More photos

                                                     Elephants are big

                                              Lions having some dinner

                                                    Sleepy hippo

               So much dust around here, makes for some pretty big red sunsets

                                              watering holes are real

                                                            Mama

Some photos

 

          me and my two borthers Eliyuko and Steveni...the other boy is Eli's friend who                                                             stayed with us a while. 

                                              an awesome baobob tree

                                            exciting looking toilet in Dar

one of the lovely sunsets from Singida

                                                     

                                                  Massive hippo we saw!

Contact Info

On Thanksgiving day I will be moving to my site (in the Chome Village of the Same Village) but I don't yet have that address.
The address that I have been at can still receive anything that is sent but I won't get anything until I return in 2 months. That address is:
Colin Harari
P.O. Box 9123
Dar es Salaam
Tanzania
If you send a package you MUST write Peace Corps on it or I have to go to the post office with my ID and pay for it rather than the Peace Corps doing it for free.

Also, you can call me via skype at this number whenever you would like: 255 686 981 704
To do this you must put some money on your skype account. You can also text me for 6 cents from skype!

As soon as I know what my address will be for the next while I will let you all know!

Shadow Week and Site Assignment

Just returned home from my shadow adventure a few days ago. We got to take off for the week Sunday to Sunday to check out the life of a current Peace Corps Volunteer that has already been rockin out on their own for a year, and it was an experience for sure. I was assigned to shadow with another lady named Katie which was nice because we had already become friends before hand and so it made the predicted 20 or so hours round trip of bus rides as well as full week together a more exciting concept. Anyways, got on the bus, and not unlike riding the Daladalas around here, and it was an adventure from start to finish. Five of us volunteers were all going to the region of Singida to shadow, and close enough to Singida town that we took the same bus. We were piled on the bus and the driver pointed out five seats. Lucky for me as I was the last to board I got to hop on in between a middle aged Tanzanian man, and an older Tanzanian woman who appeared to be in her thousands. After we sat the bus seats were all filled, and soon the bus was filled completely with anywhere from 60 to 100 more people pinned in the isle in the middle, preparing to stand for the 6 hours to come. And when I say stand I mean sit on the head or shoulder of whichever lucky soul decided they wanted an isle seat. The bus finally took off and I was ready to go, feet dangling slightly above the ground because the distance between seats and the ground was big enough for someone 4 feet tall, but I was still pumped to hit the road for the first time in a while.

We take off, and I take to watching out the window over my old lady seatmate next to me so I can check out some Tanzanian landscape. She however takes to watching me, which was a little odd considering our distance of a few inches, but I’m getting used to being observed. Meanwhile, I am snacking on some pili pili chips I got at the bus stand before leaving, which are just potatoes chips covered in ground up pieces of super delicious, super spicy peppers. I made a fatal mistake of removing some sweat from my eye and almost instantly went blind in that eye, which started watering profusely. I spent a few minutes trying to calm the eye being attacked by pili pili before Grandma Time saw that I appeared to be crying and attempted to figure out what the problem was. I told her I touched my eyes and got pili pili close by, so she moved to attempted to immediately pour her liter of water on my face. Luckily my reaction speed was about 70 times quicker than hers so I was able to battle off her attempts to save my eye rather effectively. Other than the hot pepper eye incident and the bus ride being crowded and as dangerous as ever however, was pretty excellent. Beautiful savannah on both sides. The Boabab trees are something from outta this world. If you have read The Little Prince you will have heard of boabab trees, or maybe just because you know about trees. The have the most massive, tangled, knotty trunks, wide enough for a tree in the states to rise a hundred feet at least. But no Boabab tree I have seen around here climbs higher than maybe 30 at most. And they tend to be the tallest thing around. But the massive trunk feeds into a few oversized branches that all twist and turn as if the normal tendencies to grow up and out mean nothing. And these branches quickly shrink into hundreds of very tiny little branches all hoping for more water and less sunlight. Each makes for an excellent sight and remind me in a way of what the inside of a lung would look like for some reason, all those alveoli or whatever they are called. Too long since I took bio haha.

