Twas the Night Before Christmas, Peace Corps Style

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the village
All the mice began stirring to commence their rape and pillage
And I in my small bed, my cat on the floor
Had just hunkered down for the start of the war
When up in the ceiling boards there arose such a clatter
A knew without a doubt these rats had gotten fatter
My cat got warmed up by chasing her tail
She’d catch them tonight I knew without fail
So with torchi in hand and cat at my feet
I opened the door to see what I could see
I swung the beam from side to side
Trying to find where these rodents might hide
With the light trained on a crack in the wall
I gasped in surprise when I saw what I saw
For there was the rat I had come to fear
And down at her haunches were eight babies here
So I crept back into the bedroom with ease
For I couldn’t kill the whole family on Christmas Eve
‘Merry Christmas kitty,’ I murmered in my slumber
‘And Merry Christmas rats, but tomorrow I’ve got your number



Merry Christmas Everyone!
ps-I don't really have a rat family living in my ceiling, just in case you were worried. ;)

Joyful and Triumphant

What a fabulous week. Got a kitty, had a productive meeting in the village, and I got a group of kids to actually call me Katie instead of Mzungu! Yey!
On Sunday I went to a fellow PCV's site in Tukuyu about an hour away from my site in Kimondo to pick up a kitten. He only had one left to give away and I'm pretty sure that she's the best one. She's so cute. I named her Penny Lane. Its nice to have a little company now. She gets a bit ferocious from time to time, my hands are definately suffering from that, but she's sweet too and likes to sleep on top of me. Everytime I want to roll over I have to try to gently move her off of me, but whatever position I end up in, she climbs right back up on me.
Yesterday I had a meeting with about 25 villagers and we actually got things accomplished. We planned meeting times for a nutrition/recipe class, the community garden/orchard that we will be planting soon, a village credit union and an adult English class! Yey, finally something to do. I have started teaching English to Standard 7 kids last week and that's going ok. They're coming along veryyyy slooooooowly. It gets a little frustrating, but I think it will pay off. (side note: I saw one of the students using a black erasable pen in class the other day and inwardly I was like HEY THAT's MINE!, but I decided to let it slide. How big of me right?)
And as a bonus, this morning, on my way into town, the gang of little kids in Igoma that always chant "Mzungu! Mzungu!" (Mzungu is a Swahili term for a white or foreign person) when I ride by on my bike actually said "Shikamoo, Katie." (Shikamoo is a respectful way to great people older than you). They actually remembered my name and used it! I'm not sure if this will last, but hey, its a start!

Thanksgiving and such

Thanksgiving ended up going much better than expected. We Mbeyans went through several different plans before we finally ended up at a former Peace Corps Volunteer’s house and had a really good time. Big Mike was a PCV in Tanzania several years ago and ended up marrying a Tanzanian woman and building a house here in Mbeya. He invited a bunch of current PCV’s over to celebrate Thanksgiving with his family, with electricity, and an oven, and satellite tv, and even a turkey he raised himself.
We couldn’t find any football on the ESPN channel his satellite picked up, but we did have most of the other Thanksgiving traditions…turkey and stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole and apple pie. I missed my dad’s stuffing and my aunt’s éclair cake, but for Africa, we did a pretty good job with what we had. Of course I missed my family, but I had fun with my new Peace Corps family too. And it was really nice to spend 45 minutes being passed around on the phone at my family’s Thanksgiving dinner and getting to hear a lot of voices I haven’t heard in a long time.
Right now I’m in the neighboring Iringa region with some PCV friends. Peace Corps gave us 3 free travel days, that we didn’t have to subtract from our annual leave total, so Meesh and Teri and I decided to come visit some of the other nearby volunteers. We had a good time going out dancing last night and I anticipate more good times for tonight. Quite an international crowd we had last night. Americans, Finnish guys, Brtis, and a Spaniard or two. Our crew in Mbeya is getting more and more internationally diverse as we meet more people in the area too. There are of course the PCVs from the US, who are diverse even amongst ourselves, then there are the 2 French Canadian women who live in town whose house we stay at when we go into town for the weekend and the recent additions of a Korean volunteer and a German. Its so cute to hear all of the accents when we’re all together.
Off to do some shopping at the Masai market now. To be continued.

December 2, 2008

Back at home now. Last weekend ended up being a lot of fun. Really glad I decided to not be cheap and just go. As far as updates on the home front go, I finally tried to use my charcoal iron. Not to the best effect. It was pretty pointless in fact. I guess I didn’t put enough charcoal in to make much of a difference. But at least I tried. Maybe I’ll try it again after another 3 months. Never was much of an ironer in the US, why start now?
The school term just ended and I see that I had varying success as a first time teacher. It seems that my students didn’t do any worse in my classes than they did in any others, but still, the test results overall were a bit depressing. I really feel sorry for the ones that don’t understand English, as that is what all of the classes are taught in at secondary school. It was really obvious who didn’t given the answers that they wrote had absolutely nothing to do with the question I had asked. Here’s hoping that I at least got something through to some of them. I think next year I’m going to focus more on my actual assignment as a health volunteer and stop teaching at the secondary school. I may continue to teach biology form 1 because it covers a lot of info about HIV and other STDs, but I want to spend more time in my village here in Kimondo rather than only working in Igoma.
In fact, I’m going to try to start teaching an adult English class in the next couple of weeks. Schools are closed for winter break so I have nothing better to do, and lots of people have been asking me when I’m going to start actually doing something. I’ve been delaying, thinking that I need to wait to get funds for some of the bigger projects or learn to speak Swahili better for the projects that don’t require money, but I think I’ve put it off long enough and I need to get going. I’m going to try to start out with teaching simple conversational English to the villagers here by reversing my Swahili training. Although it may be a bit difficult as most of the villagers do not know how to read and write, but I’m sure we’ll find a way to make it work.
I’m also very excited to getting started on the primary school library project. I have in-service training in January where I will finally learn how to write grants and can get the money to put everything together. As I started writing a preliminary list of all of the things I need to buy to start it, I’m realizing this is going to be quite the undertaking. But I have high hopes that it will be worth it in the end.
I will definitely need to do some lessons on how to care for books properly first. These little boys that like playing at my house leave everything in such a mess all the time. My grandparents sent me some flashcards and a spelling book that they love playing with. They come over and ask for paper and pens to write everyday. Which is great, but they just leave dirt all over everything. I know they partly can’t help it, as it does rain every single day now so they is naturally mud all over everything, but still. I’m trying to at least teach them to put their garbage in the trash can when they finish with the lollipops that they come asking for everyday as well. And I came up with the bright idea to make them sweep all of the mud that they track into my house before they get candy now. Seeing how they’re 6 year old boys, it’s not the best cleaning job in the world, but it’s a start anyway.