Wazungu na Watanzania or Americans and Tanzanians

February was a tumultuous month for me. I ate some things I shouldn't have- like maggots- and spent a lot of time feeling sick and miserable, holing up in my house, only going between my bed and my choo. I felt really guilty about not being out in my village, not being productive, and I got really homesick, missing the comforts of warm showers and hot and sour soup from the nearest Chinese restaurant and western toilets where you can sit comfortably as opposed to having your feet fall asleep because you have been sitting in a squat for so long having terrible diarrhea. BTW, I do not advise eating maggots- they cause terrible abdominal pain and other ailments.

But, after spending a week confined to my bed, with only my guilt and frustration for company, my intestines got over their unhappiness, and I made leaps and bounds in progress in my village! Or at least that is how I feel. I made a male kijana (youth) friend, which is kind of a big deal because there is a lot of gender separation in my village- I think in most of Tanzania, as well- and having this one person be my friend means I have an in to talking to the rest of the male vijana (multiple youths), and I am really excited about one day being able to talk to them about condoms and safe sex, STIs, HIV/AIDS, motivating and supporting them in trying to find work.... I started tutoring one primary school boy English- which is actually really difficult, I have no idea how to teach someone a language- but now I think the rest of the primary school children are nicer to me; they greet me, they show respect by saying “shikamoo,” and they don't tease me anymore. Yes, I do get picked on by little children. They can be really intimidating in large groups, especially when you can't understand what they are saying to you! I visited the secondary school- where the students, especially the upper forms, are pretty close if not the same age as I am- which I thought would be really intimidating, but all of the students were really nice, and really enthusiastic about me continuing the health club the last volunteer started there. I am really excited about overseeing a health club. This is my thing. Peer health education among youth in an academic setting. I want it to be very much student organized and run. I want them to decide what they want to talk about in the club, what activities they want to do, if and how they want to rely information to their classmates not in the club, and I want them to decide how people become part of the club, how they want the club government organized... A couple of students have asked me if we are going to have boys and girls conferences like the previous group of volunteers in the district had, too, which were apparently very popular. I have started my sexual health education in the village, too, except that my audience is composed of all the grandmas in my village >_> (shifty eyes). I went with my fundi friend (she makes clothes; the term for anyone who has any kind of skill is fundi) to visit her bibi (grandmother), and her bibi starts asking me if I use condoms and how many I use! Sooo, I started telling her about how to use condoms, the importance of using only one condom at a time and using lubricant or else friction will cause tears in the latex (did you know that in some African cultures women will use herbs to actually dry themselves out because they think if there is no natural lubricant, or any lubricant at all, it makes sex better? Problem. This leads to tears in the vagina and increases HIV transmission). I didn't know how to say most of this in Kiswahili, so there were a lot of hand gestures and hoping she understood what I meant. I got my hair braided by another bibi in my vill, which is a big socializing time for women, so I am sitting there with the bibi braiding my hair, my kijana fundi friend, and another woman, and the whole time she asks me questions like “Do white people or Africans know more about sex?” Who has sex more often?” “Do white people shave their pubic hair?” “Why can't American women show each other their breasts?” In Tanzania, breasts are not sexy or illicit at all- women whip them out to breast feed their children in the middle of the day, in the middle of a crowd, completely uncovered- but women do not show their knees or shoulders. So we talked about why that is and how its different between American and Tanzanian cultures. It was a really great experience of cultural exchange, and I think its really funny to talk about sex with old ladies when I would never talk about any of these things with old ladies in the States.

Another leap and bound I made was I figured out how to light my charcoal stove by myself! I have been at site for how many months and just figured it out? But now I feel like I can actually survive in this country because now I can feed myself and hopefully not make myself sick! It is a pain in the ass to light, but I can do it, and I have baked bread, made lentil curry, potato stuffed naan, lots of soups, cornflour pancakes, and bean burgers!

Now for American time. Pictures speak louder than words, but here are the highlights:

1. Made wine in a bucket with the site mates in preparation for a birthday sharehe (party).
2. Had first American visitors to my vill for Valentine's Day.
3. Site mate, Maria, turned 30, so we celebrated her birthday in town with the standi guys and Maria got to use a microphone at Club NBC- it was a debacle.
4. I got a new site mate, who is only a two hour walk from my vill! This is a big improvement over the closest person being a three hour (at least) drive and two buses away from me.

Here are some pictures

 Eriki intensely cutting mangoes for the wine.

 Eriki being creepy

 Maria being creepy

English isn't the most widely spoken language here: "Oliver oil... It good four health"

 Obama beanies; Obama is a BFD here

 Dance party. Of course.

Our bucket wine at work. This is my new sitemate Rachel! She's a really good dancer

Pictures From Training or Tardiness, I Know

My room in Dar, before I actually entered Tanzania during homestay.

