Catching up...

So my internet decided to poop out for almost three weeks now, so that's why I haven't updated.  So since last time, I've done a bit of traveling.  I went and checked out Kathryn's site.  I showed up with a water bottle of my mango wine and we made eggplant spaghetti, and hung out.  That night, after our showers, we had a couple run-ins with her rat infestation and watched a bit of a movie.  The next morning, we got up bright and early and headed to Mtwara for some volunteer birthdays.  4 1/2 hours later, we made it.  It really is pretty remarkable how insignificant a 4-hour bus ride seems these days.  That night, we all went to a resort on the Indian Ocean.  Kathryn and I split the chili prawns and the chicken sandwich.  I thought I might have died and gone to heaven, but that's not saying much since my diet consists mostly of beans.  We hung out for most of the next day, playing Bananagrams and listening to music.  We went into town and walked around and then went back to the beach despite the rainy weather.  For dinner that night, I had a fish that was the size of my face and that tasted a lot better than I imagine my face would taste.  Then we had bajaji races back home.  For those of you that don't know, bajaji are those funny, three-wheeled vehicles that my brain always associated with India.  They are quite possibly my favorite mode of transportation here in Tanzania.  The bajaji drivers thought we were crazy, but really got into the competition, even taking "short-cuts" through areas that were definitely not meant for vehicles and flying over speed bumps.  After getting home, a few of us decided to go for a nightcap at a near-by bar.  While there, we had an extremely entertaining conversation with some schmammered locals.  The lady told me I looked like I had come from the "shamba," or farm, and proceeded to button my dress the rest of the way.  She then showered me, awkwardly, with "you're beautiful's" and "I love you's" for the rest of the night.  Not gonna lie, it was creepy.  The next morning, Kathryn, Tony, and I caught a bus out of town.  Well after an hour stop to fix the bus we were out of town.  Kathryn and I hopped off about halfway to stop for a visit at Leslie's site.  We stopped for lunch and then proceeded to get caught in the hardest rainstorm ever.  There were literally Tanzanian children swimming down the street.  After visiting for a while, Kathryn and I got a liftie, the Tanzanian form of hitchhiking essentially.  Guess I can cross that one off the bucket list now.  It was pretty uneventful.  It was a couple truckers who smelt funny and I called Grease Monkey 1, 2, and 3.  We made it home in one piece, Mom, don't flip.  That next week I went and picked up my kitten!! I had been told that she was "special," but had no idea what exactly that entailed.  It turns out she is a bit physically handicapped.  Basically, she has a club-foot.  This deformity looks a bit like a flipper and makes her waddle so she has been named Duck.  It really doesn't seem to hinder her much; she can still chase lizards and kill cockroaches just fine.  We have become fast friends, which if you know me at all, you know my feelings on cats, and this is a shocking revelation.  I started teaching the Monday before last, or I should say school opened.  The first week, the small percentage of students that showed up spent the week cleaning the school.  On Friday, we had a group trip to the school shamba, or farm.  I showed up to school, not really knowing what to expect.  Well it turns out on these days, the students wear street clothes instead of their uniforms; and instead of backpacks everyone brings their own machete.  It was definitely a weird experience talking to a group of your students while they are all armed with 3-foot blades.    So we all made the 2-K hike to the school farm and the other teachers lined all the students up and let 'em at it.  I really wished I had my video camera.  Just imagine 300 students, ages 13 to 18, all swinging their machetes at the same time.  At one point a teacher even sent a boy up a tree to chop off some branches that were lying too low.  Cause why wouldn't you send a child up a tree with a machete in his hand?  This last Monday, January 24th, marked our 4-month anniversary of being in Tanzania.  Weird.  It doesn't seem like that long, but at the same time feels like forever since getting here.  This last weekend, a bunch of volunteers came to my 'ville and stayed Saturday night.  We just hung out, reading and playing our favorite game of Bananagrams.  A volunteer told us just about one of the funniest stories ever.  He said that his villagers love turning his kindle on and off of stand-by.  This is because, when you turn a kindle on stand-by, a picture of famous writers, for example Alexander Dumas or Jules Verne, pops up.  His villagers love these pictures because they truly believe that these are pictures of his close, personal friends.  Well one time, this volunteer's VEO (village executive officer) was playing this fun game and when the picture of Virginia Woolf popped up he exclaimed, "AH! I love you!" So essentially, this village's leader has fallen madly in love with this volunteer's close, personal friend Virginia Woolf.   I've even recently become well acquainted with a couple new Newala crazies.  One I shall call crazy, hat man.  This man followed me around town wearing a 3-gallon jug as a hat and was trying desperately to get me to buy another similar hat.  It just really didn't match my outfit to say the least.  Another one I call crazy, homeless man.  So for a long time, crazy, homeless man lived on the basketball court next to my house at night and during the day spent his time doing moves that would lead you to believe he is an aspiring break dancer.  I even had to stop opening my windows when he yelled "NIPE CHAI," "Give me tea," at me through the window.  Well for a long time, it appeared that crazy, homeless man had moved his plastic-bag bed to greener pastures.   What I didn't realize was that these greener pastures were situated on the porch of the other duplex connected to mine.  I realized this when I got a knock on my door at 6:45 in the morning, and not having a peep-hole answered it.  I pretty much told him to leave and shut the door in his face and he stood outside yelling "MCHUMBA!"  This is Kiswahili for fiancé.  So apparently crazy, homeless man believes that we are betrothed.  Congrats to me (enter sarcasm here).  So that is my life pretty much up till now.  Never a dull moment here in the bush.  Maybe internet will start working so I can post without 4 hours round trip to the nearest internet cafe.  Peace out!

