of Ugali, which is basically some grain water and flour, fish (I'm talking tiny fish with heads on them) and spinach. Whats fun about this meal is that you eat it all with your hands and you eat your body weight in the tasteless ugali AND Tanzanian's only eat with their right hand so I was forced to make it work. After the massive "snack" the parents turned e TV turned on CNN and left me just hanging out. I was alone for a good 3 hours just hangin out until they finally arrived home jsut in time for dinner which was more ugali, fish and spinach. I almost vom bombed during the meal.

The Next morning I awoke bright and early and while I was eating breakfast mama came up to me and informed me she was going to go for a few hours and that i should go "look at the environment." So after breakfast I looked at the environment for a good ten minutes before getting bored and attempting to walk to town to use the internet only to remember it was no power Saturday in Lushoto. The family had a son my age so we got to talking and he gave me some swahili lesons in retrn for me telling him about American music. In the end he decided we should get married and live at his parents house (my second marriage proposal of the trip). the Rest of hte evening was uneventful. The next morning though HUGE EVENT. I woke up at around 5:30 to the daughter frantically calling ehr parents to the main room. I had no idea what was going on until mama came into my room and infomred me they had been robbed the night before. The thieves took the TV, DVD player, speakers, food, 2 cell phones, and the little kids books for school. Now you might ask how did they get robbed? Well the answer is this house didnt have any windows just some chicken wire over the windows covered by a tarp, so the thieves cut threw the tarp and came into the house and walked out the front door with everything. It was an eventful morning. I then got to go to church which was an experience. These people get DOWN at church they were dancing and screaming and carrying on for 2 hours, all the while i was completely clueless as to what was happening.

We only have a few more days left in Lushoto before we all go our separate ways to our sites for the year. The more I hear about my region the more excited I get, its just going to suck leaving the whole group because everyone is so much fun. Thats All for now I will update more later about my first day of the teaching practicum later along with the pictures because my internet has slowed down and i cant upload them.