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
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