Monday, July 25, 2005

7-24-05














My host family.



Building a chicken coup.


My transportation.



Postmarked: 07-05-05...i think

Hi-A out there. It is now July 1st and I am entering my second weekend with the homestay. The family is great. However the one person in the house I got along with best (a 18 year old girl that I danced with) left today. Turns out she is a niece (I think) and as school is out now she went back home! :( Oh well, now it is the mom and pops then 4 (maybe 5) boys all under the age of 12. (I know the 12 year old - a great kid - is a nephew but I don't know if he goes home when his school is over) And then there is a girl that is 15 and I honestly don't know her place. She is either a daughter, Niece or possibly house girl.

As you might be able to tell from my ambiguity of the family, the Swahili is still coming along. Though since I started lessons 2 weeks ago, I think I am doing well. Unlike Spanish or other languages that I am familiar with, Swahili I have never heard before, so I don't understand the accents. So when learning Spanish I could understand by recognizing words, but I did not know what to say back to people, with Swahili, I know What to say, I just can't understand a single spoken word of it!!

So this week was our first technical training. My group of 5 helped build a chicken coup (banda la kookoo) using only locally gathered materials! So a selected family gathered palm leaves for roofing and bamboo type stalks for framing, a few small trees for support and a door and then gathered a bunch of clay mud from around this area. The Peace Corps provided purchased chicken wire (about $2.00 worth) and some nails and hardware (about $.50 worth) and the labor. We also are buying 20 roosters that we will have to maintain, vaccinate and provide feed for. At the end of the 2 months we will divide most of the roosters to the surrounding village to add diversity to the stock here (the roosters are top quality). I REALLY enjoyed it. I put in 100% of the chicken wire myself and worked on "throwing" the clay and tieing the palm roofing. This next week is COMPOSTING WEEK! We are also starting our vegetable garden!

So, the food: rice and ugali (unflavored malt-o-meal that has been microwaved too long - but good - made from sassava flour) then mohicha - a local spinach type green, and then a meat stew. Good stuff. Well, it is actually fairly cold here tonight and I want to go tuck into the covers...that I will check thoroughly before hopping into!!! I miss and love you all. Kwa heri!

Jane

WRITE ME!!!

Sunday, July 24, 2005

still waiting for the bus

well the post below this i just posted this morning while waiting for the bus and it is now several hours later...and i am still waiting. the bus broke down and is 7 hours behind, but i will get to stay at another hotel tonight! i hope they have electricity and maybe a toilet! ooohhh and i dont want to get my hopes up....but running water maybe...maybe it will be hot. now i should not think that positively!!! i am getting used to bathing from a bucket...my host mom heats up the water first and is actually quite nice sometimes. my first mission when i get to my site is going to be to try to find some container large enough to sit in for a bath...that or maybe i will work on become a contortionist to try to fit into the 5 gallon bucket!!!! i promise i would use the left over water for good things. i am also getting pretty good with the pit latrines, the challenge comes with trying to aim for a small hole while squatting, it takes some practice! ummm....what else, i still reach for the non existent light switch when i walk into my room everynight in the dark. but i am gaining territory on the baking. i made banana bread, brownies, cornbread, chili, cookies, and and a lot of the local foods. the swahili is coming along. i am sure i will be fluent in no time, i might forget how to speak english in the mean time but at least i will have the swahili to fall back on!!!
things i miss from home...i actually miss hearing the news, and i thought i would be happy to be away from it, but i hear that there have been some major bombs in london. my host dad speaks a little english and tells some of the news off the radio. what else...? no body worry about me, i the peace corps is VERY strict when it comes to our safety and health. when i was told that i would never have as good of health care while in the peace corps, they are probably right.
well i am going to go back to the bus stand and let someone else use the computer. i miss everyone!
love
jane

HEY!!!

hey guys...first let me say that shane rocks! the way this works is that i have been sending shane snail mail letters and then he types them up! but today (because our bus broke down) i am at an internet cafe and actually getting to make my first internet post!!!!!!! i am actually trying to send shane some photos to post if it will work! we will see. so there are a couple of letters in route to shane currently so this is a bit out of sync. but i will request to shane to make sure i have watched my language for the sensative reading audience! (sorry kids) so where to start...most recent i am in the southern part of tanzania where it is bitter cold but very green and has lots o mountains! i have been with another volunteer doing a shadow project (where i see how they live and survive type of thing) she is leaving in december and has done some AMAZING stuff...most recently she build a school. she is the contracter and completely in charge. she wrote a grant asked for money and now there is a four building brick walled, cement floor, tin roofed place for children to go to primary school! good stuff. really encouraging. (side note..it is so cold, i cant type!) so i got an opportunity to talk to my program director about where i might be living for the next two years...and although it is COMPLETELY still up in teh air...he lead me to believe i might be going to the area just south east of the serengetti...but who knows. well i better try to post this ang get moving!!!! i love you guys and miss you...send me letters!!!!

Thursday, July 14, 2005

Hello Everyone!!

So I have been in Tanzania for a week now. First let me say, holy shit! When the Peace Corps means intensive training...they mean it. It is 8 weeks (possibly 9) of 14 hour days 7 days a week. The most confusing thing so far is that they tell time differently in Kiswahili. So the day starts at sunrise (6am our time) so the first hour of the day is what we consider 7am. So 1:00 is 7:00. And since sun sets at 6pm it starts over, so 7pm is 1:00. 3:00 in English is 9:00 in Kswahail. So I go to school at 2:00 in the morning (or 8:00 am). good stuff.
What else...training. So training...There are 31 of us left so far (some have dropped out already) and 14 are environmental (mwanamazingra in Kiswahili). We are divided into 3 villages. There are 5 of us total in my village of chanzuru. We have a language/culture teacher that stays in the village w/ us. on Fridays we get back together at the meeting point to see how everyone is coping. Next week we start technical training. I have to pass a compentancy text that includes building a chicken coup, collecting/cleaning my own water, tree nuseries, fish farming and possibly bee keeping. our assignments work like this:
A town/village asks for a volunteer to come to their village. We are sent out individually. Once there, we have to arrange a village meeting to try to determine what needs the village might have that I might be able to help out with. Since we dontknow what the village wea re assigned to might need, we are trained in all areas. Other volunteers I have talked to says it takes about 3-5 months just to get the village accepting of you enough to have the meeting. Just because someone in the village asked for a volunteer doesnt mean that they all want one. So it seems more important to be better at interacting than to have a technical skillset.
The village I am training in is beautiful. we go for long walks in the afternoon (we have to draw a map of the village as our test) to get to know people. We are in a valley with mountains off in the close distance. It is mostly rice, corn, cassava, sesamea seed and sugar cane fields around here. Also there are a lot of mud brick makers. We saw baboons and some large cat of some kind. Here in the village we have these monitor looking lizards that are about 3 feet long, 1-2 feet tall. But other than that, no exciting wildlife. The food is good. Spinach, rice, potatoes, beans, ugali (unflavored over coked malt-o-meal, but tasty)...oh! the best thing ever - sambusa, a samosa/empenada type pastry. Damn tasty... severalof us plan on opening sambusa stands as our assignment project (small business development project!)
I should go off to bed...by the time you guys read this I hope to be fluent in Kiswahali
I love and miss ya'll...
Jane