Hope everyone enjoyed the holidays! I went to Newala on the 23rd to meet up with Katie and then we went to Ndanda the morning of the 24th to meet up with 9 other PCVs for holiday festivities. We went again to the watering hole for a nice swim and ended the day at a restaraunt for some basic Tanzanian fare and beers. We began Christmas morning by cooking a fabulous breakfast feast. We had eggs scrambled with lots of veggies, sausage (made by local nuns), and Katie and I even channeled our southern-ness (she's from Oklahoma) and cooked up some rockin' biscuits and sausage gravy. After brunch we did a gift swap...the theme was ridiculous stuff you can buy in Tanzania and we each had a 3000 shilingi (~2 USD). It was a lot of fun and the gifts ranged from a Hannah Montana CD case to a bottle of ranch dressing and CD of porn (there was a lot of regifting from care packages). I think I ended up with the best present of all...a 4-pack of Starbucks double shot espresso drinks. I even got to drink them chilled, courtesy of Dylan's fridge! We spent the rest of the day just relaxing, puzzling and playing scrabble, drinking bucket wine and cooking. For dinner we made beef fajitas that also turned out to be pretty tasty, and ended the night playing charades. All in all a very nice Christmas.
On the morning of the 26th me, Katie, Ghee, Grant, Jeff, and Jose hopped on a bus to Lindi and then went onwards to an island village called Kilwa Kisiwani, a UNESCO World Heritage site for its 9th century ruins. On the 27th we took a little sailboat over to see the ruins, which were pretty neat, and then spent the afternoon at the beach. The beach was really nice and I can now cross 'playing Marco Polo in the Indian Ocean' off my bucket list. Ice cold beers at a safi hotel bar on the beach ended out the vacation nicely. Katie, Ghee and I headed back to Lindi this morning (the others went on to the next stop of their trip) and we're spending the day here in an air-conditioned internet cafe, tonight in an Anglican church, and tomorrow we'll head back to Katie's site in Newala to spend New Years. I'm just about out of computer time, so that's all for now, hopefully pictures later. Hope you all have a fun New Years!
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
a few more pictures...
Got cut off the computer before I could finish uploading all my pictures. I finished captioning the last of the swearing-in pics and created a new album (PC Tanzania - service) with a few pictures of my house* and school. Enjoy!
*My house pics are already a bit outdated, but my laptop is dead so I can't upload new pictures at the moment. Recent additions to my living room include a bookshelf and the beginnings of a what will one day be a couch...so far I've just removed one of my doors and gathered up some cinderblocks to set it on. Hopefully I'll find a couple of cheap mattresses soon and some fabric to upholster them!
*My house pics are already a bit outdated, but my laptop is dead so I can't upload new pictures at the moment. Recent additions to my living room include a bookshelf and the beginnings of a what will one day be a couch...so far I've just removed one of my doors and gathered up some cinderblocks to set it on. Hopefully I'll find a couple of cheap mattresses soon and some fabric to upholster them!
Friday, December 17, 2010
Big Update! with pictures!
Hello from the deep south! I've been at site for 3 weeks now, and it's been quite the adventure so far. I added a bunch of pictures from our swearing-in ceremony at the US Embassy and Thanksgiving dinner at the Ambassador's house plus a few of my new house! Check 'em out in the photostream above.
So what's my new life like?!
