After being in Tanzania for 6 months now, a lot has changed. Not only can I eat ugali on a regular basis without wanting to scratch my eyeballs out, I can kill spiders the size of my hand, wash my clothes with only two buckets of water, and enjoy bathing by moonlight. I can get through conversations in Swahili, hold a village World Aids day, facilitate a village meeting, and weigh babies at the clinic. I've formed lifelong relationships not only with other volunteers, but with my neighbors in the village, who've provided me with food, family, and more laughter than I could have ever imagined. I'm figuring out what gets me through the hard times, and I'm learning that it's not a trip into town for a cold soda, but a walk down the road to sit with Mama Joshua to cook and just sit. Although at times I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing there, or how to get through an afternoon in extreme heat in another language, at the end of the day when I can look back at the lessons learned and taught, and the laughs I've shared with my villagers whom I didn't even know as of 3 months ago, I'm happy.
We just finished a 2 week training that Peace Corps calls 'In-Service Training', or IST. It takes place after the group of volunteers has been at their site for the first 3 months, in our case we all ventured to Morogoro from our various villages and were so excited to be all together again. There are still 39 of us as health volunteers or environment volunteers, and we're as close as we are strong. The training meant not only to provide an outlet for sharing experiences, hardships, and successes of these first challenging months at site, but gives us a little more technical training on topics such as safe motherhood, chicken projects, grant writing, project design and implementation, language, and making fuel efficient stoves, just to name a few. The second week of the training our counterparts joined us in Morogoro, the person we've chosen from our village to be our sidekick (or sanity) in projects and other work in the village. They learned about Peace Corps, it's history and purpose, sustainability, culture, HIV/AIDS, and how to effectively work with us and support us as facilitators in our villages. I brought my Baba to IST who really is my sanity and my stronghold in my village. He 'gets' me better than anyone, can read my moods and help me get things done. He is incredibly hardworking and respected, and even stands up for me when my mama keeps trying to feed me sardines and village meat. We had great conversations about things he was learning about Peace Corps, understanding my job better, and got really excited about the HIV/AIDS session and says he wants to start teaching about HIV in the village. We devised a plan for the next three months and talked about other potential projects.
All in all IST was amazing, we got to hang out with all of our friends for 2 whole weeks, shared about everything that's going on with us, receiving and trying to give advice, spend way to much money and time at the e-Bar, dance parties that lasted for hours, and were also able to refocus our purpose and get prepared to get down and dirty with some work in the village.
On another note, I'm currently in Dar es Salaam waiting for the arrival of Jill! who is stranded in Ireland or something. I can't wait to show her my life here and I'm sure she'll have some great stories when she comes back! Word is also that she's bringing a video camera so I'll be sure to post some videos too.
One more thing...I remember laughing at people who shared how bizarre it was to go into a grocery store for the first time after spending the last however many months buying food out of a wood cart or a shack, and now I can say that it really was as horrible as they described. I got so freaked out by all the cereal in an aisle and different cheeses that was in a refrigerated case that I actually had to leave the store, the only purchases I was able to go through with were a diet coke and a pack of gum.