A holiday season like none before...

So the inevitable happened.  About a week ago, the full wrath of Africa struck and I actually pooped my pants.  Awesome.  I had been having stomach problems for about a week and I though i was on the mend.  I went into to town to run some errands when I got a peculiar feeling in my stomach and knew immediately I needed to high-tail it home. Well on the way home, I was stopped by a man wanting to strike up a untimely casual conversation.  I made that conversation as short as possible and then half sprinted, half hopped home.  I successfully made it all the way to my front door and was fumbling with the key when my stomach made the executive decision that it could no longer wait.  These stomach issues continued for about another half a week when finally we reached the day before I was supposed to travel to Christmas in Ndanda.  Katherine came and spent the night before we traveled the next morning so I stopped my issues dead in their tracks by loading up on Immodium. 

On Christmas Eve, most of the volunteers in the "deep south" met in Ndanda at a volunteer’s house.  We rolled into town, had lunch, went swimming, ate dinner, and decorated our tiny Christmas tree that a volunteer's mom had shipped her.  Then next morning, Kathryn and I got up early and made biscuits and gravy for everyone.  It wasn't my mom's coffee cake, but it was pretty good all the same. After that, we had a Dirty Santa Christmas exchange.  We each brought the most ridiculous present we could find.  I ended up locating a belt that said Bruce Lee on it and was even adorned with a holographic picture of him on the belt buckle.  For dinner, we made fajitas and tortillas.  It was pretty delicious.   I got maybe the best Christmas present ever and got to skype with some of my family and then talk to the rest on the phone.  While I was skyping, I was even joined my 2 Tanzanian kiddos wanting to observe the "magic" of video chatting with a bunch of American whities.  We finished off Christmas day with a lively game of spotlight (because the power went out) charades.  The next morning, we got up and caught a bus to travel to Lindi region.  We had plans to visit some Arab ruins on the coast.  The others had an energetic bartering session with the boat people; I proved very helpful during the whole process and slept against a tree.  The ruins were cool, but my favorite part of the trip was possibly this incredibly nice hotel we found.  No way could be afford it, but that didn't stop us from drinking some beers on their white sand beach and swimming in the Indian Ocean.  After our trip, Ghee, Kathryn, and I headed on home.  They both joined me in Newala.  We just hung out for a couple days and then Leslie, one the other volunteers from our training class joined us on New Years Eve.  It was really nice it being just our training class celebrating together.  We made chili and broke open the mango wine that I made in a bucket a couple weeks ago.  We really welcomed the New Years in with style, bucket wine and dance party to Sheryl Crow.  Well if I didn't get to talk to you, HAPPY NEW YEAR! I have a feeling this is going to be one heck of a year!

