Tanzania: December 2010

Friday, December 24, 2010

Thursday, December 16, 2010

After spending one last evening with the other PCV’s in Moro, we went to bed ready to wake up at 3:15 the next morning to head to the bus station. It was a brutally early and pitch black morning to say the least. After arriving in Same, which is the closest town to my village, I finally got to meet my mkuu, and he set me up in a hostel in the area and said it would be better to sleep the evening in Same and go to Chome the following morning since there is only one bus that goes to Chome each day. That afternoon, I met up with 4 other PCVs, one Education, and 3 Health and Environment that are all staying in the nearby Same area. We had some drinks and talked about life in Same and got to know each other a little since these will be my white buddies for the next year or so. We toured around the town and turned in early since they were taking off for a little PCV thanksgiving north of Same in a beautiful city called Moshi.

I got up the next morning, wandered around Same, and met up with my mkuu and the other teacher to make our way to Chome finally. After buying some essentials for cooking and living on my own, my mkuu told me his friend was driving up to Chome and we would get a free ride if we wanted. I really was along for the ride so I agreed willingly. We piled all my bags into the car and hopped in. The man taking us was in the passenger seat, a driver driving, and another man was sitting in the other open seat on the far window. My mkuu was sitting next to me and across our laps we balanced 5 large glass plates (I think to build a glass table with). They had to go on our laps since there was no room in the back and he thought we could better protect them from breaking on the ride up. The drive was insane. I have never been in a car that was rocking and bouncing back a fourth so much in my entire life. I have never been on a roller coaster for that matter, that has been more extreme than this ride. We were driving up a tiny road of boulders on a cliff side the whole way up. I was smiling and having fun for the most part, but about half way up when we started really rocking and bumping, my face smashed into my mkuus forehead, which was slightly unpleasant probably for both of us. For the following 2 days I had a black eye haha. After the face pummeling, we hit another bump and one of the glass panes sitting on our lap shattered. I was initially alarmed by the shards of glass everywhere, but looked up to see the driver of the car laughing so hysterically that I thought he might drive off the cliff. So I just laughed and decided it was just another day in Tanzania. Kabribu Tanzania. We did successfully make it to the top of this mountain/hill eventually, arriving in Chome at last. Quite an experience for sure.

Chome is beautiful. It is impossible to see from anywhere but inside the village, or I guess from a plane or from space or something…anyways, Chome is all contained in basically a crater of this mountain, which also happens to include the highest peak in the Same district. So driving up was also an amazing site being able to see for thousands of miles out over African landscape, much of which was the Massai step. Back to the crater, amazingly beautiful and amazing lush too. Same and the surrounding area is reasonably dry and dusty as is very much of the Tanzania I have seen so far, but the crater that Chome is in effectively collects water so well it is vibrantly green and fertile throughout the year. The walls of the bowl that is Chome are covered in gardens, farmland, grass and even some massive trees and dense forests. Chome has its own water supply from the weather it creates, and they even have power lines traveling up the mountain, so I have both running water and electricity. I was able to walk from end to end of the bowl yesterday and get a good look at the village from all angles. The walk was about an hour and a half from end to end, and the scenery was incredible. Especially when I was able to walk far enough to see out of the only real opening of the bowl. For the most part, once you come over the crest and drive down into Chome, it is impossible to tell you are elevated at all. But from certain spots in Chome when you can see out of the crater, the couple thousands feet of elevation become very apparent. My description is not doing this picturesque place justice so you will just have to come visit and take the suicidal bus ride up to Chome and see for yourself.

After spending a few days in Chome on my own, I decided it was about time to get some living supplies, so I made my way back down into Same. There is only on bus that goes to and from Chome each day, and it leaves from my school (Chalao Secondary) at about 430 am. Tough day. So I got up in the pitch back and got down to the bus just in time. The bus ride down was nowhere as eventful as the car ride up, however still impossible to get any shut eye. I decided after getting down that instead of hanging in Same I would make the few more hour trip up to Moshi. Moshi is a super safi city full of wazungu. Maybe more so than anywhere else in Tanzania….Safi means really nice, and wazungu are white people if that other sentence made no sense at all…It is the closest big city to Kili, and is full of expensive, yet delicious western foods. I knew a few PCVs staying in the area, including one who is living with an NGO and has a sweet pad that PCV’s can crash at for free. I ended up spending far too much money and far too many days there, but managed to have myself a bacon cheeseburger, a banana split, and meat which was not riddled with mystery bones for most every meal. This might not sound that exciting to you all, but for me it was like heaven. Especially the ice cream. On top of that, one day we spent 3,000 =/ (3,000 +=/ or 3000 shillings equates to about 2 bucks, which is pretty cheep all and all around here, but most people are able to survive on about 1000 =/ per day, and our salary does not provide ample swimming money haha) and went swimming in a private pool! It was well worth the 3 G’s, although I did manage while doing summersaults in the deep end to mush my face into one of the walls. So I now have a nose that is ever so slightly more crooked than it already was. Oops. Oh yes…and Kili is a fantastic site. It is also massive. Almost every day it is covered in clouds but early each morning, and just before sunset each night the clouds break at you can see the snowy peak. Its so big, and so high compared to everything else, that even after traveling back to Same yesterday, I was able to see Kili in the distance pretty clearly while watching another big red sunset.