merry christmas and happy new year! me and my baba after a session at IST
since my last post, a couple of actually productive things have gone down... I had just returned to my village from a lovely, mellow weekend called 'songea-fest' with a few other peace corps volunteers, when i was stopped by one of the nurses in my village to say hello. I mentioned to her during our conversation that I was wondering when the next HIV/AIDS group meeting was going to be since I heard there was such a group already formed in the village. She made a quick phone call and within seconds a meeting between me and the chairperson for the group was set up for the following morning at 9am. Unfortunately adapting to Tanzanian time, I was just finishing chai and planning on heading over to the clinic between 9 and 10, when Detrik showed up at my house at 8:45. He apologized for being early (words that tanzanians don't ever speak, because it doesn't ever happen...) and I welcomed him and said I'd be ready soon. oops. I began to dawn on me how important this meeting was to him and that he had probably been waiting for me since I arrived in the village to ask to meet with him since the meeting was set up so last minute and being early to the meeting, he was clearly eager for some help. We walked over to the clinic and met up with one of the nurses to start the meeting. For almost the next two hours my head spun. The amount of information about the needs and problems with these groups in the communities combined with Detrik's aspirations and vision for the group were enough to overwhelm me to tears as soon as I walked out of the office. I was glad that there is already a group in place, not surprised to hear that they don't really meet or do anything, and excited to hear how excited Detrik was to start projects and educating villagers. He is also the chairperson of the orphans group, and the sole member of the HIV home-care group (goes around helping to care for people who are suffering from HIV). He struggles to take care of 15 pigs that the government donated to the orphans group, they lack funds to pay for food, and it is physically impossible for him to get enough water for them. It didn't take long to realize that he's been waiting years for someone to come along and help him. He has a vision for what the groups will do, what their meetings will look like, and what he wants to teach villagers about HIV, he just needs a little organization, guidance, and help motivating the other group members. His ideas and goals are quite lofty, but he definitely has them and I think for the first time I got a good idea about my purpose here in the village. He openly shared about his own struggles with HIV, and about his brother dying with HIV. We talked about where to start, and agreed that meeting with the other members of the group would be a good start. We set up a meeting for sunday afternoon at my house. On sunday I cooked banana bread while we waited for the group members to show up. We agreed to meet at my house because they felt more comfortable and less exposed about their HIV status. Eventually about 6 people showed up. I was so excited, Detrik clearly disappointed about his groups comittment. We ate the top half of the banana bread (while one of the women insisted on scraping off the burnt bottom and eating that...) while discussing the group, why they meet, what they do, where and when they meet, and what they want help doing or what they need. It took a few hours but I learned a lot about those members and we agreed to start doing basic HIV/AIDS education for the group members. Detrik joined a national organization that hosts conferences about twice a year and he agreed to teach what he's learned at those. Our next meeting is this coming sunday. I feels good to feel like I have a bit of a purpose other than just practicing swahili and fetching water, but I plan on starting slow and doing a little at a time at first while we're still re-organizing. The following day I had my first meeting with the villagers. I'm following a plan given to us by Peace Corps to help learn about the village and get villagers to think about their resources, daily activities, and what their needs might be. The first meeting is a community mapping meeting where we simply draw a map of the community. Sounds simple huh? Well the meeting was set to start at 9am, so about 11am right before I'm about to lose it because not a single person has showed up yet, villagers started trickling over. We waited a few more minutes to start, but by about noon there were well over 100 people there. My baba helped me explain the purpose of the meeting and how we were going to split into two groups, men and women, to draw the maps. I asked them to include things such as the school, shops, water pumps, churches, etc, and handed out a piece of flipchart paper and markers to each group. Both groups started by drawing sketched in the dirt, then started practicing on smaller paper. There were too many people for everyone to participate, but it was great to see people get involved discussing and learning about their own village. After almost 4 hours of sketching, practice maps, and a final draft on flipchart paper, both groups were done. I asked one man and one woman to present their maps, which were both very different from each other. We then discussed the differences and similarities between the maps and why that might be. The women's map was much less detailed and didn't include the local bars that the men's map did. People said they thought this was because the women spend a lot of their time in the home, taking care of the children and working around the house while the men are out wondering around and seeing more of the village. This among other discussion topics were so exciting for me because it got the villagers to start talking about the gender differences between the men and women in the village. The next few meeting I have will build more on gender differences. At the end of the meeting I asked what people learned from this activity, and hands shot up, talking about how they learned how to draw a map, learned some history of the village and where a few things were that they had heard about but had never visited. I was so excited that it seemed like this activity was worthwhile, and that the villagers were participating and taking it seriously. Everyone has been so supportive and excited to help me, I truly feel luck to live, work, and do what I can to help the people that live here. Here are a few pictures from the mapping meeting... In the next few weeks I look forward to another HIV group meeting where Detrik starts teaching, and my second village meeting. Also still trying to settle into my house that feels like a cement box, and working on my swahili...keep the emails and letters coming, I love hearing about what you are all up to!