MY VILLAGE...is called Maputi, and is near the town of Kitangali (or Kitangari) on the Makonde plateau in Mtwara region. It is pretty small, but it's hard to get any kind of accurate population, so I'm just going to guess that there are 1000 or 2000 people living here. I think my village is really cute, and pretty much looks like what you all probably imagine a rural African village to look like...lots of little mud huts with grass roofs. It has just a couple of dukas (shops) that sell some basic goods. We don't have much of a market, and the only produce I can buy here is onions, potatoes, and shitty tomatoes. Kitangali has a small market where you can usually find some sort of leafy green vegetable and maybe a bit of fruit. Unfortunately there is a huge valley between me and Kitangali and so it is about an hour walk up and down a couple of very steep hills. Another PCV lives in a village on the other side of Kitangali; his name is Tyler and he is from the most recent (swore-in in August) health and environment group. He's nice and has been really helpful so far, showing me around Kitangali and letting me share his PO Box. There is also a teacher's training college about a 20 minute walk from my house; I visited it the other day and I was pleasantly surprised to find a very nice looking computer lab that is hooked up with internet! The vice principle told me I could use it anytime I want for free, which is great news considering the closest internet cafe is probably a 4 hour bus ride away. Anyways, one of these days I'll snap some pictures of my vill, although it is a bit awkward to just whip my camera out most places.
MY SCHOOL...is on break now so I don't have much to update you all on. My mkuu (headmaster) is really nice and seems really dedicated to the school and students. He already got a bunch of math and science textbooks donated from an NGO out of the UK and even obtained some lab equipment from another school. My neighbor/other teacher has also been super helpful and I think he'll be great to work with. His name is Likulu and he's the only other full-time teacher besides myself, teaching Biology and Chemistry. The school has never had a math or physics teacher, and would like me to teach both at all 4 grade levels. That would be an extremely heavy teaching load (8 classes/day --> double what PC recommends) and require a lot of lesson planning, so I haven't quite figured out how I'll manage that...I may talk to my mkuu about cutting it down. But either way I'll begin teaching with the next term in mid-January.
MY HOUSE...is pretty basic, but I like it. I share a duplex with Likulu and our mkuu's house is maybe 50 yards from ours. We don't have electricity, which means I get quite a bit of sleep (usually in bed at 8pm) because there's just not much to do after dark. Fortunately the primary school connected to the teacher's training college has electricity, so I can take my cell phone over to one of the two teachers that live there and they'll charge it for free. Water in general is a problem on the plateau, but I've actually got a big concrete storage tank right next to my house that is connected to a rain catchment system from me and my mkuu's roof. It's pretty low now because the rainy season is just starting, so for now it gets filled by students that carry buckets of water from the main tap in the village. My house has a living room and 3 bedrooms which is way more space than I need...one room is storage at this point and another is completely empty. I also have a private courtyard which is really nice and where I spend a lot of my time. It's got a little room with a choo (bathroom/hole in the ground), a little room for bucket bathing, a storage closet, an area to cook, and clotheslines for laundry. My house started out extremely empty with just a bed, table and chairs, and desk. But I've since "borrowed" a few more desks from my school so now it's just mostly empty. I also went to a fundi to work on getting some shelves/cabinets built so that I can really begin unpacking my things. But they turned out to be a lot more expensive than I thought/can afford, so I'm going to have to just get one piece built at a time...up first is a bookshelf that should be ready today or tomorrow! And one day in the far far future I hope to be a proud owner of a couch, but for now I mostly just hang out on my bed. Every time I go to a town I try and pick up a few things to help me settle in (you can never have enough buckets). All in all setting up house will be quite a slow process, as everything I buy has to be either carried by yours truly or somehow shoved in/on a jam-packed bus.
But most unfortunately for me, I've got a serious rat problem. At first I could just hear them scurrying in my roof at night, find half-eaten bars of soap, and would sweep up rat poop every morning. But lately they've become quite the daredevils and like to come into my room at night. About 2 weeks ago I was completely startled to find a rat in one of my duffle bags. I bought rat poison and mixed it with some tomatoes and left it out one night, but apparently those little guys aren't easy to kill. Then I woke up to scratching behind my head...I turned my headlamp on and sure enough there was a rat trying to get into my tucked-in mosquito net! It turned into a pretty restless night's sleep as I'd wake up to more scratching every hour or so and have to hit my bed to make it scurry away. I left the next morning to go out of town for 5 days and sure enough it managed to eat through my mosquito net in that time. I came home to find a 2x2 inch hole in my mosquito net and a bunch of rat poop and pee on my bed. I washed my sheets and patched up my mosquito net, and just recently acquired a rat trap that I will test out tonight. If that doesn't work I think I'm going to get a cat (yep, that's right, did you ever imagine me a cat owner?!).