All right, we arrived in Singida town after about 9 hours of bus riding. Luckily we had all been advised to dehydrate ourselves because stopping just does not really happen. We met up with three current PCVs in town and went to get some grub and a beer and get to know each other a little. We ate at a place in town where they had gotten to know the cook. An extremely nice man, who loves meeting wazungu, was more than happy to be able to feed some more. He gives us reasonable prices and they in turn have helped him to pay for one of his daughter’s school fees. I have found out that knowing people in Tanzania is very important. From finding out which bus to take and where to eat, and not get white person prices for everything, can only come with a little networking. The food was amazing; I had some kitimoto (pork) for the first time since I have been here really and it was fantastic. We went out afterwards to grab a beer and hang out a little more. We sat down at a bar ordered a round of beers and were talking and such, when 4 people walked up carrying a few chairs and a table. It seemed like maybe they were just moving a table there because there was not enough room. One of the women was pretending to be pregnant (she had a soccer ball looking thing half hidden under her khanga). Then a song started playing, and one of the guys sitting there stood up and started lip sinking all of the lyrics and acting out what he was saying. Then the others would do the same during the chorus. It was like a music video in real time that seemed to come literally from nowhere and unannounced. And then at the end of the song the four of them kicked their chairs back and all fell to the ground pretending to be dead or something, and were all carried off stage. Very strange yet entertaining I guess.

The next day the 5 of us split up. Katie and I got on a bus to head to Mtunduru with Amy, a small village about 20 km from Singida town. Depending on if it was rainy or dry season the bus could take anywhere from an hour to 15 hours it sounded like. With the exception of some terrible churning in my stomach and some poison gas Katie and Amy had to bear sitting on either side of me on the bus, the ride was rather peaceful. Amy told us about a particular experience of a woman going into labor on the bus because it was so bumpy. She also mentioned on one occasion that she was sitting up front and a woman walked on, saw her and started uncontrollably convulsing. An older woman told Amy that it was not her fault and that the woman just needed to be exorcized right away. So for about an hour Amy and the rest of the passengers waited while the older woman cured the younger one of daemons or something. After saving the young woman, the older woman said she had been cured of the evil spirits, but that they were now in the bus and that she must also perform an exorcism on the bus. So they sat for another few hours until it was safe again to board the bus.

We arrived after about an hour and a half, free of any abnormal bus delays, and proceeded to meet everyone we saw in Amy’s village of about 300 or 400 people. Although when together the villagers all spoke kimtunduru, they tried to speak Kiswahili when we were around so we could understand a little bit more. We walked through her village for a little while, maybe a 20-minute walk to where her home and the secondary school were located. She had decided to go with buying the bare minimum, so although she had like 3 rooms and a pretty big courtyard in the back, she had just two plastic chairs and a single bed. Another frame had been set outside, and when we got there she had someone take 30 feet of rope and tie a sort of hammock bed together for Katie. I sent up the tent I brought in the courtyard, blew up my air mattress, and was pretty pumped about doing some stargazing. Amy did mention someone had come slamming through the courtyard door when she first arrived, but all had been peaceful since then.

Once of the best parts about shadow was being able to make some new foods, and some American sort of foods. The first evening we made a delicious mango salsa, which we put on our rice. We had some cinnamon banana pancakes the next morning, and a good curry another night. Good to get away from the salty dishes they love so much over here. The nights under the stars were another excellent part. Since Amy’s village had no electricity and there was no light pollution anywhere nearby, the sky was brilliant. Also since we are pretty close to the equator I was able to see almost a full shift of sky as the night went on. As the sun set the first night, a tiny sliver of a moon was on it’s way down, and Jupiter was very bright straight overhead. As I woke up through out the night I saw Orion rise all the way to the middle of the sky and set as the morning drew nearer. The Southern Cross also rose and fell, and even the Milky Way pretty clearly rose and set throughout the evening. I woke up and had to pee at about 6am to see Venus as bright as the moon and an amazing bright red sunrise out the window of the choo the first morning too.

