Twenty six weeks in Tanzania: Salama Toka Tanzania

Greetings from Tanzania

This is gonna be a long one so pole sana (many apologies) for that! I had to reread my last e-mail to remember what I've sent so far. It's only been a week and I'm not swamped with work but I feel like it's been a month. I'm still in the city, my schedule through next week is to be in swahili class Jumatatu mpaka Ijumaa (Monday until Friday) and orientation in the afternoon. My teacher in swahili class probably thinks horrible things about America (sorry guys), the fact that I'm not married, not religious, a vegetarian and I talk to my cat have all gotten very sincere "pole sana" responses out of her. One or the Roots and Shoots volunteer asked Jay (my counterpart for Moshi) what religion he was and when Jay said he wasn't religious the guy was like "oh you're pagan". Needless to say religion is a huge priority here and a lack of it is a very foreign concept. In fact the city has a large Muslim population and I often wake up at 4am to the call to prayer from the nearby mosques playing at top volume.

We skipped class last Thursday to visit a few schools which was really good exposure to the work that we will be doing. We visited two schools where the students were out for a holiday so we just talked to the teachers and signed in at the guest book. The third school we visited we met with an active Roots and Shoots club so we took the time to tell them about ourselves and what we are about in terms of volunteering beyond club activities. They told us about the activities that they have recently done and though most of it was in Swahili I could understand a small fraction of it. After we all talked as a group, the R&S employees and volunteers separated so that the kids would have a chance to talk to us one on one and learn more about where we come from or what we do and how we got involved. It was a little overwhelming at first because the kids came up to me and wanted me to talk about my culture but I had no idea what I should be saying. Eventually I got them to ask a few more specific questions and then I could run with the train of thought that started. They were really excited to hear about summer break, for the most part they are in school all year. They were also surprised by the variety of subjects I studied in school. Here when (or if) they start secondary school they choose a specialization like science or history or whatever and they focus on just the subjects related to that. All of the secondary schools here are taught in English so thankfully I didn't have to stumble through swahili. All of the girls we talked to are very smart, and though they are generally more shy than boys, some of these girls had a little attitude, it was pretty fun. The school we went to was over an hour away and the roads are about 50/50 for being paved or not. Even the paved roads are pretty bumpy, so when we drove out there with 8 people in our SUV (it's a JGI vehicle) it was pretty awkward. When we rode back with 2 of the teachers (apparently we'll do this regularly because we can and you share whatever you can with your friends here) it was pretty painful. It's the same on public transportation, the daladala's will be completely full so that the bus door is stuck open and still shove more people in.

Last week I helped Erica take Bugs to the vet which was kind of interesting to see. She wanted me there to tell him what was needed so I did and all he did was clean off Bug's nose (he's got some irritation there from constant scratching), give him his rabies shot and give him an injection of some ivermectin relative. We got sulfa cream for his nose and a dewormer so he's all clear now. It was interesting to me how the vet did absolutely nothing in terms of an exam. We did come in during his off hours so that may have been part of it but I was still a little disappointed. At least they have vets though!

Over the weekend we visited a Roots and Shoots club that was not associated with a specific school but is children from a clinic called Dar Dar. The clinic is for HIV+ children and I don't know too much about it except that they can get treatments there (possibly for free?) and education about their disease. So we met with them on Sat morning and Jay and I had prepared lessons and games to do with them. It was scheduled from 9-12 but everything is late here so it started around 1030 with Jay doing his lesson and a snack after so I never did my lesson (which is OK, I didn't really like what I had prepared). Instead I just helped elaborate on Jay's since we had ours tied in together anyway (we did symbiosis and the life cycle of insects). The kids there were really cool and there was only a small group that day because it was a holiday. I liked it better that way though because I got to spend more time getting to know all of them a little bit. We were out and about a bit for the rest of the weekend. I tried to go out Saturday night but they start at about 11pm and I was exhausted so I slept the night away instead of dancing it. I'm sure I'll get to experience the nightlife here in due time though.

Monday I signed up for a set of art lessons with three of my classmates from swahili class. One of the guys is staying at a hostel that is right next to the Tinga Tinga Cooperative so he had made friends with one of the artists and decided to talk to him about taking an informal class from him. He mentioned it at lunch on Monday so we kind of invited ourselves to join which probably worked out better for him because the overall price was split 4 ways. So we started class yesterday and though the guy mostly just outlined the images and we filled them in, we got to do a little bit of the detail work and I think by the end we'll be able to do most if not all of it. Anyway it's pretty fun and a nice exposure to some new people as well as a chance to try out our swahili. Today we got to be a little more involved in the artwork, Abbass (the artist) would do a small part to show us and we'd finish it. We're all doing better but your lines need a little work. For the most part I'm pretty impressed with myself though! The only things I've bought so far are earrings, a scarf for my shoulders and a basket for produce but I want to buy everything. Though everything you can buy here is basically on every street corner it's all very new and exciting for me.

I've had lots of good food, many cold baths and a couple of crazy daladala rides. The food is the same at basically every tanzanian stop. Ugali, rice, pilau, ndizi, and beans, meat and some sort of greens. Prices here are incredibly low but it's all relative, you can't make much money here. I usually buy lunch for about $2 and my Tinga Tinga class cost me about $20. There's no hot water in this house and the water flows so slowly the easiest thing for me to do is fill up a bucket and pour small amounts over my head at a time. It takes a moment to work myself up to it in the morning but it definitely wakes me up and I've gotten pretty efficient at it. The daladala's will fill up so that people are just about standing on top of each other and it often smells like BO. Though people are generally nice and helpful, I often get people that stare at me for the entire ride. Most likely just because I'm a mzungu because I always have my shoulders and knees covered but whatever the reason, they are not shy about it, even when I stare back (for about 10 seconds, that's about all I can maintain). I'm sure I could go on for another 10 paragraphs but I've probably already given you more than enough to think about so I'll finish up.

Oh! And I met Jane today. She flew in this morning (I'm not sure where from) and will be here a few days to visit with her son and grandchildren (who live on the same compound but in a different house), then she will move on to Gombe (where all of her Chimpanzee research has been done. She's been very friendly so far and I'm excited that we get to spend a little time getting to know her.