No Post Today

I JUST DON'T FEEL LIKE WRITING ON MY BLOG TODAY.
The photo above is of me at a Halloween/Going Away party for our friends who are moving to a different region. My impromptu costume was a Catholic 40 days before Easter. That is all. End of transmission.

A Great Big Asante Sana to all of our Rafiki

ASANTE SANA IS KISWAHILI FOR THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

I'd like to send a word of gratitude to all of you who have supported Carla and I over the past four months that we have been in Tanzania with your phone calls, texts, letters, and packages. Especially the packages!
I cannot stress to you the amount of joy that getting a package from the U.S. brings us. Even the smell of the American air trapped in the box makes us homesick. When you are so far away from your friends and family, the smallest things can brighten up your day. So, please keep sending us letters, texts and packages, and keep us in your thoughts.

...and now for the shameless plea:
if you would like to contact us or send us packages or donate toys or educational materials, our mailing address is:

Tony Stonehouse
SLP 36
Kibakwe-Mpwapwa
Tanzania

Here are some tips to keep in mind when shipping packages:

• Try to keep it to 4 lbs. or less
• Padded envelopes seem to have fewer problems than boxes
• Don't claim the actual value on the parcel (it's more likely to be stolen)
• Write NCV (No Commercial Value) on the parcel
• Write "Vifaa Vya Elimu" (Educational Supplies) on the parcel
• Definitely ship using a tracking number (we've already utilized this system to find a missing parcel)
• Salty snacks are only available in the big cities in Tanzania

...and if you would like to call or text, we'd love to hear from you:
Carla: 011 255 782 033 350
Tony: 011 255 784 965 453

What's Goin' On

Over the past 2-3 weeks, we have been trying to make our house a bit more comfortable by painting, hanging things on the wall and mostly trying to create some semblance of the home we left in America. Slowly but surely we are making headway. I've posted several pictures that reflect a bit more of what life is like in Kibakwe. There's a photo of me walking on our main road or barabara kubwa with the bus that we take to Mpwapwa in the background (lime green with a kangaroo on the back). The other pictures are of the path from the main road to our house, women carrying water home from our bomba (water pump), a shot of the soko or market where we buy our vegetables, and a couple of the development of our house.

As you can see, without a fence around our courtyard, all types of livestock find their way into our lives. These goats were just a bit thirsty after a long day of grazing in the African sun. The other animals that frequent our neighborhood are chickens, roosters, guinea fowl, and cows.

The Moose Analogy

Even though we have been at site in Kibakwe for almost two months now, we still don't know everyone in the village nor do they know us. This brings about an interesting situation. Since there is a koki (water tap) right outside of our courtyard, many people - mostly women and children - come here to fetch water. Most everyone is very cordial and familiar with the wazungu(white people) living in the house by the koki, but occasionally there are children who are taken completely by surprise by our mere existence. When they see us, they stare and their jaws drop struck dumb by our presence. We greet them first in Kiswahili,"Habari za leo?" then in the predominant tribal language Kigogo,"Mbukwenyi?" At this point, we realize there's no amount of language that will be able to force comprehension on their part of our presence in their village. I tried to understand this behavior by putting myself in their place and I developed this analogy: Imagine you're walking down the street near your house, you look up, and there's a moose ten feet away on the sidewalk. It's safe to assume that this situation would render most of us not only motionless but speechless as well. Now, imagine the moose greets you in English,"Good day. How are you?" I think it might take us a while to get over the initial shock of a talking moose. In conclusion, Carla and I (and most white development workers in rural Tanzania), are talking moose.

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.