Well it has been a long time since you all last heard from me and I'm oh so sorry. Everytime I sat down to write a blog post I didn't even know where to start, so I just didn't. ha. But now I swear to you my faithful followers that I will do better! It's been about 5 weeks now since my welcoming party on August 21st. I've been settling into my new life slowly but surely - setting up my house, eating with neighbors, visiting the primary and secondary schools, practicing my new language and hopelessly searching for anyone who speaks english (no such luck yet...), hanging out with the nurses at the clinic, and my favorite pasttime: watching regular soccer games in the center of my village. I love my village. It's on the main road to Songea, and only about an hour or two outside of town. After debarking from the daladala (amazing van that can somehow hold and infinate amount of people, I counted almost 40 in one last weekend, with actual seats for about 15) in Ngadinda, you see the pool table and duka la dawa (medicine shop) to the right, and follow the main path back towards the village center. One thing I like about my village is how centralized it seems. After following the path lined with homes back about 5 minutes you see the primary school on the right and the health clinic on the left. My house is just behind the clinic and was actually built for the doctor, but they were transfered out of the village years ago and now there isn't a doctor. A good amount of my villagers actually think I'm the doctor, which I can see how they would get that idea, but has led to a few very confusing conversations in which I've been asked to deliver babies or treat a child's burns. Anyways, following the main path still, just after the clinic and school there are two main water pumps, the village leaders "offices", followed by the regulation sized football field and a very german style catholic church. There are about 3,000 people in the village, and the houses spread far, for almost 3 km in every direction from this central part. The village is split into 8 neighborhood/settlements, and I'm working on visiting all of them by the end of the month, 3 down so far. So my first week in the village was a lot of meeting neighbors, figuring out how to get water, what food is available in my village, and plenty of "what in the world am I doing here??". My VEO (village executive officer, aka Mama Mango) and her husband have taken me under their wing and wouldn't let a day go buy without feeding me massive amounts of ugali (corn flour stirred aggressively into boiling water - google it) and trying to figure out why I keep refusing meat? hmm maybe it's because Tanzanians like eating fat and sucking on bones? They still don't understand and I think they believe everyone in america doesn't eat meat. Sorry about that one. I did my best to explain! There isn't a great variety of food available in my village. Mostly rice, beans, ugali flour, cassava, some tomatoes and small onions. I can also get eggs and little candies at the duka (shop). In town (Songea) I can get carrots, green peppers, spices, apples, oranges, and the occassional avocado which makes me extremely happy. There are mango trees everywhere in my village and word on the dirt path says they start to show up around december. My Swahili is coming along, it's hard to tell if I'm making progress, but I'm learning new words every day. I carry around a little notebook and my dictionary with me everywhere, looking up and writing down vocabulary and making flashcards (that I haven't actually used yet, but I do make them!) Sometimes I shock myself when whole sentaces come out and the person on the other end actually understands. Those are very happy moments. Like I said, I have yet to find anyone in my village who speaks English, which can lead to very long, exhausing, and sometimes frustrating days of piecing together conversations. There are a few people who know some English vocabulary, and one guy whose english is about like my swahili, so he helped me at a meeting last week. There are a few teachers at the secondary school who speak beautiful english, but it's about 4 kilometers outside my village and they all live at the secondary school. I get along with a few of those teachers really well and am excited to work with them (eventually) teaching life skills at the school. I can't wait for the day where this lovely language flows effortlessly out of me, but until then I'm stickin with the people who speak slow and have the patience to watch me look up words. So what's a day in the life of Alli in a rural african village look like at this point? Well I'll tell you. The primary school bell rings every half hour starting at 6:30 am which is the most obnoxious alarm clock. Wait, I take that back. The roosters are the worst alarm clock. At least the bell is predictable. I usually roll out of bed around 8 and light the coals to boil water for oatmeal and tea. If i'm not interupted by the swarms of students running by my house, I can usually manage to hide in my house and read until around 10am. Then I wander out waiting for a neighbor, mama mango, or one of the nurses to invite me to chai. I think it's a good way for me to get out of my house, socialize with people, and get chai usually accompanied by boiled cassava, sweet potatoes, or andazi (kind of like a plain donught maybe?). I wander around some