Not sure how I've managed to become worse at regularly blogging, considering my daily internet access now, but it has happened. At this rate I have just a couple more blogs left before finishing my service in December...in the words of Tanzanian mamas "waaaaaaaoooooooo" (like "wow" but much better). I did add lots of pictures though, so perhaps I'm slightly redeemed.
May and June seemed to really fly by. Weekends were filled with fun activities like the "Miss Dodoma" beauty pageant and a cultural music/dance festival. Another Saturday I went with some other PCVs and Dodoma ex-pats to a winery an hour or two outside of town. It's owned by Italians and is quite impressive, making and bottling all of the wine produced in Tanzania. One of the best known is creatively called "Dodoma Wine" and also comes available in a box, which can be frequently found at PC gatherings. So it was nice to see how it's all made and have a little taste, including their best quality wine which was significantly better than our well known boxed variety. I also went to Dar for a weekend in mid-June to see off a good friend, Hanako. She was the Japanese volunteer that lived near my village in Kitangali, and it was really wonderful to see her again before she returned to Japan. The timing in Dar also worked well to get to see the World Cup qualifying match for Tanzania vs. Ivory Coast. We lost 2-to-4, but it was a great game; the stadium was packed beyond capacity with cheering fans, including about 30 PCVs sporting Tanzania jerseys. So it also meant getting to see lots of other PCVs who were there for the game or just traveling through, including a few of my old friends from Mtwara...a pleasant surprise and a great weekend indeed!
The first week of July was especially exciting with President Obama's trip to Tanzania! The country absolutely loves him, calling him "kaka Obama" (brother Obama); it's all anyone could talk about in the weeks leading up to it. There was a small meet-and-greet planned at the embassy for embassy staff, USAID staff, and 30 PCVs scheduled for July 2nd. There was a lottery for the PCV spots (out of about 150 of us), from which I was not chosen and subsequently spent the next two weeks moping around. But then I got a wonderful phone call from our country director asking if I would like to serve as a press escort for the White House Press Corps and international press during the visit. So then I was happy again! It meant two very long and full days in Dar, getting the hotel ready for the press arrival, setting up the press filing center, running general errands, and escorting the press around Dar. Unfortunately I got nowhere near the President or first family, but it was still so fascinating to see all the behind-the-scenes hustle associated with the visit and work with some very impressive state department people. On the second day, the press had a couple of hours to kill before their flight out, so I ended up taking many of them to a nearby shopping center to buy souvenirs, helping to translate and negotiate prices, etc. which was really fun. Then I was in charge of getting one of the big buses of them to the airport for their charter plane back to the states. We had a motorcade and closed streets (which thousands of people must have spent a great deal of time cleaning, as they were devoid of all their usual trash) so it only took 15 minutes or so, as opposed to the normal two hours in traffic; it's pretty cool what can be accomplished by the U.S. government for an extraordinary amount of money! Talking to the journalists on the drive there was probably the most enjoyable part of the two days. There was one woman, whose name I've forgotten, who had been reporting for ABC in the White House Press Corps since the Reagan administration; she was so sweet and it was really interesting talking to her. Lots of them also seemed really interested in Peace Corps and what I'd been doing there, asking lots of questions and thanking me for my service. Before I left Dodoma to go to Dar, I was doing some shopping at a little duka (shop) in my neighborhood and told the shopkeeper I was going to Dar to meet Obama and he was so excited for me that he gave me a gift of about 40 pieces of Obama gum (yes, there's gum here with Obama's face on it, strawberry flavored, as well as Obama pens, Obama fabric, Obama belts, you name it) to gift to the important Americans I met. So I passed the gum out to the press on my bus and they were so happy, thinking it was the funniest gum they'd ever seen, trying to take pictures of it with their blackberries, etc...it was a hit! So if you see any strawberry Obama gum turning up on eBay, let me know :). When we arrived at the airport, we just drove right around to the runway, where the plane was waiting - no security, no lines. If only we could all fly with such ease and style! Although I was repeatedly warned before the press arrived that they would be tired and demanding and likely yell at me if anything didn't go exactly right, all of the press I interacted with were nothing but pleasant. Check out a post on Tanzanian eggs by Ari Shapiro of NPR :)
Also check out this short video of the visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdKjHcMscuA
Following the POTUS visit, I went to Moshi to celebrate July 4th with a few friends, relax, and enjoy all the delightful coffee shops. We spent one day going to a natural hot springs a couple hours from town. It is this unbelievable little private oasis, in the middle of a dry desert. Not hot, but just the perfect temperature for swimming. Not a bad place to take a holiday! A week or so after returning home to Dodoma, the PCV with whom I was sharing a house finally finished his service and returned to the U.S. I've got the house all to myself now which has been a real treat; I forgot how nice it can be living alone, free to walk around in my underwear, blast my music, and do as I please! I've still had houseguests a few times a week since he left, happily sleeping in my new guestroom, so it's not all been no pants Kathryn time, but at least now there's a good mix of it.