The few days at Amy’s were excellent. Got a feel for electricity and water free life. Got to try some disastrous tasting mango wine, which might have well have been mango vodka, which all the villagers politely refused to try again haha. And we got to do a puzzle, which was a pleasant change of pace from the endless hours of language training the previous 6 weeks. The third day we walked through the dessert essentially from her village to another PCV’s village named Carol, where our other friends were staying. We hung there for the day and the evening, saw another excellent sunset, and hit the hay early so we could get up and catch a bus back to town the following morning.

We went back to Singida town to catch a bus to a place called Manyoni, the last stop of our shadow. Driving in we saw a sign worth mentioning actually. It was partially in English and said Get Brown Hair Cuts Here, and had one of the biggest pictures of Will Smiths face I have even seen. Super awesome. Anyway…we got into town and found out our bus would not leave for 6 hours, and so we sat down to get some grub and hang for a while again. After sitting and eating breakfast we were playing cards when one of the women that worked at the place came and pretty aggressively grabbed my arm. I turned and looked at her kind of strangely, but she did say anything just gave me a confused look and kind of pinched me again. I looked around to my other side and a man that was crouched next to me with his hand in my pocket rose and pretended he was looking for a card we had dropped. Turned out the guy was trying to take my wallet, but was too big of a guy and a little bit deranged for the woman to do anything about, so she just grabbed by to warn me that he was stealing from me. Pretty exciting. All moneys are safe still though.

Manyoni was a little bigger, and did have electricity so it was a little bit safer than the other villages. We had some more tasty food, saw some more excellent sunsets and got to know third PCV named David. We came back home that Sunday and will hang in Morogoro for this next week, return to Dar once more and then travel to our sites on Thanksgiving.

Speaking of our sites, we all found out where we will be going for the next couple years, which was a very exciting experience. I told the staff that I was really up for going anywhere but that I do enjoy coolers places as I am from Wisconsin (not that that means anything to people here), and that I enjoy mountains. One by one we were called up and told our sights and everyone was handed an envelope containing some info about their site. Most will be replacing old PCVs and have lots of info and people to talk to, but some do not. My site is one of the new ones, and other than a few paragraphs no one I have talked to knows much about it. The information I received says: “Chalao secondary school is coed and day which started in 1995. It currently has 393 students, 194 girls and 199 boys. The school is situated at the top of the mountains in the Chome village, Same district, in Kilimanjaro region. Because of the highlands the place is cold almost throughout the year. You can travel direct to Chome by bus from Dar. Going up the hill is an experience. The road is stony and climbs up the hill in a snake shape. Your look down is more than 1-2km and the edges are a foot or two from the wheels of the vehicles you will take to Chome. It is an experience.” And that was the only information I have been given by Peace Corps. Strangely and coincidently enough, my Host family Baba happens to not only be from the Same district but from the Chome village. The Chalao secondary school, before 1995 was a primary school and was the primary school that he attended as a child. Really crazy. My Bibi (grandmother) actually still lives in the village even high in the mountains. My mama took the liberty of describing Bibi as short, fat, basically deaf, and very funny. My mama also thinks its hilarious because Bibi for some reason has a cell phone, but cannot use it because she cannot hear anything. Anyways, I was able to find out from Baba, that the village does have some electricity and lots of running water that drains off the mountain. The water is also pure enough that you can drink it with out sterilizing or boiling the water like you must do here in the city. And on clear days I should be able to pretty clearly see Kili in the distance.

Whoooop whooop

All the Peace Corps Volunteers when we first arrived.

