Sunday, September 18, 2005

a convent, girls empowerment, and garth brooks

hey guys, so just a brief update..oh but before that...if anyone sends me a package, which i think is defined by a box as opposed to the padded envelopes, please pay customs upfront...not because i am so cheap (which i realize i am) but but because the post has the right to open to package to assess the cost of your custom tax if not paid in advance. and since this is done out of your presence, not ALL materials seem to make it to the volunteer. i know if i opened a box and saw a bag of reese's i would take it...sorry but soem things are just to hard to let pass by!

so i just spent the last 5 nights at this great convent. solor powered showers, permaculture farm, and beautiful grounds oh and most importantly CHEESE...all different types! we had this girls empowerment camp. each volunteer takes three students (about 5th grade equivelent) 2 girls and one boy and then we spend 4 days doing trust building, HIV/AIDS lecutres, low rope activites, sing songs, watch movies, eat good food, and meet people from other villages, see electricity, see life outside the village. this is a great conference on many levels. not jsut seeing friendships build or confidence levels rising, or when boys realize they too can carry water, but just to have the space for 4 days of thier life they are worry free children that are allowed to run and play without all the daily responsibilites that are usually such a large burden at thier age. it was great. the kids were amazing, after about 2 days, the shells started to slip off and they became comfortable and the last night they started a singing/druming/dance session that lasted for hours. i don't have the time right now to go into why there is a need for a girls empowerment confernce and do it justice...but expect that rant to come soon. to my neices and nephews...i think it would BLOW YOUR MIND to see how kids here live. especially the girls. thier lives are hard in the villages. and yet they smile.

also i think i have my first "jigger" which is this worm like creature that enters into your feet and lays an egg sac that must be cut open and removed. (not to be confused with the tick like creature common in the states) i am only in day two. i noticed it yesterday that is, and i have been adviced to let it sit for a couple of days to let the sac get larger, which makes it easier to remove. luckily i am going to another volunteers house this week to help her prepare a wedding cake and she will be able to help me remove it. there is slight chance it is not a jigger since my feet are still covered in blistered from being sunburned so much. but i know that it is prime jugger season. oh the joys of africa.

ok well i better head out...got some shopping to do while in the city. i made brownies this past week on my firewook. and they are DARN tasty if i say so myself. i FINALLY got my cook book and think i might spend the week trying to takle making a pizza. i baught some italian sausage (made from rabbits) and some cheese from the convent!!!! i need to pick up some yeast and eggs (which i am sure after the 2 buses, taxi and 4km bike ride back to the house will be in great condition!!)

well keep the letters coming, i will get them eventually! oh i almost forgot the garth brooks refernce. so i was in a cab ride back from the convent to town, and the cabbie was kicking "ive got friends in low places". so the the five volunteers started singing garth brooks at the top of our lungs. just thought i would share one of the random moments with you. never did i think i would be shouting garth brooks from the inside of a cab in africa!

love you guys!!!!!!!!!!!!!

love
jane

Monday, September 05, 2005

ok so i finally got the po box

ok so i mananged to talk the other peace volunteers in the area to let me use thier pox so i can recieve mail here in the district. so the new address is...

Jane LeGrand
PO Box 369
Mafinga, Tanzania

dont forget the padded envelopes are alyas good (and anything you want to send me i would love to have it) and it doesnet hurt to address it to "sister" jane and put all the religious symbols on there...

this way you can start sending mail directly to me without going through the peace corps. if you have sent me mail to the other address it will still get to me, as peace corps will foward mail to my new address. i hav enot received mail for 2 weeks and dont expect anything probably for another month now, for those i had told that i had mail waiting....well that was a lie. there was no mail when i went to pick it up. oh well..i guess that it will just build up and when i finally get some maybe it will be a large quantity!!! also as ihave been around internet for the last few days i am about to head back to the village and wont make it back to the city till tuesday the 13th. so the reason i know i will back on the 13th is that we are doing a girls empowerment camp starting that tuesday. it will last until that saturday. we are staying at the convent that is run on solar power and has a GREAT farm. and i hear even hot shower. so over the time span i am there i am sure i will take off to check the ole email at some point. i am excited about the camp. it will be for young girls and boys and focusing on the dichotomy of gender roles in the village.