Notice the super safi western toilet. Just ignore the fact that later a large piece of my ceiling fell onto my toilet seat lid.

My CBT at Halloween

The Mutant Ninja Turtles made an appearance, too.

Cate and Jamesy so excited about getting chocolate that they could shit their pants.

My favorite picture of my CBT.

My homestay mama at a harusi (wedding).

A really sassy woman dancing at the wedding. This was so much because it was just women, and I got to see them all let loose and dance and sing.

The giant spider with fingers I found in my room one night. Its dead now.

The Maandazi Mama holding me.

Me holding my baby dada in fron tof my homestay house.

Cooking peanutbutter pancakes Tanzanian style at Safi's house.

My baby dada, Edisi. I love her.

Peke Yangu (on my own) in Tanzania or Take That VSA!

I have been at site for just over a month now, and have delivered three babies, regularly take blood samples to test Malaria- of which, none have been positive, which makes me suspicious of either the test or the supposed prevalence of malaria in my area- and I just learned how to give shots, which I am really bad at. I work every day at the zahanati (clinic), and am truly gaining experience that I never would have been able to get with my biology degree in the States. Other than at the zahanati, my friend who charges my phone at his duka (shop) wants to start a chicken project. We started by talking about how his son is in school, and he has no money, and I told him that I wanted to start community groups that could make money. Was he interested? Well, yes he was! And he wants it to be a chicken group, and then he told me all about his chickens and everything he knows about them. I have never seen this man so excited! He is finding five other people- because he said that five other people would make a good size group- and my hope is that he will take over this group and make it productive with little to no influence from me. I even know a man that can come and teach this group about raising and selling chickens for profit. I had an impromptu conersaion with some women at a chai house about birth control methods and family planning. It didn't go too well because I forgot the words for "family planning" and "pill" and "types," and then the woman I was talking to got distracted by her milk, but it will go better next time. Currrently I am trying to write a lesson about Malaria and fever to teach at the zahanati. Writing the lesson in English was cake- thank you internet research in the States- but translating things like "bloody stool" into Kiswahili isn't exactly staright forward. For some reason that phrase isn't in the dictionary, I don't know why. I have also farmed, which is such a big deal to my villagers! I got strawberry plants from a friend in town, so I got my jembe (local farming tool, kind of like a hoe) and started clearing a small patch of overgrownness in the used-to-be garden in front of my house. Yeah, farming with an audience is fun. The kids were all passing my house leaving the primary school, so they all just stopped and watched while I planted my little plants, and we talked about fruit and farming. All the mamas passing greeted me a little more enthusiastically, seeing that oh, the mzungu farms kind of like us! Except they can create an entire field of future food in the time it takes me to create my little 2' by 6' patch.

My site continues to impress me with how beautiful it is, and how perfect it is for me. There have been a couple of days cold enough that I have worn my fleece in the middle of the day- and this is supposed to be the end of the hottest season. The dominating colors of my site are green and red. The grass and the leaves of trees are green, and on the days when it rains, the light filtered through the clouds makes everything look greener. But contrasted against this green is the red of the dirt and the trunks of the papaya and banana trees, which burns a brighter red on jua kali days when the near-equatorial sun is merciless. I have a beautiful view of hills from my front porch, and for the past several nights I have watched as lightning flashed in the clouds over the surrounding hills. Its like fireworks, but better!

Here are pictures of my house!

Jikoni (kitchen). Um, I will do something with this. Someday.

Choo. Very important.

Courtyard. Look at how luscious that grass is. I work so hard at landscaping (no I don't).

My favorite view sitting on my porch. There is a boy who grazes his cow in this field some days. I think he is so poetic, this lone boy with his lone black cow, that he follows close behind as the cow meanders slowly.

The zahanati and my garden.

Pretty flowers in front of my house.

Pipi: Swahili for Candy, English for Urine

I have made it to site! I am a sworn in Peace Corps Volunteer, I live in a village on a mountain, and its great!

Right now I am celebrating Christmas with fellow PCVs in town. We had a secret santa gift exchange, where the presents included peanut butter, cookies, pasta, and plastic buckets. Its funny what you come to appreciate most living in this country. You can never have enough buckets. Never. You need as many as you can get in order to horde water, wash dishes in, shower out of, wash clothes in, sit on, store food in, make bucket wine in... Its also really useful to keep a bucket in your room in case you have to pee in the middle of the night and your choo is too scary to use after dark. This happened during homestay, only I didn't have a bucket. I used a candy container instead. Peeing in your room is an interesting experience.

I can already see how living in Tanzania is changing me. I have become so much more aware of my water usage, and how much fuel it takes to cook my food or heat water. Taking a hot shower is such a luxury. I haven't taken one since I came to Tanzania. A cold shower is super safi, because it isn't out of a bucket.