TRAVEL...down here is no fun. So far I've been on a bus that got stuck in the mud for 2.5 hours, a bus that broke down for 2.5 hours, 2 flat tires, a fire extinguisher explosion, drove on a 30 degree incline while dodging giant dirt piles, witnessed a full-blown physical fight over seats, held sleeping children on my lap, and completely changed my definition of the word crowded. There is only one paved road in the region, so most bus travel is done in shitty buses on shitty roads. And rainy season is just starting which should make travel even more interesting! But on the bright side, I get a great core workout every time I spend a bus ride trying to maintain my balance while standing in a variety of uncomfortable positions!
Buses don't go through my village very often, but there is one daladala that runs once a day to Newala, where my good friend Katie lives. Unfortunately it leaves my village at 5:45 in the morning, but it only takes about 1.5 hours to get there. Newala is pretty nice and has a big market where I have bought most of things for my house and also where I've found the most fresh produce. There is even one duka that sells peanut butter which has been a huge lifesaver! There are also a few other health/env volunteers that live near Newala so it is one of the meeting points in the region. If I go the opposite way on the main road from my village (north), I can reach a town called Mtama in about 2 hours. There is another ed volunteer, Grant, that lives there. Mtama is on the paved road that runs from Lindi to Masasi. A few volunteers live in villages along this road, including my good friend Ghee, who ended up getting transferred down here last minute. I've gone west to the town of Ndanda, where two ed volunteers, Dillon and Jeff, live. It's a pretty big town with a nice market. Dillon has a really safi house there with electricity, water you can drink straight from the tap, an oven, etc. so that is another big congregrating point for volunteers (and where I spent Thanksgiving).
So all in all I've already done quite a bit of traveling, mostly because the other ed volunteers are on break from school and it's holiday season. Although we're pretty isolated from the other regions, Peace Corps has been building Mtwara up so there are quite a few of us down here and we are relatively close to one another. It has definitely been nice to see/travel with other PCVs and have more of a transition into full-time village life. I got back about a week ago from a 5 day trip that was a lot of fun...I went to Newala for a couple of days to celebrate a volunteer's, Claire, birthday. We hired a truck to take us from Newala down to the Ruvuma river, which defines the border between Tanzania and Mozambique. It was a really pretty drive down the edge of the plateau and the river was also nice. It was quite tempting to make the short cross over to Mozambique, but we resisted because there are supposedly alligators and also because Peace Corps would shit themselves and then quickly send us home if they ever found out some crossed into northern Mozambique (which is still covered in lots of landmines). Then aobut 8 of us headed by bus to Mtwara town. We stayed 2 nights in Mikandani, a nearby village, at a pretty nice guesthouse that we were able to get a good deal on. We also stuffed our faces with extremely tasty but extremely expensive food. I ate quite possibly the best steak of my life and I drank a margarita! But the best part is that we went snorkling! In the Indian Ocean! It was my first time to snorkel and it was absolutely beautiful. I also recently went to Masasi, a 4.5 hour bus ride away and where the closest ATM is, and soon I'll be headed back to Ndanda to celebrate Christmas with some of the volunteers down here. Still not sure about New Year's plans, but thinking about heading to Lindi.
Welp, that's just about all I can think of to write at the moment. But I am doing well and still feel really lucky to be in Tanzania and Mtwara! I hope everyone is well and enjoying the holiday season!
So what's my new life like?!
