Today in Tanzania

Today in Tanzania, Carla and I are preparing to go back to Kibakwe after a bit of online time and some fruit and vegetable shopping at the soko(market). Angus has been kind enough to let us use the computers at the teacher's college for a short time this morning. I'd like to take this opportunity to refer all of you to Carla's blog www.carlaintanzania.blogspot.com if you don't already have it. I know, it's long overdue and I apologize for not linking it earlier. Carla is just so much better at documenting our daily activities than I am. For example, check out the past few days for the story of the five a.m. dance party in Kibakwe that we passed on our walk to the bus stand. I try to cover posting the pictures and Carla is very good at detailing the nuts and bolts of living here. Speaking of pictures, I have some new ones to post today. They show what we've been working on for the past couple of weeks at our house in Kibakwe. The young men in the pictures are our helpers Zawadi aka Zizo (the taller of the two) and Gilbert aka Man G. Within the first couple of weeks they started showing up asking us if we needed any help with cleaning or washing clothes or anything and so we decided to try it out for a while. So far, they've been great, helping out with whatever we need and just hanging out with us practicing their English and letting us practice our Kiswahili. You'll notice in one of the pictures that there's some freshly poorly laid tile in our bafu(shower). This is an example of how we're trying to make our house a home here in Tanzania. I've never laid tile before and my resources were limited - no tile adhesive, only cement, no bubble level, no grout, and no previous experience laying tile. This being said, I'm trying to make the bathroom a little more familiar. Word of advice: if you have any cuts on your hands do not mix cement without wearing gloves. I did this and the lime content of the cement aggravated my wounds so badly that I thought I had serious chemical burns. Everything is fine now and my sores are healing. I hope these pictures give everyone a little glimpse of how it is to be living large in the village. What we have is not a typical Tanzanian domicile.

Bust Out the Turd Polish

“If we can fix up this house, there isn’t any house back in the U.S. that we can’t fix up.” These were the words Carla used to express how much work is needed to create a comfortable living environment here in Kibakwe. Of course, the standards in the village in Tanzania are not as high as in other countries as you will see from subsequent pictures of our "nyumbani."

A Word on Tanzanian Mob Justice

Early on in training, we had heard that wezi (thieves) were not tolerated by the Tanzanian public and that we should think twice about yelling, “Mwizi” (Thief (singular)) if someone steals something of ours. When a thief is run down my an angry mob he will be beaten, stoned, hacked with mapanga (machetes), burned, and sometimes, if the authorities do not arrive in time or a wave of sensibility comes over the crowd, killed by any of the aforementioned methods. We recently saw the aftermath of this type of village justice right in our front courtyard. Carla and I were doing work around the house and Gilbert and Zawadi were sweeping the yard when a group of men, one covered in blood with severe gashes about his head, walked through our courtyard on their way to the clinic which is about 300 meters behind our house. I caught a glimpse of this through the spaces in our courtyard wall and Carla was called by Gilbert and Zawadi to come outside to see the mwizi being escorted to the hospital. Needless to say, Carla was abhorred by what she saw. To the boys, this was nothing out of the ordinary. "How else do you deal with someone who feels that it is acceptable to steal a harvest of three sacks of peanuts from a man who has worked hard to farm them?" In the villages, this attitude is common and nobody has a better solution.

A Word on theTanzanian Culture of Sympathy

“Pole.” This phrase is uttered, literally, millions of times every day in Tanzania. It means, “Sorry.” However, the gravity that this phrase carries is dependent upon the context, but the word stays the same, sometimes followed by “sana” (very). Here are some examples:

Your goat ran away? Pole.

Your luggage was stolen? Pole.

You dropped something and it made a loud noise? Pole.

You have a touch of malaria? Pole.

Your infant child died? Pole sana.

I was told by a current PCV that the essential meaning of the phrase is, “It sucks to be you.” This is not to say that every time this phrase is said, it’s completely insincere, but nine times out of ten it’s just to fill the silence.

A Word on Tanzanian Food

Common to the Tanzanian diet are cooked rice(wali) or rice cooked in coconut milk(ubwabwa), ugali(a stiff corn flour porridge similar to polenta or modeling clay), kidney beans(maharage), tomatoes(nyanya), onions(vitunguu), cabbage(kabichi), peas(njegere), okra(bamia), potatoes(viazi), sweet potatoes(viazi vitamu), local spinach(mchicha), fish(samaki), beef(nyama ya ng’ombe), chicken(nyama ya kuku), goat(nyama ya mbuzi), and on occasion pork(nyama ya nguruwe or kiti moto). Some of the traditional foods include chapati(similar to tortilla, flatbread, or Indian naan), sambusa(triangular pastry filled with meat or potatoes similar to samosas), mandazi(donut-holes), bagia(savory deep-fried snack similar to hushpuppies), and vitumbua(oil-soaked sponge-like rice fritter). Bagia is our favorite, closely followed by sambusa and mandazi. Fortunately or unfortunately, bagia are not available in Kibakwe. However, our friend Mathayo in Mpwapwa has offered to periodically send us bagia via the Kimambo Company bus that travels between Mpwapwa and Kibakwe every day. Also available in our village is a dish called “chipsi mayai” which is essentially french fries and eggs. It's potato wedges fried and then eggs are added and fried till done and you put salt and hot sauce on it and it's delicious! If I'm feeling especially good about the meat in the village that day, I'll order “nyama choma,” too which is literally “meat roasted.” Imagine beef or goat shishkabobs without the skewers or things other than meat. I cannot continue on this trajectory for obvious health reasons, but on occasion it is quite satisfying. I never thought I'd be in a place where I would look forward to fried potatoes and eggs and charred meat.