A Volunteer of Many Names and the Demon Cat

It really is amazing what you become accustomed to being called when living in Tanzania.   If you have ever heard that song by The Ting Tings, "That's not my name," that song summarizes my feelings about living in Tanzania.   The Tanzanian people are very fond of calling people everything, but their actual name.  So far, this seems to not indicate whether that person knows your name, or they just don't like using it.  The following is a short list of names I have been called. 

1. Dada- this is Kiswahili for "sister."

2. Sister

3. Mama

4. Auntie

5. Mzungu- basically "wonderbread," "whitie," or "cracker" in Kiswahili

6. Teacher

7. Madame- how Tanzanian students address female teachers

8. Numerous names of other white, female Peace Corps Volunteers because all white people look alike. 

In further news, I really thought my body was rejecting Africa for a while.  It all started with a rash behind my left knee.  That rash looked like harmless heat rash until it spread all up and down my leg, onto my right leg, onto my stomach, and up my back.  A few days later, I started running a temperature and had extreme nausea.  Then just the other day, I woke up with one eye almost completely swollen shut.  I seem to finally be bouncing back though.  My rash is slowly clearing up, my stomach issues and temperature lasted only 24 hours, and a popped some allergy pills and my swollen eye slowly went back to normal.  Also, I am no longer afraid to stay up after dark because I now have a cat to protect me from the critters of the night.  Unfortunately after 3 days, it is very clear to me that our personalities do not exactly mesh.  The second night I had the cat, I discovered that he seemed to be suffering from some sort of separation anxiety when I shut him out of my room to sleep.  He proceeded to spend the night meowing at my door and chewing up various objects that were left out.  Luck for me, I had only left out some Ziploc bags and empty water bottles.  This cat also appears to be the most vocal cat in the universe.  It has the loudest, alien-sounding meow in the world.  Sometimes, I swear words actually come out of that idiotic mouth.  This morning, that lovely little feline decided my bed was a good place to take a dump.  Needless to say, I am currently looking for a new home for this cat, which is currently the bane of my existence, and am searching the market for a replacement kitten.  That has pretty much been my life for the past almost week, just hating this demon-cat.  Next week we are all getting together for Christmas so hopefully I will have some better updates.  

Karibu Mtwara!

So as you might assume I safely reached my permanent site.  The bus ride down was nothing short of interesting.  We did end up staying all night and at around 4:30 we started loading up all of our possessions.  We then had to all say our goodbyes to each other, which was about as much fun as getting a tooth pulled.  We got to the bus stand at about 5 a.m.  As soon as I got off the Peace Corps bus, someone promptly tried to swipe one of my bags, but lucky for me, one of the Peace Corps staff was on top of it.  Then, the bus people refused to put our bags under our bus so Katherine and I's bags got put up with all of the passengers and my name written all over the bags for a purpose I do not completely understand.  So now, my name is written in permanent marker not only all over my bags, but also Katherine's, including a big "K. Thill" written on her pillowcase.  We finally got on the rode and remained on the rode for the next 13'ish hours.    This would have been around a 10-hour ride if our lovely bus had not gotten stuck in the mud for 3 hours and pried out by our fellow passengers using big sticks and one shovel.  Happy Birthday to me...