I am currently in a place called Singida town, taking off today to a much smaller village with a PCV named Amy. She is hilarious and crazy. I don’t know where exactly she is from but its somewhere down south. Should be an experience because the girl that I am shadowing with is also hilarious but also a little crazy and from the south. So I am rather out numbered. Amy's house has nothing in it. She had a bed made out of string or something made for Katie and I a few weeks ago but the bed was stolen along with most of her other belongings. So I brought my tent and we will be sleeping in the courtyard. She was no electricity and no running water either haha. She said the her choo is set up very poorly, and there is a pipe that makes like a 90 angle after exiting the choo. So about once a week she has too pull up the concrete slab, get a big stick and carry over a bucket of water, and work to slowly unclog the crusty stopped up corner. And for some reason in the last two weeks she mentioned she has literally pooped her pants 4 times. Should be an experience. I’m just gonna try and send this now to see if the picture will go through...

The Beginning

Well lets see…where to start…I guess here in lovely Tanzania. On the 24th of September, 39 of us education volunteers all arrived. We spent a solid 24 hours in Philly, had a crash course in what was to come, hopped on a bus to New York City, hung out in the airport for half a day, and eventually, after some passport confusion made it on to our plane. 17 hours later, stopping for a few hours in Zurich, Switzerland, and briefly in Nairobi Kenya, we landed in Dar es Salaam. All of us tossed our two carry on bags and are two massive checked bags into the back of a truck and crammed together on two busses and were driven wildly around Dar for 30 minutes before being dropped off in the compound we stayed at for 3 or 4 days, called the Msimbazi Center.

Dar was strange and very brief. We sat through numerous lectures about what to expect, were given plenty of shots, and were told we would all get diarrhea at some point. We were watched a lot, especially when we decided to run around and play Frisbee. None of us had much of any langue training so we were basically incapable of communicating with anyone who did not speak English.

We took off for Morogoro city on the 29th, where we would be staying for about two months. Morogoro region is adjacent to Dar, and the city is about a 2 and a half hour drive from Dar (which is on the Eastern Coast of Tanzania). We got to our second compound called CCT around dinnertime, and set up shop at our new location. We spent another 4 days here before moving in with our respective host families. Those first few days were dedicated to language as well as a brief visit into the Morogoro city. Morogoro mjini is about a 45-minute walk, or a 10-minute Daladala ride from CCT. Everything about the journey into the city was quite an experience. The Daladalas are essentially the form of public transportation around cities. They are 15 person vans that hold anywhere between 25 and 35 people. Kids have no problem going in and out windows, and personal space is quite non-existent. There is a team of two guys working each Daladala; one is driving wildly and the other hangs out the sliding door, opening and closing it from time to time to cram a few more passengers on.

Eventually we got into the city, grouped up with 5 others volunteers and one Tanzanian to make sure we didn’t get completely lost. The town was wild- so many people everywhere and everyone seeming to be going somewhere, selling something, or just watching us confused to not only see one mzungu (white foreigner is a pretty solid translation) but packs of 5 of them walking all over the place. We spent a few hours checking out a few of the endless number of shops lining the streets, walking through the main market, and just trying to get a grasp on what was going on around us. It was one of the days that will be engrained in my mind forever. Especially walking through the market. Massive piles of rice, beans and flour. And the cages of chickens we pretty wild too…seemed like a 100 birds piled on top of each other in a cage that should probably have no more than 15 or 20 inside.

We went back to CCT for a day or two and prepared to move in with our host families. We were told none of the families would speak any English at all, and even if they did they would not speak English with us as to help our language progression. ). I found out I would be moving in with the Kazoka family, but nothing more. 

On of the Peace Corps Volunteers that was with us during those first few days told us some stories about many of the miscommunications that she had heard about. One story included telling her family that there were so many “mboo” that kept biting her. She made the unfortunate mistake of using the word “mboo” rather than the word “mbu.” Instead of saying she was being bitten by mosquitoes (mbu) she was repeatedly telling her family she was being bitten by penises (mboo). 