more, greeting people with the plethera of greetings this culture employs, maybe hang out at the pool table next to the road, or sit at the mghawa (cafe) and help my (only) friend cook. Then sometimes she feeds me, or I go home to cook rice and beans followed usually by a nap. After my brain has recovered from a morning of swahili, I venture back out to meet more people and just try to stay busy. My Baba (my african daddy) has been taking me to visit different "neighborhoods" in the village and introducing me to people. He has been so helpful in helping me adjust and get to know my surroundings, making me feel at home, telling me who certain people are, and making me laugh. He is an amazing man, he speaks such great swahili with me, is patient, and is clearly respected in the village yet is very humble. My daddy away from home (but no replacement dad, don't worry:)) My villagers have caught on to how much I love watching the village soccer league and come to get me if there is ever a game, or even a practice. My VEO sets up a chair for me in front of her house so I have a front row seat. At the very beginning it was actally a great way for me to get out of hiding in my house and be seen by my villagers without having to talk a whole lot which I was fine with by the end of the day. More recently I've been spending more evening time at home, cooking or reading, and more time during the day out of my house getting to know people. At night I also use my charcoal jiko (stove) to heat up water for a bucket bath (which should probably be happening more frequently than it does...) and am dead asleep by 9pm if I can. I would like to close this entry with a few things that I love about Tanzania so far: the endless amusement second hand t-shirts from America bring me, one of my favorites thus far has been a purple taco bell uniform. Also, laughing. I know they are mostly laughing at me, but it helps that I'm also good at laughing at me. I am well aware that carrying a 20liter bucket of water on my head is hilarious (and no fun at all) and gladly make light of it by stopping to do a little jig while walking past groups of women peeing themselves with laughter. So three and a half months down, and a long ways to go, but I'm starting to feel more comfortable in my village and am excited to start my first meetings this week. Although I absolutely have days where I consider going home just because I could get ice cubes there, at the end of the day (well, most of them) I'm feeling good about being here. Until next time, look out for rats falling from the ceiling as you squat on the choo, those things are rutheless...
Saturday, August 28, 2010
a few more pictures...this is a group shot from swearing in, my first peek of my house a few weeks ago when i was shadowing amanda (lives in the neighboring village), me and amanda, and my welcoming party last saturday in my village...
So this is the only way i can figure out how to post pictures right now because they won't upload to facebook.... they are in no particular order, i apologize for that, but they are from training, homestay, swearing in ceremony, and of some of my new friends!
This morning I had to say goodbye to my second family in two months. Finished with training meant finished with homestay and goodbye to the Masawe family. I never thought I would become so attached to them, saying goodbye was not easy.
Now I(we all) are in Dar es Salaam for a few days in order to swear in as official Peace Corps volunteers. I'll move to my village after that (I should get there on Saturday if everything goes as planned...) and then I'll be on my own to start working. Well actually our job for the first three months is basically to survive. Get to know our village and villagers, what the needs of the village are, be able to cook my own food, fix my own water, and hopefully pick up a lot of Kiswahili as I will be without any english speakers. Sounds fun right? Well we'll see. I'm sure I'll have a lot to update on in a few weeks! I'm so excited to get started in my village and see what I can really do!
Oh, and here's a picture of the latest haricut that my baba (dad) gave me. He was trying to help and went a little short, so we had to take more off than expected. I just let him have at it (I actually didn't have much of a choice, he was so excited and wanted to help so bad, I mean, it was pretty funny.) I'm thinking of going with a faux-hawk from here...
This is quite the task. Sum up my first six and a half weeks living in Africa in a blog. But I am able to handle just about anything at this point so here goes....
We are still in training right now. Currently I am shadowing a Peace Corps volunteer who has been in country for a year in order to get an idea of what it’s like to be a PCV and meet other volunteers. It's been such a nice break from training and I got the special treat of shadowing in the village next to the village I'll be living in for the next 2 years! My lovely neighbor-to-be Amanda is hosting a few of us at her beautiful house showing us around her village, teaching us how to cook such great food with local ingredients and giving us tips about village life in the Peace Corps. We’ve also been hanging out with a few other Peace Corps Volunteers who live in the region and I’m so excited to live here and work (and play) with these wonderful people! Yay for Kelly, Amanda, Erica, Jack, and Bill!