so i am heading back to village though strangely just for the week. things here start slowly but once that ball gets rollings, it seems to pick up speed rapidily. it is nice also since all of the environmental volunteers are working on the camp together it is giving me an opportunity to get to know my neighbors.

so i am signing off...keep the letters coming...i will get them someday!!!

love
jane

Saturday, September 03, 2005

continuing on a theme

so to pick up where i left off, i dont want to paint a picture of tanzanian village life as this desperate, hungry life that is shown in a christian's children commercial. not that it does not exists but because there are so much more to the people that live in the village than desperation. i merely just want to point out the strong dichotomy between village and urban, and i dont know if i have the ability to do that with words or even pictures. i guess you all will just have to come and visit me to see for yourselves!

in the mean time i have received several questions that have been repeated in emails and thought it easier to answer them here...the first is what i bought on my shopping trip. i hate to disappoint those expecting anything exciting, but coming to town is more of a supplies trip. while it is incredibly exciting and a sensory overload for me, it will probably look more like a grocery list for everyone else. mostly i bought stuff to help me become the successful tanzanian chef i hope to be. i bought some essentials for making my favorite food...chapati. which is a rolling pin and tray. then some pots to use just for boiling water and for making beans. i have found that it is important to keep these two separate. as i have drank several bottles of bean flavored water! but the most exciting thing about coming to the city is the groceries. they have some safi stores here that have foods that i can only dream about in the village. yesterday not only did i stumble across cheese, but i even found a block of gouda!!!!! it costs $8 USD...but it is now in my possession! there is also spices like cinnamon and things that are difficult to make on an open fire, like bread. there is also a huge fruit market here where i can buy pineapples and tangerines. i found a store yesterday that sells ragu pizza sauce and pasta. oh and ever so important....chocolate!!!! these are the things that when you are sitting in your kitchen stirring beans, that you daydream about eating. as far as local crafts, i did pick up some maasai beaded jewelry. this area is also known for its great colorful woven baskets...they are tightly woven to hold flour or just about anything.. and the same bright weave are put into rugs. they are beautiful. expect to see a bunch upon my return. my big search today before leaving is looking for a spatula.

so another question was to expand more on my daily life in the village. i have found that having a schedule is essential. i wake up 6:30 (when the school kids start arriving to school) and make coffee and uji...this corn meal version of malt-o-meal. quite tasty. then i do some yoga/floor exercises. then usually i have visitors that come by the house and i greet them and make tea. then i make lunch and do dishes and clean my house and wash clothes and sweep the yard (yes the dirt yard). then i leave my house for a couple of hours. as i am not supposed to start any projects for three months, i am supposed to be getting to know my villagers and performing a needs assessment in the high-context, indirect communication that is culturally acceptable in the village life. so every afternoon for at least 2 hours i walk around my community. i tend to leave my house with a small goal...e.g. try to find the village office, or see if you can find some garlic. and while i usually am not too successful in achieving these goals, the adventures of exploring the community is much more valuable. another thing is that i set personal goal for each day. these include: making rice for the first time with firewood, or washing the walls of my house, or finding the closest place that sells matches. just something that when i go to bed at night i can say, "well at least i did this today." then it is time to cook dinner. i start by heating water to bathe then usually put on a pot to boil while i do my bucket bath and then cooking something, rice, pasta, ugali, something. then i put a large log on the fire and turn on the radio and sit by the fire and eat my dinner. sometimes i boil water to have a foot soak. i have found that i have become extremely sensitive to the sun with the doxy (anti malarial) and regardless of the amount of sunscreen i put on i still have sun/wind burns on my feet hands and face. my feet have become so bad that i have blisters on the tops of all my toes from being wind chapped. i have never lived at such a high altitude before and it is taking some small lifestyle changes to figure it out. such as for the first time in my life i am using lotion (THANKS TO SHERRY for leaving behind such wonderful products while she was here visiting!!!!!) so anyway the other night, i was sitting by the fire having a cup of coffee (instant but not too bad) soaking my feet and listening to a howard zinn interview on the radio. i felt like i was on a luxury camping vacation. as my time hopefully will become more filled as i start projects i will probably hire house help for one or two days a week to cook a pot of beans and carry water and scrub my pots (pine and eucalyptus produce a LARGE amount of sap that stays on the pot and has to be cleaned)and collect firewood but in the meantime i enjoy doing all these activities to help me fill the day and stay busy.