So far I am really enjoying my site though.  I am in a bit of a bigger town than I first thought, but have almost everything I should want locally available.  Since I am in one of the bigger towns, I also have had a stream of other volunteers visiting, picking up supplies.  I have yet to go a day without seeing another volunteer.  Not exactly what I was expecting, but I'll take it.  Everyone in my 'ville has been awesome so far.  Even the crazies.  There is one man, whom I call "Bird-man."  I truly believe that this man is half bird because there is no way that a full human can make some of the bird noises he makes.  Also, the other day, he tried to catch a mango falling from a tree with his mouth, which proved very entertaining.  My site is almost perfect.  I can even see Mozambique from my house.  There is just one thing.  There wildlife has about made me wet myself on several occasions.  Now I'm not creeped out by most creatures, but my house guests are a bit much.  For one, my house and the surrounding area seems to harbor giant lobster-bugs.  These are humungous bugs that look like a cross between a scorpion and a spider and red-colored.  Basically they look like a small lobster.  I was later told that these were "just tarantulas."  Also, I share my home with some very pleasant rats.  I woke up to a living nightmare the other night when I heard a rat in my room.  I turned on my flashlight, trying to locate the culprit.  After a while of looking from the safety of my mosquito net, I finally saw it.  It seems that earlier that day I accidentally zipped a rat inside of my duffel bag while cleaning up and it was now attempting to escape.  I of course immediately slipped into a state of panic and lay in bed, sweating profusely for about 3 hours before I worked up the nerve to leave my mosquito net.  When I finally got up, I ran out, got the broom, used the handle to drag my bag out of my room into the living area, and slam my door, shoving kangas under the crack before jumping back into bed.  The next morning, the first thing I did was throw my bag into the middle of the courtyard and leave it there until someone else showed up to deal with it.  To deal with this problem, I have adopted a killer cat.  His first night in my house was a success.  His hit list included 1 rat and 2 lizards.  Well thats all for now.  Time will tell how this whole owning a cat thing goes.

All Sweared In!!

So today was an extremely successful day...and maybe one of the best days of my existence.  This morning, we made the short bus ride to the United States Embassy for our swearing-in ceremony.  We all got "pertied" up in our Tanzanian finest and became official Peace Corps Volunteers, or PCV's.  There was our honored guest, a member of the ministry of education, and even the U.S. Ambassador himself, Ambassador Lenhardt.  We sang a little song and did a little dance, well maybe not a dance but we did have to sing, and then said our oath.  After that, they shoved us full of food and patted our heads for a job well done during training.   We had a bushel of samosas and meat on a stick, and man was it delicious.  After that, we went back to our hostel for free time, a.k.a. try to nap in my room, but really just lay there in a puddle of my own sweat.  We piddled around for a couple hours, packing, talking, cutting hair.  Yes, I cut more hair today. I think I might have a new profession in my future.  After that, we had to get dressed back up and loaded a bus to go to the Ambassador's house for dinner.  When we got there, we hung out with his wife Jackie who may or may not be one of the sweetest ladies ever, and talked a bit.  Then the food was unveiled.  What lay before us literally brought a tear to my eye!  Ladies and gentleman, the good Ambassador Lenhardt and his wife managed to wrangle us up an amazing Thanksgiving dinner in the middle of Africa.  I ate so much mashed potatoes and stuffing that I was in physical pain and continued the self-torture by serving myself up a plate of pumpkin pie.  BEST DAY EVER!! Tomorrow, we have to get up at 3:45 though and head to the bus station so we are thinking we might not even bother going to bed and soak up the last bits of togetherness before we get separated.  Despite the awful waking hours, I am extremely excited about tomorrow and to finally get to my home for the next 2 years!!