Before joining the PC, my friend told me a story about a Volunteer who, early on in her service, had to deliver a baby, and ever since then I have been certain that that would happen to me. I researched how to deliver a baby, what to do in the case of certain complications. Its all written down in my big black book of knowledge. So, on my first night at site, when a woman came to my door speaking rapid Swahili that I couldn't understand, I should not have been surprised to find a woman in labour at the clinic and me expected to help her deliver the baby. Let me tell you, its completely different when its in Swahili. There I am, alone with this woman, and I am stuck on the fact that I can't tell her to breath, because I don't know how to say that in Kiswahili. Luckily, she had done this before and was very calm. Eventually, the nurse for the clinic arrived, and then immediately the baby came out! I stand there, see the baby slide out, hand the nurse the clamp, string, scissors, then I'm wiping the baby down and rubbing its chest to get it to cry. The nurse is helping the mother to deliver the placenta. I am holding this floppy new born baby. Oh my god. Birthing a baby is disgusting.And really cool. This is my life right now.

So, everything else at site has been normal and slow and after that. I go on walks. Talk to people. I have already gotten really good at staring out my window for entertainment, or watching the cows and goats eat out of the garden in front of my house. Things are pole pole (slow). I have a really annoying cat that the previous volunteer left behind. She cries all the time and is really high maintenance; how she has survived this long in Tanzania is beyond me. It makes me miss my cat in the States, her sassy independence, how she talks to birds, how she will yell at you. Brandy, are you taking care of her?

I'll let you know if I deliver any more babies.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays!

Shadow Week or Maisha wa Voluntia

I'm not sure if that is proper Kiswhili, but I am shadowing a PCV this week in Mbeya region, in southern TZ. Mbeya could not be more different from Tanga- cold, mountainous, evergreens. I have gotten to see what life as a volunteer looks like. Some highlights:

I met a man named Flamingo Body and a girl named I don't know.
Full grown men and women sat on me during a 4 hr bus ride.
I baked 3 loaves of bread on a charcoal jiko using pots in one day.
I watched a Tanzanian drama, which is surprisingly similar to Asian dramas, just in Swahili.
I saw a pig be born.

Shadow has made me much more excited about living at my site. Living with a host family is a good experience, and the best way to learn about Tanzanians, but it is not indicative of what life will be like at site, so, future PCTs, if you are having a hard time in training, know that things will change. If you are in Turkmenistan and stay with a home stay family for 2 years, pole sana.

Some other recent habari is that we got our site announcements! I will leave the process of site announcements shrouded in mystery and anticipation, as it was for me, but I will tell you that I am going to be in central TZ, in Dodoma region, near Kondoa. Dodoma is a desert, but my site is in the foothills, so it should be a little cooler, I will be by a health clinic, and should have solar power to my house, which is a BFD. Swear in and installation is in about 2 weeks!

My cross country trip to Mbeya from Tanga for Shadow enhanced how grateful I am to be in this country. It is beautiful and diverse here. Every PCV I have talked to has emphsized the importance of not making generalizations, how every village is different, how culture can change across just a few kilometers. In the States I think we make broad assumptions about other peoples and countries, especially about "Africa." The people- and landscape- in Tanzania are so diverse, with different languages, religions, clothing, food... there is no way to make bblanket statements about an entire continent. This is something that I have to work on- I catch myself talking "Africa" based on what I have seen here, but I don't know anything about "Africa." I barely know anything about Tanzania. I know I am in the right place when my coworkers tout diversity over generality.

I also find it strange to be in the midst of development work. I was a biology major, I know nothing about development, yet I find that I have very strong opinions about how development should be done, especially in this place where development is such a hot topic. A man came into the village of the PCV I am shadowing a month ago and built a bunch of pump wells, which is great, except that now they are all broken, and no one knows to fix them. Where was the education or training for the villagers? Why didn't he contact the other American living in the village? Electricity is slowly working its way up the mountain to her village now, too, which will improve life and is great, but why not bring supplies for using a renwable energy resource instead, like solar? It probably would have been easier to carry a bunch of solar panels in a truck than build giant poles all up the mountain for electrical wires, which still need to be connected to each house.

I read this National Geographic article on how the Earth's population is at 7 billion, and how fertility rates and population density correlate to amount of resources used. Much of the Earth's population is condensed into developing countries, but it is the devloped countries- which have fewer people and lower fertility rates- that are taxing Earth's resources most. Most devloping countries are reducing fertility in an effort to increase economic development- or maybe decreased fertility is a byproduct of development, kind of like the chicken and the egg. There aren't necessarily resources sufficient to support 7 billion people, and counting, but people also shouldn't continue living without sanitation and infrustructure when other people have private jets and yachts.