Well, I have been home now in Chome for a week or so now and since there is not all that much to do since school does not start until January 10th, I have been doing a lot of sitting in different random locations, and exploring the mountain and village to keep entertained. At first I thought it would be fun to take more time to make delicious things to eat, but as it turns out I’m not good at cooking and I’m for sure not good at sitting in one place while things cook, so that’s probably rarely going to happen. On the topic of food though, I ate dinner at my mkuu’s house the other night and had one of the stranger meals I have had since I have been here. And I have had some very strange things (one being a neon green, mucous textured concoction…not tasty). Anyways… I sat down with another teacher at our mkuu’s humble abode and he opened up they three pots he had cooked up for dinner. The first was what appeared to be a soup. After trying and questioning I discovered the soup was a peanut sauce. But not like a peanut sauce you can get at a Chinese place, this peanut sauce was ground up peanuts and water. And that was it. And in the watery peanut sauce, was the go to boiled fat pieces, which are so loved here. The starchy side dish was coco yams, which before cooked appeared in the shape of a blow horn, and were filled with what looked like cookies and cream. Well, just white with black spots is probably a better way to describe it. After cutting and boiling them, they were served with the peanut water meat fat. Two-for-two on strange things thus far. But the real kicker was the beverage of choice that evening. I have had many different types of teas since arrive in Tanzania, but tonight was the first time I would have tea made from different tree barks all ground up and mixed together (which a hint of ginger I am pretty sure). Strangely it was not all that bad, and maybe the best part of the all around strange meal. I guess however it could have been worse…I talked to another PCV today who said she ate what appeared to be bugs at dinner that night. When she asked the girls that had made the meal where they bought the bugs, they said… “oh, no you don’t have to buy them, they are the ones that fly around the lights. And if you put a bowl of water nearby they are attracted to the water, get trapped and then we catch fry them”. So I was fine with the coco yams and bark for sure.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Last days in Moro

The last few days in Moro were excellent. We all had to take a Language Proficiency exam to make sure we would be capable of fending for ourselves in the real world. And then I had a day of gardening with a guy named Peter Jensen. Ill send you some pictures another time but it was a project or business idea he had called Permagardening helping to empower and enable those living and coping with HIV/AIDS to live a more self sustaining life when so much around them has been loss. I could have described that much better, but I’ll bet you can find it online and Peter does a far better job of explaining...

On the last night with my host family, my brother and I were alone a majority of the evening because baba and mama were at a wedding for my mama’s brother I believe. And so Stephani and I decided to try and make some pizza. I bought cheese at some super expensive store in town, and the rest of the ingredients were easy to get at the market and at home. All and all the pizza turned out quite excellently considering it was cooked on a charcoal jiko in a frying pan. And even though we had no idea what the measurements were supposed to be for the flour and yeast when making the dough, it tasted really rather delicious. We made our tomato sauce with some tomatoes and garlic all ground up together, cooked it for a while, and strained it to make a makeshift paste. After letting the dough rise a bit, using the power of palms we flattened it into mini pizzas, cooked it up in some oil, and topped each little mini pizza with some green peppers onions and cheese. Not too shabby at all. When my parents came home they tried it, as well as the other guy living with us (still not sure who he is, sometimes my brother calls him brother, but my baba calls him brother as well, so its hard to figure out). They pretended to like it, but since Tanzanians never eat cheese, I think it was a little too much for them to handle. They politely said they were full even though they proceeded to make ugali haha.

It was time to take off the following morning. I gave my brother and baba a big hug, and had to chase my mama around the house to give her a big bear hug. It is not really socially acceptable to bear hug and pick up the women here or really touch in any way other than a hand shake between genders, but I decided that she would get over it. She laughed and sort of punched me in the head, but all was well and good in the end and I am pretty sure I have not been shunned from the Kazoka home. Hopefully. All the trainees took off for Dar after lunch, bringing the homestay portion and the training as a whole to a close.

Dar was a nice transition, and a good time to be able to hang out with everyone once more before we all took off to our respective parts of Tanz. The few days in Dar were dedicated basically to meet our heads of school (or mkuu in Kiswahili so I don’t have to write head of school any more), and officially swearing into the Peace Corps. The former didn’t work out so well for me because my mkuu was the only of the 38 who was unable to make it. Mainly because the message did not reach him until too late I believe. He did send a proxy to meet me and accompany me to Chome, but he arrived a few days late so I did not meet him until after swearing in. The swearing in process was pretty cool actually. We all went to the US embassy for it, along with all of our mkuu’s, and the Peace Corps staff. The ceremony was pretty brief; the country director said a few words about us all, we sang both the US and the Tanzanian national anthem, we sang a song with Kiswahili words to the tune of With a little Help From my Friends (which they kindly forced us to do), the US ambassador said a few words, and an honorary guest speaker said a few words as well. Oh, also two of the volunteers gave a speech, one speaking in English the other translating in Kiswahili. We all held up our right hands, swore to do good, and now we are all volunteers. Short, sweet and excellent. We were invited to an early thanksgiving dinner at the ambassadors house that night, which was the best thing of all times… especially the deserts in my sugar-loving opinion. Really everything was quite amazing, some tasty potatoes, gravy, stuffing, no turkey sadly, but I could not have asked for a more delicious meal. Having a meal like that on thanksgiving in Tanzania makes me realize how much I take for granted back home from time to time. But I’m not one to get too sappy… lets just say I was very thankful to have been given so many amazing opportunities and to know so many amazing people. So, thanks to everyone at home, I miss you all and love you very much, and was thankful for you all that night!