MY VILLAGE...is called Maputi, and is near the town of Kitangali (or Kitangari) on the Makonde plateau in Mtwara region. It is pretty small, but it's hard to get any kind of accurate population, so I'm just going to guess that there are 1000 or 2000 people living here. I think my village is really cute, and pretty much looks like what you all probably imagine a rural African village to look like...lots of little mud huts with grass roofs. It has just a couple of dukas (shops) that sell some basic goods. We don't have much of a market, and the only produce I can buy here is onions, potatoes, and shitty tomatoes. Kitangali has a small market where you can usually find some sort of leafy green vegetable and maybe a bit of fruit. Unfortunately there is a huge valley between me and Kitangali and so it is about an hour walk up and down a couple of very steep hills. Another PCV lives in a village on the other side of Kitangali; his name is Tyler and he is from the most recent (swore-in in August) health and environment group. He's nice and has been really helpful so far, showing me around Kitangali and letting me share his PO Box. There is also a teacher's training college about a 20 minute walk from my house; I visited it the other day and I was pleasantly surprised to find a very nice looking computer lab that is hooked up with internet! The vice principle told me I could use it anytime I want for free, which is great news considering the closest internet cafe is probably a 4 hour bus ride away. Anyways, one of these days I'll snap some pictures of my vill, although it is a bit awkward to just whip my camera out most places.
MY SCHOOL...is on break now so I don't have much to update you all on. My mkuu (headmaster) is really nice and seems really dedicated to the school and students. He already got a bunch of math and science textbooks donated from an NGO out of the UK and even obtained some lab equipment from another school. My neighbor/other teacher has also been super helpful and I think he'll be great to work with. His name is Likulu and he's the only other full-time teacher besides myself, teaching Biology and Chemistry. The school has never had a math or physics teacher, and would like me to teach both at all 4 grade levels. That would be an extremely heavy teaching load (8 classes/day --> double what PC recommends) and require a lot of lesson planning, so I haven't quite figured out how I'll manage that...I may talk to my mkuu about cutting it down. But either way I'll begin teaching with the next term in mid-January.
MY HOUSE...is pretty basic, but I like it. I share a duplex with Likulu and our mkuu's house is maybe 50 yards from ours. We don't have electricity, which means I get quite a bit of sleep (usually in bed at 8pm) because there's just not much to do after dark. Fortunately the primary school connected to the teacher's training college has electricity, so I can take my cell phone over to one of the two teachers that live there and they'll charge it for free. Water in general is a problem on the plateau, but I've actually got a big concrete storage tank right next to my house that is connected to a rain catchment system from me and my mkuu's roof. It's pretty low now because the rainy season is just starting, so for now it gets filled by students that carry buckets of water from the main tap in the village. My house has a living room and 3 bedrooms which is way more space than I need...one room is storage at this point and another is completely empty. I also have a private courtyard which is really nice and where I spend a lot of my time. It's got a little room with a choo (bathroom/hole in the ground), a little room for bucket bathing, a storage closet, an area to cook, and clotheslines for laundry. My house started out extremely empty with just a bed, table and chairs, and desk. But I've since "borrowed" a few more desks from my school so now it's just mostly empty. I also went to a fundi to work on getting some shelves/cabinets built so that I can really begin unpacking my things. But they turned out to be a lot more expensive than I thought/can afford, so I'm going to have to just get one piece built at a time...up first is a bookshelf that should be ready today or tomorrow! And one day in the far far future I hope to be a proud owner of a couch, but for now I mostly just hang out on my bed. Every time I go to a town I try and pick up a few things to help me settle in (you can never have enough buckets). All in all setting up house will be quite a slow process, as everything I buy has to be either carried by yours truly or somehow shoved in/on a jam-packed bus.
