Monday, August 22, 2005

Mafinga

hello everybody.

i have arrived to my village! it is beautiful. i live on top of a mountain that over looks this valley with a large lake. and of course faces the west so the sun sets just in the valley! behind my home is one of the largest pine plantations in tanzania. it is lined with about 4 rows of eucalyptus, so there is a pleasant smell everytime the wind blows. my house rocks! there are 3 rooms of the same size (maybe 8X 10), concrete floor and white concrete walls. there is a bricked in courtyard and then i have a kitchen, storeroom, shower, and toilet on the otherside of the courtyard. i will send pictures the next time i come to town. about that. so i left my house at 5:45am and made it to town around 9:15am. not too bad in time...but it turned out to be fairly expensive, so it depends on how i can budget things out... as of right now due to some logistics that i still have to work on in town, i will be checking my email about once every 2 weeks. my phone also works in my village. which there is something bizarre in sitting in the middle of africa on the my cell phone. texting has worked with some phones but i have not recieved any from the states. due to battery reasons i will have my phone on from 5pm until 9pm each night...for you guys on the east coast we are 7hrs difference, central 8hrs...and a shoutout to the west coast (stephen, wendy and sommer) 10hrs. so feel free to give me a call!

so i live on the elementry school campus with a lot of teachers nearby. the kids have been getting my water and fire wood. which is nice. the headmaster is really nice and it seems that i will be working mostly with the school. i am the 3rd or 4th volunteer in my village, which makes me wonder what type of projects iwill be working on. as every project that peace corps teaches here has already been done in the community. but for the first 3 months i am jus to observe the community and do a needs assessment. after being there for 3 months i am expected to come up with projects that might help better the liveihood of tthe villagers. i have NO IDEA what this might be...they seems to have alot of past projects still operating, bees, aquaculture, forestry, gardens, animal husbandry etc....i am sure something will come up. the largest problem i see now is that they elementary school has 785 students and 13 teachers. makes for ridiculous class sizes. but that is a problem that is nation wide. there are just not enough teachers here!

what else...sorry for all the typos...they keyboard sticks.... i am off in search of some bread. i love you an dwill post my new address soon!

Friday, August 05, 2005

NEW PHONE!

so hey guys...here is my cell phone number for the next couple of weeks....

011-255-787053192

you might try texting..i am not sure if it works...i does not cost me
much to recieve calls..and i beleive there are website you can buy
cheap minutes to tanzania...but i dont nkow when...