Sorry its been like ten thousand years since I've posted.  Things are still great.  So since last time we found out our sites.  I will be moving to Mtwara and teaching at Newala Day Secondary School.  Mtwara is in the far south of Tanzania, on the Mozambique border and along the coast.  I am supper excited about my site!  I have a 2 bedroom house, pretty much already furnished, with a courtyard.  There is a passion fruit vine, mango tree, and papaya tree in my courtyard.  And the best part? ELECTRICITY!! Yes friends. I will be living on the coast, able to see Mozambique pretty much, with a plethra of fruit and electricity, so basically in the lap of luxury.  Anyone want to visit?
In other news, I am done with training!  The week before last week, we went to shadow current volunteers.  I got sent to Singida.  I was told that Singida was the desert of Tanzania and was dreading it.  It turns our Singida is absolutely beautiful.  It is dry, basically sand, but the sky is huge because the land is so flat.  Our adventure began with the always exciting Tanzanian bus system.  To start, the but was almost an hour late.  When we were getting on, we basically sat wherever our bag was thrown by the conductor.  I sat in between Doug and a gangly, rather pungent Tanzanian man.  Most of the ride, the bus was flying.  To avoid hurling all over the extremely crowded, swerving death-trap of a bus, I tried to stay passed out the entire ride.  I was so unaware of my surroundings most of the time, I had no idea, until told by Doug later, that apparently my stinky friend next to me monopolized on my current state and used me as a pillow.  After a whole 8 hours on awful roads, and at one point no road at all, we reached Singida Town.    After getting to town, we met up with some PCV's.  They had gotten hotel rooms and we went and dropped our stuff and went to the next door bar for drinks and dinner.  They are all well acquainted with the owner who just loves "wazungu," or whities.  He made us maybe the best meal I've had since arriving in country.  The next day, we hung out in town, grabbing breakfast going to the internet cafe and later on lunch.  After all this, it was time to catch our bus to her village.  The ride was ridiculously bouncy.  Imagine riding a charter bus across a field.  Consequently, I spend the ride ready to stick my head out the window to hurl.  I was in a better boat than my fellow volunteer though who was having stomach issues and about to poop his pants the entire ride.  Apparently, this is not an extremely uncommon issue in Peace Corps.  Our host said she had pooped her pant four times in the last 30 days due to a gnarly stomach issue.  We finally reached her village and walked to her house.  For the next 2 and a half days, Colin and I pretty much did nothing but work on a puzzle and occasionally help cook.  It felt pretty awesome to just do nothing.  While we were at Amy's house, we celebrated her birthday, making banana pancakes, omelets, and mango.  Uma, Jordan, Doug, and their host Carol walked from their village, bringing chocolate cake.  After vegging out, we spent the day laying on the concrete talking/reading/playing cards/puzzling.  It was pretty wonderful.  That night, Amy, Colin , and I went into the village to visit and eat dinner.  We hung out chatting with her village, drinking what was meant to be homemade mango wine.  After what seemed to be too much yeast, too little sugar, and too little mango, you get pretty much mango vodka'ish jazz. There are really no words to describe.  The next day, we hiked 2 hours to Carol's village to spend the night with Jordan, Uma, and Doug.  We played games and drug mattresses out on the front porch and slugged around all day.  The next day, we again had bus adventures.  So buses might bery well be the most interesting/scary part about my Tanzanian experience.  We took a bus from Carol's village to Singida Town.  We get smooshed on, fighting for our seat and breath in an often exhaust filled bus.  This particular bus ride, I literally saw a man shove two live chickens into the overhead bin.  Apparently the chickens just shut their eyes when the bus starts moving. Maybe we share the quality of getting motion sick and they just close their eyes to avoid tossing their little poutlry cookies.  When we reached Singida Town bus stop, we then had to fight off the hourds of people selling mangos, water, baskets, and plastic crap.  These vendors are all over the new buses rolling into the station like stink on poo trying to sell their goods.  After a bit of confusion, we figured out that our bus did not leave till 1:30.  It was currently about 8:30.  We then went into town to waste time, avoiding the usual children screaming "give me money mzungu."  After wasting time in town, we went to the bus stop and our bus was actually there.  the bus ride seemed off to a great start: a normal amount of people, no animals, and actually leaving on time.  Well then, we stopped 10 other times before leaving town and crammed as many people on as I though possible.  Well I was wrong.  The bus then stopped on the highway the entire way to Manyoni, cramming more people on.  At one point, I had about 4 people half-sitting on me.  Another time, some lady literally sat her baby on my shoulder.  I am thankful I wasn't in one of the other volunteer's seat where he had to stay our of pecking reach of the chicken held right at his eye level.  After a day in Manyoni, we headed home.  It was then that I saw yet another sight that was extremely unusual.  I saw a petroleum tanker with a live goat tied on top.  Strange.
This last week, we had to go to CCT everyday.  We had numerous tests, over teaching technique, security, etc.  Thursday, we learned to make a permagarden.  I really enjoyed this from about 8 to 3, but after that lost all concentration.  I was entertained by playing with a machete for most of the day though.  We would take pieces of banana tree and throw them at each other, trying to slice them out of the air.  Basically it was like that Wii game, but real life.  Friday, I had my final language test, which went awful.  Friday night, we had our family good-bye party.  My family gave me a dress.  I am so ready to move on to my site, but will miss my host family so much.  Tomorrow, on Sunday, we head back to Dar es Salaam where we will stay until we are sworn in at the embassy on Wednesday.  Then on Thursday, I move to MTWARA!!