But most unfortunately for me, I've got a serious rat problem. At first I could just hear them scurrying in my roof at night, find half-eaten bars of soap, and would sweep up rat poop every morning. But lately they've become quite the daredevils and like to come into my room at night. About 2 weeks ago I was completely startled to find a rat in one of my duffle bags. I bought rat poison and mixed it with some tomatoes and left it out one night, but apparently those little guys aren't easy to kill. Then I woke up to scratching behind my head...I turned my headlamp on and sure enough there was a rat trying to get into my tucked-in mosquito net! It turned into a pretty restless night's sleep as I'd wake up to more scratching every hour or so and have to hit my bed to make it scurry away. I left the next morning to go out of town for 5 days and sure enough it managed to eat through my mosquito net in that time. I came home to find a 2x2 inch hole in my mosquito net and a bunch of rat poop and pee on my bed. I washed my sheets and patched up my mosquito net, and just recently acquired a rat trap that I will test out tonight. If that doesn't work I think I'm going to get a cat (yep, that's right, did you ever imagine me a cat owner?!).
TRAVEL...down here is no fun. So far I've been on a bus that got stuck in the mud for 2.5 hours, a bus that broke down for 2.5 hours, 2 flat tires, a fire extinguisher explosion, drove on a 30 degree incline while dodging giant dirt piles, witnessed a full-blown physical fight over seats, held sleeping children on my lap, and completely changed my definition of the word crowded. There is only one paved road in the region, so most bus travel is done in shitty buses on shitty roads. And rainy season is just starting which should make travel even more interesting! But on the bright side, I get a great core workout every time I spend a bus ride trying to maintain my balance while standing in a variety of uncomfortable positions!
Buses don't go through my village very often, but there is one daladala that runs once a day to Newala, where my good friend Katie lives. Unfortunately it leaves my village at 5:45 in the morning, but it only takes about 1.5 hours to get there. Newala is pretty nice and has a big market where I have bought most of things for my house and also where I've found the most fresh produce. There is even one duka that sells peanut butter which has been a huge lifesaver! There are also a few other health/env volunteers that live near Newala so it is one of the meeting points in the region. If I go the opposite way on the main road from my village (north), I can reach a town called Mtama in about 2 hours. There is another ed volunteer, Grant, that lives there. Mtama is on the paved road that runs from Lindi to Masasi. A few volunteers live in villages along this road, including my good friend Ghee, who ended up getting transferred down here last minute. I've gone west to the town of Ndanda, where two ed volunteers, Dillon and Jeff, live. It's a pretty big town with a nice market. Dillon has a really safi house there with electricity, water you can drink straight from the tap, an oven, etc. so that is another big congregrating point for volunteers (and where I spent Thanksgiving).
So all in all I've already done quite a bit of traveling, mostly because the other ed volunteers are on break from school and it's holiday season. Although we're pretty isolated from the other regions, Peace Corps has been building Mtwara up so there are quite a few of us down here and we are relatively close to one another. It has definitely been nice to see/travel with other PCVs and have more of a transition into full-time village life. I got back about a week ago from a 5 day trip that was a lot of fun...I went to Newala for a couple of days to celebrate a volunteer's, Claire, birthday. We hired a truck to take us from Newala down to the Ruvuma river, which defines the border between Tanzania and Mozambique. It was a really pretty drive down the edge of the plateau and the river was also nice. It was quite tempting to make the short cross over to Mozambique, but we resisted because there are supposedly alligators and also because Peace Corps would shit themselves and then quickly send us home if they ever found out some crossed into northern Mozambique (which is still covered in lots of landmines). Then aobut 8 of us headed by bus to Mtwara town. We stayed 2 nights in Mikandani, a nearby village, at a pretty nice guesthouse that we were able to get a good deal on. We also stuffed our faces with extremely tasty but extremely expensive food. I ate quite possibly the best steak of my life and I drank a margarita! But the best part is that we went snorkling! In the Indian Ocean! It was my first time to snorkel and it was absolutely beautiful. I also recently went to Masasi, a 4.5 hour bus ride away and where the closest ATM is, and soon I'll be headed back to Ndanda to celebrate Christmas with some of the volunteers down here. Still not sure about New Year's plans, but thinking about heading to Lindi.
Welp, that's just about all I can think of to write at the moment. But I am doing well and still feel really lucky to be in Tanzania and Mtwara! I hope everyone is well and enjoying the holiday season!
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