mikumi, teaching, etc.

Sorry for the delay, but PICTURES ARE UP!! Check out the photostream above or visit http://picasaweb.google.com/KathrynBAlexander/PCTanzaniaPST?feat=directlink.

LIVING:
My homestay family is still great. My mama has pretty much blown every conservative stereotype that PC told us out the window. I came home the other night and she told me that she had just remembered that today was her birthday. Remembering that she told me she was 25 the first day I moved in, I mentioned that she turned 26, to which she responded that no, she had turned 24. So I guess I'm still not sure how old she is, but it looks like she's just 6 months or so older than me which is amusing because homestay is conducive to being treated like a child (here's how you use the toilet, take a bath, cook, wash your clothes, clean your room, etc.). I also found out that her and my baba aren't actually married, but live together and have a child which is extremely untraditional for Tanzania. And after every warning given to me about how religious Tanzanians are and how they will not understand you if you say you don't have a religion, of course my Mama isn't religious at all. Of course village life will be much different, but it has been neat to see a broader picture of modern Tanzanians.

Flora, my house dada (house sister = live in housekeeper/cook) ran away about a week ago. It’s a pretty long story that I won’t go into because I still don’t really understand what happened myself. But long story short she is gone and now its just me, Mama Isaac, my kaka Isaac, and my dada Betty. It has been pretty crazy without Flora because she really did most of the work around the house and stayed home during the day with Isaac. I’ve had to pitch in a lot more around the house, which means waking up earlier and staying up later to help with the chores. My personal favorite (read: NOT) is sweeping the dirt around outside the house; I’m not sure I’ll ever understand the reasoning behind it, but I can say with pretty high certainty that I will not be waking up early to do this once I’m in my own house.

Most people are interested to hear that I eat dinner almost every night with my hands. Well really hand, because you're left hand is reserved solely for wiping yourself (don’t worry, I use toilet paper). At the beginning I was pretty paranoid about using my left hand for something I'm not supposed to and offending someone. For example, have you ever tried to peel a banana using one hand? I have, and it is not easy. Of course after a couple of minutes my mama's friend just started laughing and told me that I could use my left hand to hold the banana peel. I think about it a lot less now and so I've forgotten plenty of times and used my left hand to grab food. My mama and her friends also laugh at me a lot because I haven't really mastered eating rice and beans with my fingers. They're really good at like rolling it into a ball in their hands and eating it but I mostly just make a big mess and my hands are covered in food at the end of the meal. It is pretty amusing. In general, Tanzanians appreciate you even trying to fit into their culture and give you tons of slack because you aren't afterall Tanzanian.

About every other afternoon/evening I'll meet up with some of the other volunteers in the area for a (cold!) beer or soda. I know I won't have that luxury once I'm alone at site, but it's been really nice having other PCVs to talk to that know exactly what you're going through and to just be able to completely relax and be yourself.

TEACHING:
I’m about to finish my third and final week of internship teaching. It has gone alright, and it is definitely hard to take over a classroom for just 3 weeks, but it has been really interesting and I feel like I've learned a lot. English is by far the biggest challenge. Most of the students english skills are not where they need to be to be learning all subjects in English (most Tanzanian teachers teach primarily in Kiswahili which means that the kids can learn the concepts but then fail the exams which are written in English). The hardest part is definitely forcing myself to slow down my speech as much as possible, over-pronounce every syllable, repeat myself, and use really simple vocabulary. Students don't have textbooks and so everything you write (and only what you write) they copy into their notebooks and study from. It takes a long time for them to copy boardwork because they all want to write and draw really perfectly (they seriously use rulers to draw every single line). Besides the language barrier, you generally recieve very little feedback and it's hard to get a lot of class participation. Posing open-ended answers to students and having them feel comfortable answering them is a big challenge and a highlights a pretty huge difference between the Tanzanian and American educational systems; in general, Tanzanian students are not encouraged to think for themselves, but instead to memorize and regurgitate answers. But if anything, internship teaching has made me more excited to have my own class for an entire year, where I can set rules and expectations and really get to know my students. We've had some really great sessions given by current PCVs with really practical information about differences between American and Tanzanian schools, how to manage a classroom, how to encourage critical thinking rather than memorization, etc. Last week we also had a really cool session by a 4th year PCV (a lot volunteers here extend past 2 years) about hands on lab activities. It was a lot of fun and he gave us a lot of great information and ideas that have made me really excited to teach science as interactively as possible, and all of the cheap and local materials you can use to do so.

TRAVELLING:
Two weekends ago we went to Mikumi national park, which was about a 2 hour drive from Morogoro. It was a really great weekend and just the break we all needed from training. We did a late afternoon safari on Saturday and then a very early morning safari on Sunday morning. It was a really amazing experience and really the first time that it hit me I was actually in Africa and how lucky I am to be in Tanzania and experience the things I'm experiencing. I'm not even a huge animal person and I must say that it was so cool to see all of the elephants, giraffes, zebras, impalas, warthogs, a hippo, etc. Watching the sunset in the park was also incredible. We partied a bit on Saturday night and actually managed to stay up until like 2:30 in the morning which is really incredible when I think most of us go to bed around 9:30 every night. Anyways, the weekend went by way too fast but it was a lot of fun!

Training is starting to drag on and a lot of us are getting pretty antsy to move on to our sites, be able to cook and clean in our own houses, etc. Luckily this week seems like our last real week of training because on Sunday we’ll leave for shadowing current PCVs. I’m headed to Mbeya region, in southwest Tanzania close to the border with Zambia. It is one of the furthest sites and takes about 10 hours by bus from Morogoro. There are four of us going there, and I feel really lucky to be in the group I’m in (PC seems to like splitting us up completely arbitrarily); one of the guys is one of my best friends here and the other two are really cool and laidback so it should be a fun trip. I’m extremely excited to see some more of the country, and have heard good things about Mbeya (green and lush, cooler, tasty rice, etc.). It will also be really helpful to see how a volunteer lives, works, eats, sleeps, etc.

On Saturday we find out our site placements so it should be a crazy day filled with lots of emotions! I’m super anxious and it is pretty much torture waiting to find out where I’ll be living for the next two years and which volunteers I’ll be nearest to...stay tuned!!

Oh ya and it’s also been pretty crazy here lately with all the excitement surrounding the presidential election, which happened on Sunday. The current President, Kikwete, ran for a second term and won, which was expected. However, his party, CCM (which has dominated for a really long time) lost a lot of their seats in parliament to other parties which was also expected because there are a lot of people that think CCM has been in power for too long and want to see what other parties can deliver. Anyways, it was expected to be a peaceful election, but as a precaution we were on standby from Peace Corps (stay at home and don’t go into town and be ready to hear from Peace Corps with further instructions, etc.).

Ok, that's all I can think of for now...badaaye (later)!