Up in flames...

So yesterday, I got up bright and early and went to church with my host brother Felix and Mama Happyness.  The music was greta, but I understood absolutely nothing.  There was the long sleep-filled sermon and then the entire congregation got up to give a donation.  After that they auctioned off kitangas (Tanzanian cloth) and a pair of shoes to raise money for building the church.  Right now, the church is basically just a cinderblock building with wooden benches.  Pretty much, the auction was like half-time entertainment.  I was actually pleasantly suprised when chuch only lasted an hour and 40 mintues considering my friend Doug's experience a couple weeks ago when church lasted 7 hours.  After church, Doug came over and ate breakfast with my family.  After we finished breakfast, we went to Veronica's and sat in the shade while she finished her laundry.  Then, we picked up our friend Eric and went to the local market.  Going to the market is definitely my favorite way to practice my Kiswahili.  You just feel so good about your skills because everyone is so excited that the whitie can speak Swahili at all.  I even ran into some of my students from my school and talked to them for a bit.  We then went back to Veronica's and Eric, Veronica, and I cooked lunch.  We made guacamole, chips, sauteed potatoes, and an omelet.  The chips we made were from plantains.  We sliced them and fried them in oil and they were pretty much the greatest thing ever.  The potatoes we sauteed with pepper, salt, and fresh ground cumin.  In the omelet we put onions, pili pili hoho (bell pepper), to tomato, and spinach.  Over everything, we poured pili pili sauce (just hot pepper sauce) that Veronica's host sister made.  Overall, I was pretty impressed with the way everything came out.  The most entertaining part of the day happened right before we cooked the omelet.  We washed a bowl and put it on the jiko (charcoal stove) to let the water sizzle off.  Well, there must have been grease or something on the bowl because all of a sudden, the entire pot went up in flames.  Veronica pulled it off the jiko and I was doubled over laughing.  The flames were huge, like almost as high as our heads at points.  She kicked to bowl and it skidded across the floor, coming to rest beside a wooden table with a tablecloth hanging off.  I grabbed the bowl and put it away from anything flammable.  We were looking for baking soda when Eric decided that flour would work-WRONG.  That just made the flames even bigger.  We then just decided to ignore the "don't use water to put out a grease fire" rule and problem solved.  The pot was pretty charred, but still usable and thankfully, Veronica's host sister had run to the store so we still had our pride.  By the time we ate and cleaned up, the process had taken 7 hours.  It had been a long day so Vero and I went to the bar with our friend Colin.  There, over beers, we had a long discussion about how Physics is far superior to Chemistry.  Essentially, they believe that Chemistry is the bastard child of Physics.  Overall, a good, but exhausting day.