April Update

Hey all, hope everyone is having a splendid month of April...happy holidays from Tanzania! I've got a long weekend off from school for the Easter vacation, so I'm enjoying it on the beach in Mtwara town with a group of 9 other PCVs. We're staying in a beautiful house right on the Indian Ocean, owned by some German fathers that give us a good deal. It even has a hot shower (my first in nearly 7 months!) so I've been taking plenty of those. This afternoon we went to the fish market and bought a bunch of shrimp and a 2 foot long tuna fish (prime tuna steak!)...tonight we'll grill up some seafood skewers and make pilau (seasoned rice) so it should be tasty! Then we'll have a bonfire on the beach and then head back to our respective sites tomorrow morning.

Anywho, I've been busy at site since arriving back from IST a few weeks ago. I took a few days to get home from Morogoro, which included a great day in Dar with, I kid you not, a legit Subway sandwich for lunch. For dinner, Katie, Will, and I treated ourselves at a fancy Thai restaurant overlooking the harbour of Dar es Salaam, complete with a bottle of red wine, and topped off the night with ice cream sundaes. Then came the long bus ride home...the normally bad road is significantly worse due to the rainy season, and we kept hearing horror stories about people getting stuck for 3 days on the road. Fortunately we had a relatively smooth trip down to Mtwara, with no breakdowns or mud-stuckage. Then after a pretty round-about way home (the road one direction to my vill is closed) and just one missed bus, I finally made it back to site. I had mentally prepared for my house to be a complete wreck after being gone for nearly 3 weeks, and I was certainly not disapointed. Of course there was massive amounts of dirt and rat poop to be swept, containers and things knocked of all my shelves, and a good sized piece of my math notes chewed off. My kitchen-ish room floods everytime it rains hard, which is normally not a problem because I'm there to mop up afterwards. Expectedly, it was flooded. But, unexpectedly, there was a little zawadi (present) left for me in all the water, in the form of a fully decomposed rat carcass. Not sure how the rat died, but apparently the water had been standing long enough so that only bones were left. Luckily I don't have actual windows, so constant ventilation meant there was no death stench. Also left in the pool was my partly-chewed-up sock that went missing a few months ago, so that mystery has been partially solved!  Needless to say I wasn't about to touch any bones or the hairy, gut-juice water with my hands so I waited about 10 days for all the water to evaporate and then swept out the bones. There is still a nice pile of rat hair stuck to the floor, so hopefully that can slowly be swept away.

SHULENI (at school):
Not a whole lot new at school. Graded lots of midterms and am back into the normal teaching routine. Our school grounds are a bit livelier since our school goats had babies! I think baby goats may be the cutest of all baby animals, but they also cry alot which tends to disrupt class. I actually had a baby goat come into my classroom when I was teaching and poop! It sure is hard to get your students back on task after something like that happens!

My counterpart was really motivated from IST which has been awesome to see. We've started to teach "Life Skills" sessions on Tuesday afternoons. We've done two sessions so far, an introduction and a session on effective communication, and the students seem to be enjoying them so far. All the girls also came to school last Saturday and we talked a bit about some issues they face (low self-confidence, early pregnancy, prostitution, etc.). They created a girls club, complete with elected officers, where they can talk about their problems, help each other out, get advice from teachers, etc. so hopefully it will continue and be helpful for them.

Mista Likulu has also been trying to get a lab (he teaches Bio and Chem) started at school for the last several months. He already got most of the supplies donated and has bought a good amount of chemicals, but they have been sitting on the floor of an empty classroom for a few months now. All we are really lacking at this point is lab tables, stools, and storage cabinets, so last week we talked with a few local fundis (carpenters) about getting those built. Wood is a bit scarce at the moment, but hopefully we will have a functioning laboratory soon! Shout-out to my mom who is going to help with the fundi costs :). Oh and if anyone has any old children's books (in English) laying around and would be willing to donate them to my school, it'd be much appreciated! The students' English level is way below where it should be, so we are working hard to get them more comfortable. Unfortunately we have no English books, so children's picture books up to easy, short elementary level reads would be a great resource to have...If you are interested in helping contact me or my mama!

KIJIJINI (in the village):
Last weekend a village nearby (where some of my students live) hosted our ward's annual ngoma kicking off the start of circumcision season. Ngoma means drum in Kiswahili, and is traditional celebration with dancing, drumming, etc. It is a really big deal, and people walk there from as far as 25 kilometers. I went with my counterpart, and let me just say it was overwhelming! I was not expecting there to be what seemed like thousands of people around. All along the road people had set up stands to sell food, fabric, basic goods, etc. and you could barely move it was so packed. We missed the main drumming part, so we just ended up walking around at first. After several months in Tanzania I feel quite used to being stared at wherever I go, but I had never experienced the level of attention I got here. I was literally surrounded by a constant circle of wide-eyed, open-mouthed children and adults, about 10 people deep, the entire time. It was both awkward and amusing. And to add to it, I am tall. Seriously. It is definitely a new experience for me, but I've encountered few taller than me among the short Makonde people! So now picture the "tall" white person that I am, standing in the middle of a massive huddle of short Tanzanians. By this time (late afternoon), most of the adults were good and drunk off pombe (local brew), so there were lots of drunk people coming up to me speaking Kimakonde, which I can understand very little of. I think I've talked a bit about alcoholism around here; it is an especially serious problem among the older people. It is common for villagers to go out and work in their shamba (farm) in the morning, and return home and begin drinking pombe. The result is that if you walk through the village by mid-afternoon, you will encounter plenty of drunk old people or see them passed out on the ground outside their huts. I have to admit that at first it was kind of amusing, but it has gotten old and is truly sad to see, especially because many of them are the parents and grandparents of my students. But on the bright side, my high school students don't drink. Seriously. When we talk about drinking alcohol at my school, it is not about the students, but about the students' parents...quite different than the US. But back to the ngoma, they finally started another drumming session which was really cool to see. Unfortunately my camera died pretty quickly, but you can check out a few pictures and a video I took! There are lots of local Makonde traditions involved that I don't know enough about, but the drummers and a few of the dancers are the oldest men in the village. There is a nearby hut where the oldest of the old men will sleep for the next month. A few of the old women that dance are the ones that actually perform the circumcisions, which I think will happen sometime in the next month. Young boys are definitely circumcized, but it is still unclear to me whether they also circumcize the girls. Previously I had heard that they do not do FGM down here, but girls are atleast somehow involved in the traditional ceremony.

HABARI YA PEACE CORPS (Peace Corps News):
Peace Corps-Tanzania is working hard to try and improve its technical training, so I'm helping another PCV to write a math teaching manual (hands-on activities, teaching tips, etc.). We are super rushed because Peace Corps wants it ready by the end of May for the incoming training class coming in June, so it will be a work in progress, but will hopefully be helpful to future volunteers. I'm also hoping to help out with math technical training of the new education class arriving in June, so we'll see.

HABARI NYINGINE (Other News):
I've been writing lots of letters lately, and I'm taking requests! If you want a super-duper-cool, handwritten letter all the way from Tanzania, send me your address or write me first!

Ok, that's all for now. I added some new pictures, so check them out!