In most exciting news, I'll be climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro from August 15 to 19/20, summiting on the full moon with two other PCVs!! At 5,895 meters (19,341 ft), Mt. Kilimanjaro is one of the "Seven Summits" of the world, as the highest mountain in Africa; the highest free-standing mountain in the world; and the 17th highest point, by country, in the world. We're doing the Machame route and going to try for 5 days, although we may decide to add a 6th day depending on how it's going. I am really excited, but starting to freak out a little about the fact that it's less than three weeks away now. I've been exercising pretty regularly since mid-April to prepare, but there's just not a lot whole I can do to prepare myself for the altitude change. Altitude sickness above 3,000m/10,000ft sounds pretty rough, so hopefully I can push through and make it! I do have some prescription altitude sickness pills, Acetazolamide/Diamox, but I've heard such mixed reviews that I haven't yet decided whether to give them a try. So a big TBD...
With so many thoughts of Kili on my mind, I've been struggling to get back into study mode. On September 19th I'll be taking the GRE (U.S. graduate school entrance exam) in Dar. Plans are in the works for applying to MPA - Master of Public Affairs/Administration - programs in the following months so I'll keep y'all posted.
Other than that, all is good here and work is going fine. When I arrived I was one of 4 PCVs and 5 Americans at the office, and now I'm the sole American; a big change, but I really like all of my Tanzanian coworkers. The last couple of months have been a lot less busy workwise, so I'm travelling less these days. I've mostly been doing monitoring for one of our microprojects, which gives foot-powered water pumps to small farmers' groups to help them to establish and irrigate vegetable gardens. It's always fun to interact with the farmers, although some groups are much better organized and more active than others. I've also learned a lot about gardening (I'm getting better at identifying the different plants) and water sources. Basically every farmer uses very shallow "local wells" which are just dug by hand into the ground. Irrigation and water pumps are almost non-existent at the individual or village level, and farmers just drop buckets into the holes to fetch water, carry them to pour on their plants, and repeat. One bucket at a time. As you can imagine, it's quite tedious and takes a great deal of time, also limiting most farmers to a very small area. With the pumps easing the task of watering their gardens, most groups have been able to at least double their garden area which is really great to see. The extra income from selling their vegetables goes to help pay school fees, household costs, and pesticides. It's on a very small scale, but the rewards are still there and very cool to see.
That's all I got for now. Hopefully next time you hear from me I can report having made it to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro!
May and June seemed to really fly by. Weekends were filled with fun activities like the "Miss Dodoma" beauty pageant and a cultural music/dance festival. Another Saturday I went with some other PCVs and Dodoma ex-pats to a winery an hour or two outside of town. It's owned by Italians and is quite impressive, making and bottling all of the wine produced in Tanzania. One of the best known is creatively called "Dodoma Wine" and also comes available in a box, which can be frequently found at PC gatherings. So it was nice to see how it's all made and have a little taste, including their best quality wine which was significantly better than our well known boxed variety. I also went to Dar for a weekend in mid-June to see off a good friend, Hanako. She was the Japanese volunteer that lived near my village in Kitangali, and it was really wonderful to see her again before she returned to Japan. The timing in Dar also worked well to get to see the World Cup qualifying match for Tanzania vs. Ivory Coast. We lost 2-to-4, but it was a great game; the stadium was packed beyond capacity with cheering fans, including about 30 PCVs sporting Tanzania jerseys. So it also meant getting to see lots of other PCVs who were there for the game or just traveling through, including a few of my old friends from Mtwara...a pleasant surprise and a great weekend indeed!