During homestay, there was always rice, beans, spinach, cabbage, and ugali on the table. On occasion there was beef, fish, okra, sambusa, and chapati. And we always ate with our hands. Dinner would be served when Mama would say, “Karibuni chakula” (You(plural) are welcome to food), and at the end of dinner we would say, “Nimeshiba. Asante kwa chakula, Mama” (I am full. Thank you for the food, Mama). I feel very fortunate that we got such good food during homestay. Many of our friends would complain each week about how they only got rice and beans or rice and mchicha.

Now that we are in the village, we're cooking for ourselves and even though we're using the locally available ingredients, we're not always cooking Tanzanian food. I like to think of it as a type of “fusion” cooking – Tanzanian, American, and California Cuisine – TanzAmCaliCu is what I like to call it. Carla has continued to be a very inventive and resourceful chef and baker even with limited means and resources. Pasta and popcorn, I have discovered here in Tanzania, are my two most crucial comfort foods. Both of these foods are reminders of childhood – pasta because it's what we ate at my house at least once a week if not three times a week, and popcorn because of my memories of my Mom making three to five batches of popcorn at a time in the stir popper, dumping it all into a disposable aluminum roasting tray, salting it, and storing it inside the oven so it would “keep” longer. On those really bad days where I hate being here, and I don't want to speak the language or leave the house, I know that a batch of pasta or popcorn will make everything better.

Bringing Everyone Up To Date

I decided to use this blog entry to summarize what our first ten weeks of training were like. First of all, we arrived at night in Dar es Salaam and went straight to the hostel. Basically the first week in country was spent traveling from compound to compound. First, the hostel, then Peace Corps HQ Dar, then MATI Ilonga (the Kilosa training compound), and finally homestay which was still somewhat insular. Being dropped off by the Peace Corps car at Mama Chacha’s house in Kilosa was one of the strangest and most awkward feelings I’ve ever experienced, but looking back on that house in Kilosa, I miss the comfort of familiarity. With us speaking almost no Kiswahili and Mama Chacha refusing to speak any English, we communicated through contextual pantomime and our small photo albums from home. We were told by other PCVs(Peace Corps Volunteers) that this is a great icebreaker, not to mention that the pictures do all of the talking. The biggest adjustment we made to the Tanzanian way of life when we were at homestay was in the form of dinnertime. In the U.S. we usually ate dinner around 5 or 6 p.m. Here, most people don’t eat until at least 8 or 9, and there were many times we wouldn’t eat until 9:30 or 10:00 or saa tatu na nusu au saa nne (3:30 or 4:00 Kiswahili time). Don’t ask me why, but the Tanzanians thought that Western time was too confusing, so they changed it by six hours. Oh, did I mention that all of the clocks and watches in the country still show Western time, which means that Tanzanians are constantly doing the math in their heads.

For ten weeks our routine was to start language classes at 8:00 a.m. - Carla’s classroom was right in the courtyard of our homestay house and mine was a 5-10 minute bike ride away in Manzese-B. This was our life Monday through Friday. Saturdays were spent at MATI in nearby Ilonga where we were presented with loads of technical and bureaucratic information by Peace Corps personnel. Sundays were our day of rest, which most of spent doing laundry…outside…by hand…in buckets. Saturdays were great only for the fact that we were able to reconnect with our fellow trainees whom we would not have seen otherwise. Our group of 25 was divided into five CBTs(Community Based Training modules): Manzese-A(Carla’s), Manzese-B(mine), Mbumi, Magomeni, and Msalambani. Each CBT has one LCF(Language and Culture Facilitator) who lives in the same village as his/her students, and after five weeks, they rotate to different CBTs. The breakdown of CBTs, LCFs, and PCTs(Peace Corps Trainees) was as follows:

Manzese-A: Jumapili/Petronilla(LCFs) Carla, Jerusha, Caitlyn(Pendo), Linda, Rashad

Manzese-B: Paul/Peter/Vicki/Petronilla/Immanuel (LCFs) Tony, Steve, Keenan, Lacey, Bibi Jan

Mbumi: Petronilla/Jumapili(LCFs) Mike, Nancy, Saraben, Kate, Carolyn

Magomeni: Peter/Vivian aka Big Boy(LCFs) DeeDee, Wyatt, Stephanie, Jimmy, Mick

Msalambani: Vivian aka Big Boy/Paul(LCFs) Jess, Charlie, Amy, Ben, Mannis

None of the CBTs were more than a one hour bike ride away from another. Over ten weeks we all became very close, but especially so within our respective CBTs.