Development is interesting, and frustrating, and difficult, and there is definitely a better, more sustainable, way to do it. I hope I can do it the better way.

PST or Why Am I Doing This?!

I have been at my CBT (community based training) site for two weeks now. I live in Kilulu, a village near Muheza town in Muheza District. I live with a host family, who speak no English, have no running water and no electricity. The night I got to my host family, I was terrified. I was soooooo nervous. I had spent the last week in Dar, spending every moment with my 40 other PCTs, speaking English, enjoying electricity, drinking beers in the gazebo in the evening, and really having no interaction with Tanzania at all. My mama came out to the car when we pulled up, a tiny worn woman, and carried my bags in for me- bags that I have trouble carrying, and I have multiple inches on this woman. She walked me through her dark little house to the courtyard in the bag, sat me on a stool, and continued making dinner on a wood fire in a hut outside, in traditional TZ style. I was immediately surrounded by silent children, staring at me. I know how to greet in Swahili at this point, that's it. One little girl hands me a baby she's holding, so now I am holding someone's baby, being stared at, with nothing to say. That was basically my first night in homestay.

In TZ, people use the choo, which is a structure usually unattached from the house, with a hole in the floor, where people do their business and shower. Its basically a bathroom. Choos are terrifying places. And I have a nice choo. The top of the structure is roofed by some kind of dried veggitation, and spiders like to inhabit it. I don't like spiders. I don't like little spiders in the States. Spiders in TZ.... you could put a leash on them and take them for a walk. There are seven in my choo. My solution is to crouch as low as possible without actually crawling on the floor so as to put as great a distance between me and the giant spiders.

I have a very nice room. I actually feel really bad because I have a huge room to myself, and the rest of the family- mama, baba, kaka, and dada wawili- all sleep in one room. I have a lock on my door and bars on my window, to PC standards, and I have an insecticide treated net over my bed- which I religiously keep tucked to keep bugs off of my bed. There are cockroaches. We cohabitate very well I have found. I found one of the giant spiders on my wall though one night. I walk into my room, see it, and stop. I can't just leave it there. I am not going to sleep with that thing on my wall. But I cant squish it either because it is bigger than my shoe. So I got the kids. I bring them into my room and point at the spider, and they look at me, like, whats the big deal? They eventually killed it, which caused me to scream, and everyday they make fun of me for my fear of ndudu, bugs.

I go to shule Monday- Saturday with my 3 CBT mates to study Kiswhili. Our language instructor is a brilliant Tanzanian nicknamed Big Boy, and he knows more American slang than I do. I read on a blog once about how PCVs talk about three things: sex, shit, and food. Its true. There isn't any real habari (news) so we just make it up, hypothesizing on who will hook up with whom, who already has, what the drama in other CBTs is. Everyone knows when someone has the runs, or when someone hasn't pooped in a week, color, consistency, etc. And we talk about American food and Tanzanian food constantly. About how much we hate ugali. About how we are always full. About how salty the mchicha is. About how much we are craving peanut butter and pizza.

On Sundays I do housework- TZ style. I wash my clothes by hand. I walk ten minutes to get water, and carry it back in a bucket on my head. I cook on a wood burning stove, and by stove, I mean three large rocks arranged in a circle. I have seen my mama pluck and tear apart two chickens with her hands already. These are chickens from our front yard. I think that when I get to my site, I am going to be a vegetarian. The inside of a chicken is disgusting. I would, however, eat my rooster. I would eat every rooster in Kilulu, because roosters do not just make their screaming cockle-doodle-doos  when the rises, but all night, and all day. I really hope we eat the rooster someday.

Really, I am living the idyllic American in Africa fantasy. I am surrounded by barefoot children, who follow me everywhere, yelling my name. They pronounce it like "caught," but very sharp and short.  It is beautiful and lush and green, and everyone is friendly, and everyone knows everything I do.

Training is hard, but I am so glad I am here.

Just Put A Kanga Over It or Tanzania's Multitool

In Tanzania, knees are very provocative, so to ensure maximum coverage women will wear an extra piece of fabric over their skirt, called a kanga. This is not the only use for a kanga, however, so it is essential that one must have multiple. I have two, and its a struggle. These uses include, but are not limited to...

skirt, dress, shirt, swimsuit cover, shawl, towel, sunshade, yoga mat, cushion, pillow, rug, hat, curtain, wall decoration, table cloth, water filter, bag, scarf, and I have even seen khangas used to keep a car's hood attached to the rest of the car.

Personally, my mama insists that I have an indoor kanga, an outdoor kanga, and that I wear two kangas to the choo when I shower.

Kangas are more multi functional than my Gerber.

I will post a picture eventually, promise.