Luckily for me, I was spared many of these awkward situations because the majority of my family speaks excellent English. This does mean I most likely have not gained as many Kiswahili skills as some of the other volunteers who are most immersed. However it has been very nice to be able to really talk and connect with my family. My immediate family is Mama, Baba, and two younger brothers, Eliyuko and Steveni. But Tanzania households very seldom have just the immediate family. My dads “young brother” Vincent lives at the house two and I believe he is actually my Baba’s nephew. Vincent’s brother’s illegitimate wife also spends a lot of time around the house, and with mama cooking many evenings. I am not exactly sure what her relationship is, but illegitimate wife is the best understanding I have of who she is. The Kazokas are most excellent. Eli is in form 6 and was only really around for the first few weeks and is now at a boarding school just 30 minutes away so I don’t see much of him. But with Steven I spend most of my time at home. He is about 14, maybe 15 and just about to enter secondary school. Baba is an eccentric and hilarious man who loves to get a beer on most days unless he is taking malaria meds. Speaking of which, mama, baba and kaka steveni have all gotten malaria in the last two weeks, which does not bode well for me I don’t think haha. Anyways, I try to spend as much time with mama since she does not speak much English at all, learning how to cook. Usually she just tells me to mop the floor or sweep. Tanzanians really enjoy sweeping the outside, which I have yet to figure out. It seems to me that they are just moving around the endless amounts of red dirt, but I do it anyway to make mama happy.

The other day I discovered an interesting new beverage here. Helping around the house, I grabbed what used to be a white polo shirt of some kind, but was now the color of red dirt, dipped it into a bucket, and joined my brother (who had red dirt colored sweat pants) in mopping the floor. My other brother was using a fagio, a broom that consists of maybe 30 2 foot straw needles, to sweep thousands of ants into a pile and out of the house. I would say after clearing the room of the small ants, they took up a volume of almost a blow up football. My other brother and I continued mopping and moved outside to wash our clothes. That can be for another time though. Breakfast was some chai tea, and 3 slices of bread and ants. Tasty and nutritious. The ants are wild around here. When I take a spoonful of sugar, the spoon appears to be moving as the dozens of little ants make a break for the handle to avoid certain death in my hot tea.

The food here I think is spectacular. Lots and lots of rice and beans. Super easy to make, but the beans take about 3 hours to make start to finish unless they are soaked over night the night before. Cooking is also completely different than from home. Everyone here cooks using a charcoal jiko. And the main ingredients for every meal are usually salt and oil. They do make this delicious side dish called Kachumbali, which is diced tomatoes, green peppers, onion, hot peppers, and sometimes some cabbage. Might not sound super delicious but Tanzanians do not like to eat uncooked veggies so it is a very fresh change. My family usually eats it on the same night we have pilau, a ginger flavored rice, which is amazing. Sometimes some mystery meat is tossed in that I tend to steal clear of because the meat tends to have too many hidden bones to sift through for my liking. Some of the others foods we have for dinner include chipsi (which are just fried potato wedges) and ugali (which I don’t really know, is just corn flour and water heated up really hot, stirred for hours). Ill come back to food a little later though, back to the run through of life thus far…

All 39 volunteers were split into CBT (culture based learning) groups. Each CBT would stay together for the two months in Morogoro and go 5 days a week for intensive language training and internship teaching at their 8 respective schools. Of the 8 CBT’s, 7 are within walking distance of their schools. I however am in the one that is too far to walk to each day so we were given bikes to take to school. At first I was pretty pumped to be able to bike around to school each day, and don’t get me wrong it is very beautiful, but biking was not all I thought it was cracked up to be. I have ridden my bike to and from school probably 20 times so far since being here and have had between 5 and 10 flats. I have patched it and re patched it, but the roads are just not meant for biking. The other small downside to having our CBT school at Kayenzi is during our journey to school we have to pass some sort of industrial building that I am convinced is producing poop. The smell is so rough, even when I breathe through my mouth I can taste the poopy suds. The other downside is that being white we tend to stick out quiet a bit as it is, but cruising around on our trek bikes, with our speed helmets makes us seem like we could very well be from another planet. Just the other day we were riding back from school and in passing two small Tanzanian boys, they pointed at us and started crying because they were so scared and confused. Even with the flat tires, poopy taste and alien role I do get one of the most amazing views each morning. The Uruguru mountains are directly in front of my the majority of my 20 minute bike ride, and the air coming east from the coast creates some amazing clouds that tend to circle the peak of the mountain every morning. And apart from the mountains, the terrain is so flat I can see for miles and miles in each direction. Pretty beautiful, so I really cannot complain much at all.

