6 months in Tanzania

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