The first week of July was especially exciting with President Obama's trip to Tanzania! The country absolutely loves him, calling him "kaka Obama" (brother Obama); it's all anyone could talk about in the weeks leading up to it. There was a small meet-and-greet planned at the embassy for embassy staff, USAID staff, and 30 PCVs scheduled for July 2nd. There was a lottery for the PCV spots (out of about 150 of us), from which I was not chosen and subsequently spent the next two weeks moping around. But then I got a wonderful phone call from our country director asking if I would like to serve as a press escort for the White House Press Corps and international press during the visit. So then I was happy again! It meant two very long and full days in Dar, getting the hotel ready for the press arrival, setting up the press filing center, running general errands, and escorting the press around Dar. Unfortunately I got nowhere near the President or first family, but it was still so fascinating to see all the behind-the-scenes hustle associated with the visit and work with some very impressive state department people. On the second day, the press had a couple of hours to kill before their flight out, so I ended up taking many of them to a nearby shopping center to buy souvenirs, helping to translate and negotiate prices, etc. which was really fun. Then I was in charge of getting one of the big buses of them to the airport for their charter plane back to the states. We had a motorcade and closed streets (which thousands of people must have spent a great deal of time cleaning, as they were devoid of all their usual trash) so it only took 15 minutes or so, as opposed to the normal two hours in traffic; it's pretty cool what can be accomplished by the U.S. government for an extraordinary amount of money! Talking to the journalists on the drive there was probably the most enjoyable part of the two days. There was one woman, whose name I've forgotten, who had been reporting for ABC in the White House Press Corps since the Reagan administration; she was so sweet and it was really interesting talking to her. Lots of them also seemed really interested in Peace Corps and what I'd been doing there, asking lots of questions and thanking me for my service. Before I left Dodoma to go to Dar, I was doing some shopping at a little duka (shop) in my neighborhood and told the shopkeeper I was going to Dar to meet Obama and he was so excited for me that he gave me a gift of about 40 pieces of Obama gum (yes, there's gum here with Obama's face on it, strawberry flavored, as well as Obama pens, Obama fabric, Obama belts, you name it) to gift to the important Americans I met. So I passed the gum out to the press on my bus and they were so happy, thinking it was the funniest gum they'd ever seen, trying to take pictures of it with their blackberries, etc...it was a hit! So if you see any strawberry Obama gum turning up on eBay, let me know :). When we arrived at the airport, we just drove right around to the runway, where the plane was waiting - no security, no lines. If only we could all fly with such ease and style! Although I was repeatedly warned before the press arrived that they would be tired and demanding and likely yell at me if anything didn't go exactly right, all of the press I interacted with were nothing but pleasant. Check out a post on Tanzanian eggs by Ari Shapiro of NPR :)
Also check out this short video of the visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdKjHcMscuA
Following the POTUS visit, I went to Moshi to celebrate July 4th with a few friends, relax, and enjoy all the delightful coffee shops. We spent one day going to a natural hot springs a couple hours from town. It is this unbelievable little private oasis, in the middle of a dry desert. Not hot, but just the perfect temperature for swimming. Not a bad place to take a holiday! A week or so after returning home to Dodoma, the PCV with whom I was sharing a house finally finished his service and returned to the U.S. I've got the house all to myself now which has been a real treat; I forgot how nice it can be living alone, free to walk around in my underwear, blast my music, and do as I please! I've still had houseguests a few times a week since he left, happily sleeping in my new guestroom, so it's not all been no pants Kathryn time, but at least now there's a good mix of it.
In most exciting news, I'll be climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro from August 15 to 19/20, summiting on the full moon with two other PCVs!! At 5,895 meters (19,341 ft), Mt. Kilimanjaro is one of the "Seven Summits" of the world, as the highest mountain in Africa; the highest free-standing mountain in the world; and the 17th highest point, by country, in the world. We're doing the Machame route and going to try for 5 days, although we may decide to add a 6th day depending on how it's going. I am really excited, but starting to freak out a little about the fact that it's less than three weeks away now. I've been exercising pretty regularly since mid-April to prepare, but there's just not a lot whole I can do to prepare myself for the altitude change. Altitude sickness above 3,000m/10,000ft sounds pretty rough, so hopefully I can push through and make it! I do have some prescription altitude sickness pills, Acetazolamide/Diamox, but I've heard such mixed reviews that I haven't yet decided whether to give them a try. So a big TBD...
With so many thoughts of Kili on my mind, I've been struggling to get back into study mode. On September 19th I'll be taking the GRE (U.S. graduate school entrance exam) in Dar. Plans are in the works for applying to MPA - Master of Public Affairs/Administration - programs in the following months so I'll keep y'all posted.
Other than that, all is good here and work is going fine. When I arrived I was one of 4 PCVs and 5 Americans at the office, and now I'm the sole American; a big change, but I really like all of my Tanzanian coworkers. The last couple of months have been a lot less busy workwise, so I'm travelling less these days. I've mostly been doing monitoring for one of our microprojects, which gives foot-powered water pumps to small farmers' groups to help them to establish and irrigate vegetable gardens. It's always fun to interact with the farmers, although some groups are much better organized and more active than others. I've also learned a lot about gardening (I'm getting better at identifying the different plants) and water sources. Basically every farmer uses very shallow "local wells" which are just dug by hand into the ground. Irrigation and water pumps are almost non-existent at the individual or village level, and farmers just drop buckets into the holes to fetch water, carry them to pour on their plants, and repeat. One bucket at a time. As you can imagine, it's quite tedious and takes a great deal of time, also limiting most farmers to a very small area. With the pumps easing the task of watering their gardens, most groups have been able to at least double their garden area which is really great to see. The extra income from selling their vegetables goes to help pay school fees, household costs, and pesticides. It's on a very small scale, but the rewards are still there and very cool to see.
That's all I got for now. Hopefully next time you hear from me I can report having made it to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro!
Hi Kathryn!
ReplyDeleteI've been following your blog from about the beginning. I don't know if that's creepy since I've never said anything but I found it on the "best peace corps blogs" or something like that. I'm currently living in Arusha province about an hour outside of town in a village called Imbaseni. I guess I was just wondering if you were ever going to be around if you'd like some company. Though I love my Tanzanian friends it would be nice to have an American around!! Do let me know I'm going to be in the area until November I think. My email is adrianne.giuliani@gmail.com.
Wako,
Adrianne (Ndege)