how close am i to other wazungu (foreigners)? well the i have one volunteer neighbor that is only about 10-12km away.(in case rhea or ellen are reading this...this is bonnie, strangely enough we were put right next to each other!!!) then another about 20-25km and another about 35-40km. these guys are easily accessible to meet up with for lunch in a neighboring town or for the one closest to me we can visit each other's houses and return back in the same day with out sorry of it becoming dark. or when i get my bike, it will be easier. however, all of them are closing service in december and heading back to the states. after that i will be only volunteer in my district. there are some education people arriving in september, but doubt any will be going to village areas like mine. so right now i have several neighbors (though i have not seen any of them, it is comforting to know they are there if i need them, and i have been communicating with them) but in december i will be more like 70-80km to the next volunteers i am estimating. HOWEVER, i just found on one my exploratory walks that in the next village over there is a Unilever tea field. unilever is one of the worlds largest food manufactures and is the parent company of Lipton teas. SO in my fascination in corporations and their affects on developing nations, i will be visiting the unilever fields soon and i am sure there will be some brits or americans hanging around there. i also believe they have a unilever ran hospital that i think is the closest peace corps approved medical facility for me.

as far as having any tanzanian friends...well i am still having a language barrier. there is no one in my village that speaks any english (well the headmaster of the school speaks about as much english as i do swahili..so it doesn’t help much) there is the staff of peace corps that is almost completely tanzanian and our training staff that i have made some great friends. as far as IN the village, well there are a couple of teachers that i get along well with. one in particular. the other day i was bored and wanted to go get a coke and did not want to go by myself so i went to her and asked if she wanted to go and we went...so it was like calling up a friend and saying "hey lets get out of the house for a sec" and it was great...the are great pauses in the conversation due to my limited communication, but so much communication can be done without words!

well i better log off and get back to my research. hope all is well on the home front. i am still trying to get a po box, but in the mean send any mail to the dar address on this site!

Friday, September 02, 2005

in the city...

hey guys. so all is going well here on the tanzanian front. i have come to the big city of iringa (this one you might actually find on a tanzanian map). it is the regional capitol of the region i live in. lets see...that break down is.. i live in the village of kihanga, in the district of mufindi in the region of iringa. if you have detailed map, there might be mafinga on it. i live just south east of mafinga. i cant remember what all i wrote about in the last update, and even here in the big city, i am scared to open up too many screens to look back, but i live at about 2000m (1.25 miles) up in the mountains. it is more of a rolling mountain in the highlainds than of jagged mountains of that of the north (or the rockies). the people i live with are from the tribe of wahehe (pronounced wah-hey-hey...which CRACKS me up every time i say because it sounds like duane off of whats happening?) the wahehe speak kihehe and i have been learning kihehe. while it is not necessary for me to be fluent in kihehe because they speck excellent kiswahili, it is VERY respectful to speak in the tribal language and every little bit i learn and the more i am able to converse the morethey are willing to work with the me...in other words, the more they see me trying to understand thier ways and culutre, the more they are likely to like me and there for want to help me in projects and the like.

so being here in the city is completely different than that of the village life. we are not talking about the normal differences that occur between urban and rural but extremities of each. my village has absolutely no electricity. none. there are powerlines the go through the village, but they do not touchdown anywhere...they just passthrough. there is no transportation in or out of my village. well expect that of your feet, or bike (if you are lucky). there is one lorry (cargo truck)that passes through in the morning and returns each evning. most people live in mud walled houses with mud floors and thatched roofs. they are farmers, store owners or teachers (well 13 of them) and some work in the surrounding tea feilds. there is no resaurant and there is no dispensary. they eat almost solely corn flour and beans. there are some vegitables and there is some rice and even quite a large number of animals for a small village, but these are expensive. here in the city life is completely different. i am sitting at an internet cafe drinking a cappuccino and watching all the kids playing on the internet. at this moment back i the village the kids are probably carring in water for the evening meals and helping take care of all thier siblings. life is just different. i should actually log off for a bit now... i will add to this tomorrow after going SHOPPING! i am about to go eat some indian food and ice cream! i will be leaving town sunday....so email me!!!! oh and dont havenew address as of yet....still working on it...

love
jane