So the past 6 weeks we've been living in the Muheza district near the city of Tanga. It's in northeastern Tanzania - check it out on a map. We're split into small groups called Community Based Training(CBT) groups. There are 5 people in my group and we live a village called Bagamoyo. The first few weeks of training we met every day in a room of one of the houses and learned Kiswahili all day. The amount we learned in 3 weeks was incredible and equivalent to a six month language course, which was so helpful but no match for the regular communication breakdowns and language barriers. For the past few weeks we've been meeting together as a whole training class (there are 40 of us!) and having technical training about what we are going to be doing at our sites. For most of our technical sessions they split us into health and environment groups. As health volunteers we've been learning about HIV/AIDS, Malaria, teaching primary health care, nutrition, water borne diseases, health care in Tanzania, and so so much more. There is so much to learn about the language, culture, and our technical tasks that 9 weeks is no where near enough time to figure out what in the world we're supposed to do. But the goal is not to teach us everything, but to give us an idea of where to start. As health and environment volunteers we don't have structure like the education volunteers teaching in the schools everyday, but our job is to assess what the village needs and wants are and create projects that help villagers help themselves. Some health volunteers work with womens groups creating income generating projects such as making soap, bags, or starting small businesses. Other volunteers have created HIV/AIDS support groups, or are working with Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVCS) and out of school youth. There is so much flexibility in what we can do, and it all varies from village to village depending on what the needs of the village are.
But that's enough about the unpredictible future, how about some more info on what's happening now...
For training like I said, I'm living in the village of Bagamoyo with the Masawe family. I have a Mama, Baba (dad), two Kaka (brothers), and one Dada (sister). Baba's name is Prosper (age 40 something), Mama is Majube (age maybe 40?), my Kakas are Matei (age 2) and Karoli (age 7), and my dada is Rizeiki (age 11). I also have a wonderfully entertaining Bibi (grama, age unknown but definitely up there) who is always apologizing to me for some reason and who I taught how to play frisbee. It was a rough start, as you can imagine it would be moving into a family's house who speaks a completely different language with a very different way of life. We worked it out, I am able to communicate a little bit better now and they know me know so everything is great.
Our daily routine consists of me waking up at approximately 6am when Martinez my bat enters the room. He flaps around eating mosquitos and is a very effective alarm clock. After he settles in his corner and I feel it safe to exit my mosquito net without being attacked, I walk around my house greeting my family (greetings are very important in Tanzania culture, sometimes greetings alone can take up 5 minutes per person and consist of a Shikamoo given to everyone who is older than you which means “I take your feet”, how did you wake, how did you sleep, whats the news, how is your morning, how is your farm, how is your house, how is your family, and so on. Many classes were devoted solely to greetings...). After the greetings my mama gives me warm water to take a bucket bath with. I am now able to bathe with less than 10 liters of water each time, for some reason I am required to bathe twice a day and when you do the math it ends up being about a 400% increase from how many times I bathed in the states. So after my morning bucket bath I sweep my room and have chai with my mama. She makes me tea every morning along with 2 chapati (kind of like flatbread) or Mandazi (fried bread triangles). I head out around 730 picking up Lauren who lives closest to me and we meet up with Tala, Katie, and Kenzie to either have class in Bagamoyo or go to MATI where all of the groups come together for those technical sessions. After school we head back to Bagamoyo and either study or take walks to our secret hide out behind the church. I usually go back to my house around 630, hang out with my family or study. Most recently a coloring group has started in the evenings due to the wonderful gift of markers my family sent me. There are about 10 kids who sit on our front porch drawing pictures of houses, cars, people, tracing their hands, flowers, or drawing pretend sunflower tattoos on their arms and/or legs. Oops. My mama gives me more water to take another bucket bath, we eat around 8, watch the moon for a while because I continue to freak out about how beautiful it is every night, and I go to bed tucking myself inside my net and blowing out my lantern.
Its amazing the things that are normal and a part of my everyday life. From using a choo (squat toilet) and learning to shine my lantern into the choo at night to scare away the cockroaches before I enter, to having a pet bat, boiling water to drink, eating rice and beans twice a day, spending time with amazing Tanzanians who are wonderful, peaceful, welcoming, and happy despite living in poverty day in and day out, and watching the sun rise and set every day. I taught my dada how to blow kisses and we blow each other kisses all the time. My kaka (matei, the 2 year old) has a really big problem with my cat climbing into my lap and will repeatedly remove her by her head and throw her on the ground, only to have her crawl back on my lap and the cycle begins again sometimes lasting for 30 minutes. It’s hilarious.