On to school. Kayenzi is the name of the secondary school my CBT convenes at during the week. The first two weeks we dedicated solely to language training. The last two weeks, and one more week to come, include a mixture of language and internship teaching. Oooh, since we go each day for about 7 hours, we have a lady the cooks for much of the school cook for us as well, and the menu we have looks something like this:

1. Chipsi mayai na pilipili kali

       a. (fried potatoes with hot chili sauce)

2. Tambi na njegene

       a. (Spaghetti and peas)

3. Chapati, ndizi, maharage, na pilipili kali

       a. (tortilla, banana, beans and hot chili sauce)

4. Wali na maharage

       a. (Rice and Beans)

5. Ugali samaki na maandazi

       a. (Ugali, fish and like sweet bread stuff)

Good stuff all and all. Ummm back to Kayenzi. The transition into teaching was a little strange. We arrived at Kayenzi to start our language training during one of the school’s breaks, and where as at many schools there are a few kids that tend to leave a little early before break or return a bit late after break ends, this was generally the trend for the teachers. So we were not really able to observe any Tanzanian classrooms with teachers before beginning our internship teaching. Also, the majority of the students have learned very little English before they begin Form 1 (After primary school, secondary school begins with Form 1, and ends with Form 6, if the students can pass a Form 2 and Form 4 national exam called NECTA). But once they begin secondary school, all the classes with the exception of Kiswahili are supposed to be taught in English. Without the teachers around it was quiet hard to figure out, at least for me, what my physics students had done so far this year, and how long it had last been since they had had a teacher. Nevertheless, after doing some detective work with students’ notebooks I decided they had learned a little bit about relative density as their last topic.

So internship teaching began, and I thought I knew who to teach, and thought I knew what they had last learned, so I was feeling pretty solid, expect I realized that I had no textbook, which was no good at all. After asking around for a few days I was finally given a textbook covering all the physics material from Form 1 to Form 4, which I have been teaching out of since I started the internship. The teacher for Form 1 physics did arrive a few days ago, and gave me a more up to date and better book to use, and it turn out teaching states of matter was correct, but I was teaching them things they really did not need to know. Oh well... all in all the teaching has been very interesting and made me realize how important it will be to stop mumbling, and improve my Kiswahili skills so if I am getting as many blank stares I received the last few weeks, I can clarify in Kiswahili.

Ohhh I did get to go on a safari the other day with the volunteers play the tourist, which was cool. Hopefully I will be able to send you a picture. Maybe not though. But we saw everything, it was really crazy- elephants, giraffes, a hippo in the water, zebra for days, water buffalo, lots of baboons, oh and even saw a few lions eating something by the watering hole. Solid all around.

One more funny story since I have a bit more free time today. I left my computer out today because there is only really one charger in the house and it is in the main room. I had to run to the market to get something, actually to get an avocado because I wanted to show mama how to make guac, which was delicious and hilarious to watch her try it like it was going to be poisonous. Anyways, when I returned later I found that my brother and my dads young brother had discovered photo booth. There was like 7 or 8 videos each about 5 minutes long of my little brother dancing to Smooth Criminal. All of which were actually really awesome; he is quite a good dancer. And then a few more videos of him sitting way, way to close to the camera and singing suuuper out of tune hahaha, which are probably my favorite. And then my dads young brother, who speaks no English at all, just talking at the computer. I am not really sure at all what he said, it is literally like 10 minutes long and he almost never stops talking, and he didn’t even really move. They also accidentally left the video running at one point and during part of it my mama walks in and since Michael Jackson was playing she started dancing unaware of the fact the she was being taped. I showed her later and she half jokingly threatened to beat me hahaha, so I fake deleted it, but its the best video ever so I of course could not...