Each week during training, a current PCV would come to Kilosa to be our PCV of the Week and they would hang out with us, come to our CBTs, organize tech sessions, and give us some idea of what to expect when we got to site. Mostly they were around to encourage us through training and to give PC administration an idea of where we would best be placed.

By the end of the ten weeks of training, we were all ready to be done with the rigorous schedule and to be set free in a sense and we were all anxious to know where we'd be living for the next two years. Of course, we'd miss our homestay families and farewells are always difficult, but being American, we were missing our privacy, too.

I will probably write more on the subject of training, homestay, and the swearing-in ceremony as time goes by and I remember details worth mentioning. This will need to suffice for now.

Tunazoea mazingira - We are controlling our environment

Over the past week, we have seen President Kikwete speak in Mpwapwa, cemented our tiny dirt courtyard, and visited with our nearest PC neighbor Ben, who comes to Kibakwe regularly to buy supplies. As you can see in the photos, a presidential visit in Tanzania is much different than one in the U.S. This took place on the soccer field outside of the primary school in Mpwapwa and he spoke for about two hours, mostly about the importance of building schools.



When we returned to Kibakwe, the work began on our patio. First, dirt was dug and carried bucket by bucket from the field across from our house to grade the base for the cement. Then, cement, sand, and rocks were mixed in a pile outside our courtyard and carried in bucket by bucket ( this is how most work is done in Tanzania) and finished. The entire process took about three days - a landspeed record for a Tanzanian fundi (caraftsmen). There was only one day of lag time between grading and cementing.

As you can see, Carla and I decided to put our mark on our home in Kibakwe.

Our closest PC neighbor Ben, who lives in Kingiti 11km away, regularly rides his bike to Kibakwe to buy supplies and to visit with the other Wazungu (white people). The picture above shows how Ben is able to haul sundries back to his village using the available resources. Keep in mind that the road between our villages is not tarmac, but dirt. So imagine taking this load on an American style mountain bike trail and you get the idea.
We just bought a ton of supplies in Mpwapwa yesterday, so the next few weeks will be filled with tiling the bafu (shower/bathroom), painting, planning and building the vegetable garden, and furnishing our house. We spent the night at our friend Angus's house - he's a VSO volunteer from England who teaches computer technology at the teacher's college in Mpwapwa. If you'd like to know more about Angus, visit: www.angusinafrica.co.uk . Our friend Matayo, who has a stall in the market here, has been such a great help to us, and to all of the volunteers in the region. Yesterday he went with us from duka (shop) to duka to buy tiles and paint and furniture and cushions and helped us tremendously. Our friends Lisa and Russ (PC education volunteers who live in Mpwapwa) are in Dar es Salaam and Morogoro for a couple of weeks working with the new education volunteers and they're presence here is missed. To learn more visit: http://lisaintanzaniapcv.blogspot.com

Well, that's all I have for right now. I'll try to post again before we leave for Kibakwe tomorrow. Also, I will try to post many pictures on my Shutterfly site. Tutaonana baadaye (We will see each other later).

Our New Home

I'm taking the opportunity of uninterrupted internet service to publish two posts in the same day! I wanted to show all of you back home what a typical Tanzanian house looks like. Keep in mind that this is on the higher end of the economic spectrum in the villages. We have a long way to go before we can really call this home, but we're doing what we can with what is available.

Since My Last Post...

Since my last post back in July, we have finished "shadowed" with current Peace Corps volunteers, Russ and Lisa in Mpwapwa in the Dodoma region, finished training, received our site announcement, bid farewell to our homestay family, celebrated one last time with our training group, and moved into a new house in a new region. We are currently setting up our house in the town of Kibakwe, in the Mpwapwa district, in the Dodoma region. The climate is similar to high desert in the US - Colorado or New Mexico - very dry, dusty, and windy. Over the next several posts, I will attempt to convey what it has been like living here for the past two months. We'll have access to the internet about once or twice a month in Mpwapwa town which is about a two hour bus ride or a four hour bike ride from Kibakwe. This first month is going to be very tough because we need to get our house up to a level where we'll be comfortable living in it for two years. The main challenges that face our village are lack of water, low crop yield, lack of knowledge of small animal husbandry, a higher HIV rate than the surrounding area, and alcoholism due to lack of work. For the first three months we are not allowed by Peace Corps to start any projects or write any grants. We are expected to get to know the people of our village and learn the language better. These first few months will be the most challenging since we need to assess our needs and the needs of the village and see what we are able to do here. I've posted a few photos depicting the past couple months to give you an idea of where we've been living. We hope that everyone is doing well back home and we miss all of you! And would it kill you to send us a text every once in a while?