Being immersed into a culture so different from ours has and will continue to be an amazing experience. Learning a new language, beautiful traditions, distinct gender roles, how to dress and interact with people, how to use local resources, and what not to do when the village guards are training are only a few of the things I’m starting to figure out.
After we return from shadowing we have a few more days in our homestays before we say goodbye to them, take our final oral proficiency test and swear in as Peace Corps Volunteers on August 19th. After that we are sent all over Tanzania to our villages and begin our two year service at our sites.
We got our sites last week, I am placed in the Rumuva District in the southern highlands. The closest larger city is called Songea my village is called Ngadinda which is just north of Songea and about 10km from Amanda’s village. I was able to get a sneak peak of my site yesterday since I’m shadowing at Amanda’s (I’m the only volunteer who got to shadow near their siteJ). We visited my house which is beautiful and walked around the village a little bit. The health clinic is basically in my front yard, the primary school is around the corner from that, and just beyond the primary school is a huge soccer field and really nice church. I met a few of the village officials, and it took a ton of pressure and stress off of that initial drop at my site. I am so excited to settle down there in a few weeks and start to figure out where I fit in to life in Ngadinda.
I will post a new address when I get settled, until then hold off on all of those letters and packages. I will also update a list of things I might need or want from the states. Getting mail is something that might end up keeping me sane, so please don’t hesitate to send some love!
Hope you enjoy these few pictures of my life at home in Bagamoyo...A family picture, me with my dada and two kakas, the loves of my life Sarah and Rebecca, and my coloring group...(the video won't load, sorry!)
Love you all!
The Masawe Family!
Me and rizeiki, matei, and karoli
This is my coloring group...we're still learning how to use markers....
Me (looking very native) and Rebecca sitting and Sarah standing in a ridiculous fashion behind us. (at MATI)
Me with the neighbor kids, practicing taking pictures... and yes, my friend Sativa cut my hair!
After 9 months of anticipation, weeks of goodbyes, and 18 hours on a plane, I finally made it to Peace Corps Tanzania. Our staging event was in Philadelphia where we went over some general expectations and rules about Peace Corps. It was nice to be with the whole group to travel over here, we all learned that we had very similar anxieties and it was good to be with a group who was going through the same things. There are 41 total people in our group - 25 health volunteers and 16 environment volunteers.
We got into Dar es Salaam in the evening of June 16th, were herded into buses and headed for the Msimbazi center. It's basically a hostel/college run by nuns who have crazy parties on saturday and sunday nights. We started sessions (classes) right away on Thursday morning. Our classes are pretty general at this point, focusing on Tanzanian culture, Peace Corps goals and expectations, some Kiswahili lessons, safety and security, what to expect at homestay, and introductions of our training staff. There are 29 PC Tanzania staff, and only 4 of them are American. It's so great to be learning from Tanzanians who are excited to have us here and want to help us succeed. If I've learned one thing so far (and it's not much swahili), I've learned that Tanzanians are the most kind, welcoming, funny people I've ever met. They mentioned to us in one of our sessions that although the police don't have a strong presence or role in dealing with crime or things of that nature, that Tanzanians will do anything they can to protect us and take care of us if we integrate well into their community. This mostly means learning the language (or at least enough to partake in the 5 minute initial greeting of a collegue, friend or family member) and being culturally appropriate with dress and social norms. Our sessions so far have been great in helping us get a start on understanding these things.
On wednesday we move 5 hours north to the town of Muheza where we'll spend 9 weeks in Community Based Training. We are divided into small groups, there are 5 girls in my group, and we'll be living in the same village right outside the main town for the duration of training. We'll each be living with a Tanzanian family who has volunteered to take us into their home as one of their children. Our mama's and baba's will teach us to cook, do laundry, chores, kiswahili and other culture norms among many other things I'm sure. From what I've heard it is extremely awkward for a good amount of the time, as we're trying to communicate and understand each other. I've also learned that Tanzanians like to laugh at just about anything we do, so at least there's a lot of humor going on because it's going to be ridiculous. I'm really excited about homestay and can't wait to meet my family - I just hope my Kiswahili really picks up or we could have some seriously long days of staring at each other.
