alli and africa: August 2010

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August 2. 2010.

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 19^th. 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!