The schedule during training consists of classes with our Language/Culture Facilitators during the day in our village, monday through thursday, and whole group sessions on fridays. I'm not exactly sure what the main town of Muheza is like or how often we go into town, but I'm hoping to get a cell phone within the next couple of weeks. It sounds like our internet access will be minimal during training, but I'll update when I can.
I'm having such an amazing time here so far with these phenominal people in AFRICA! There are people from all over the country who come with such diverse experiences and backgrounds. We were talking tonight how we can't believe it was only a week ago that we all met, everyone is great and we get along so well.
Side notes:
- I learned how to take a shower using only 5 liters of water in a bucket.
- I have 21 mosquite bites, all from the knees down.
-If you're thinking about sending packages or love notes, we can recieve mail here in Dar for the next 6 months;
Alli Jones
US Peace Corps
PO Box 9123
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Some mailing tips we've received include writing "school supplies," "Religious Materials" or "jesus loves you", etc on the outside of a package to scare away customs agents from rummaging through stuff. They also said that if you're sending something that they might want to keep, to use creative packaging like hiding it in a tampon box or somthing of that nature. Please send me things if you can - I would love to get mail especially with such limited access to communicating with you guys. Letters would be great:)
Well I'm going to climb under my mosquito net and get some sleep...
Packing list. Here's what I brought with me. Requirements: 2 checked bags under 80 lbs total, 1 carry on - not impossible.
In the 50+10 Deuter backpack:
Sleeping bag
Top/flat sheet
Headlamp
Raincoat
Tampons
1 thin fleece
1 nike half-zip
1 long sleeved shirt
6 "blouses" (whatever that means)
3 t-shirts
3 tank tops (recommendation: get the ones that have the bra on the inside to hold money for security purposes)
1 pair jeans
2 shorts to sleep in
4 skirts (mid-calf/ankle length to be culturally appropriate)
2 pairs loose/baggy capris (1 is quick-dry material)
2 long (loose fitting) pants (wish I would have brought leggings to wear under my Kanga)
10 undies, 6 pairs/socks
ihome portable speakers for ipod
In the small duffel bag:
4 books
bike helmet with flames on it (you can get kicked out if you're caught riding a bike without one: no joke)
presents for host family (puzzle, braclets, cheap girly hair stuff, coloring pads, crayons: I'm planning on getting a Kanga for my host mama and a knife for my host baba)
78 kashi granola bars (thanks kath)
quick dry travel towel
toiletries: toothbrush, toothpaste, 3 bars soap, deoderant, sunscreen, floss, q-tips, nail clippers, tweezers, advil, hydrocortozone cream that doesn't work, 1 shampoo,small bottle of all purpose laundry soap, dish detergent (good for washing essential items before going to homestay)
diva cup (good alternative to tampons)
batteries
small alarm clock
small cutting board, skillet, kitchen knife
small notebooks (wish I would have brought flashcards)
lots of pictures of friends & family
pens, sharpies (wish I would have brought markers and highlighters)
bug spray that doesn't work
shoes: chacos, rainbow, toms, running shoes (for all of the running I do)
outlet converter (here they have both British and Europe outlets)
leatherman multitool
In the Mountainsmith carry on:
Netbook (probably about half of our group brought computers, but I'm glad I did)
Camera
journal
book
playing cards, uno, skip-bo
ipod
nalgene
travel pillow strapped to the outside thanks to Jeff's bungee cords
swahili dictionary
What i've bought here so far:
larger spiral notebook
peanut butter
3 Kangas (large pieces of fabric used as skirts or can be turned into dress/shirt/anything)
lock for luggage
more q-tips
toilet paper
I cannot believe it all fit and I was way under weight limit.
Also, PC gave us a ridiculous first aid kit including anything medically you could ever imagine needing (plus mosquito netting.) They also took us into the market on our 4th day here to get things in case we had run out or forgot something important. I was pretty proud of the packing job, couldn't have done it without input from other Peace Corps blogs and tips from family and friends who had traveled to africa, thanks!
