June 24, 2008 Visiting Local Government Officials
Today we took some time from our Swahili lessons to go visit the village government. We had already visited there briefly last week just to introduce ourselves. But today we went to learn about the structure of the government and how we would interact with the government in planning projects. It was kind of a practice for when we get to our sites so we know how to work the system to get the help that we need.
We learned that the population of Magomeni is 9860, which is more than I thought, but then again I’m terrible with guessing populations. I have no idea how many people live in High Springs even. There are 4 primary schools and 1 secondary school here. I think this is because primary school (standards 1-7) is the only level that is mandatory. There are 1888 students in primary school and 207 children under 7.
Most residents are peasants who keep chickens or goats or have small businesses which sell necessities like laundry soap or flip-flops, which I had pretty much already figured out for myself. It seems to me like almost everyone has one of these little shops built into the front of their homes. If they don’t, then they usually sit in front of their house selling something that they have cooked, like my family does with the donut-like food called vitumbua. Only about 50 people, out of the 5570 that are employable work in an office setting.
Corn, rice, cassava, sweet potatoes, sunflowers, and sesame are what are mostly grown in this area. And if I have not already made it clear, they usually eat rice, beans, and spinach or cabbage (as I have generally eaten 2 times a day since I have been here).
The average income of a villager in Magomeni is about 750 Tanzanian Shillings per day or roughly 273,750 Tsh per year. This is about $0.75 a day or $273.75 a year, which I thought was pretty staggering. But I guess that gets them what they need. I asked my teacher how much she pays for electricity and she says that she buys a card with a certain amount of energy allowed on the card, and when that card is gone then there is no more electricity. She said it usually costs about $10 a month in Dar, which is a big city here and would be more expensive than it would be here in Magomeni.
Talking with the village leaders today really got me thinking about what I could do to improve the situation around here already. I was reminded what I am here to do in the first place. It’s hard to access what they feel like they are missing and what would work if implemented; then again, I’ve only been living in this village for a week. I guess that is the point of having us live in one place for 2 years. So we can make a comprehensive assessment of what the village feels like it needs and how to best create a program to meet that need that will be sustainable after we leave. I haven’t really asked, but it seems like people are ok with what they have here. I’m trying to think of things that I had growing up that they don’t have that they may want, but in doing that I realize that we are more similar than I might have thought. A lot of what I did growing up I could do here. Playing in the streets with my friends, writing stories, using my imagination. But I hope that I eventually get the opportunity at my site to start some type of an after school program that has organized activities that will encourage more development within each person. Maybe a writing class, or a girl’s club or a sports league.
I think that there are kids willing to participate in these sorts of things if only someone would organize it for them. For instance, yesterday after school we didn’t feel like going home yet so Luke (a fellow trainee) got out a soccer ball and we walked to the soccer field that is by one of the primary schools here, within 5 minutes, there were about 25 kids gathered around to play. Three of my fellow trainees played soccer with a bunch of little boys while I sat on the sidelines and practiced talking in Swahili to about 25 other people that had gathered around me. I feel like I did pretty well. I was able to tell them what I was doing here, when I got here, how long I would be here, where I came from, etc. They even asked me about George Bush, Osama bin Laden, and Iraq. Then through charades I was able to determine that one of them was talking about the execution of Sadaam Hussein. So yeah, good times there.
I know it’s too early in the game to be making all these kinds of plans, but it at least got the wheels turning. We talked a lot about how there are similar problems in America with people who get educated leaving the smaller towns to move to big cities and leaving the small towns underdeveloped. I’ve only been in Tanzanian for two weeks and already I’m seeing a new perspective on things. JFK kept coming to mind with, “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.” But then again, it was JFK who started the Peace Corps in the first place, so I guess he had it figured out. We can all do something to improve the lives of others, no matter where, or for who, or how small. I know that sounds cheesy, but I think it’s a nice attitude to try to keep in mind.
June 26, 2008 Sometimes All You Need Is A Little Time Lying in the Grass
It’s been an interesting couple of days, but then again, I’m pretty sure that’s going to be a regular occurrence here for a while. Yesterday we pretty much did the same thing that we did the day before except for instead of visiting the local village government officials we went to see the Kilosa District government officials, and I got a taste of some potential frustrations that I am going to face once I actually have to start working on projects here. First of all, we were about 45 minutes late being picked up from our CBT in Magomeni to get to Kilosa Town, but this is a pretty regular thing, and we definitely were not the last group to arrive. So once we all got there, we stood around outside waiting for about 30 minutes, then they informed us that the people we were supposed to be meeting with were still in another meeting, but they had sent a message in to them to let them know that we were here and they would be out in a few minutes. They moved us inside to sit and wait for another 30 minutes or so and one of the trainers came in at some point with a classic line, “Eventually things may about to get started soon.” I feel like that is pretty much going to be the way that time works around here. Current volunteers that have been coming to visit us at our training sites have told us to expect meetings to start as much as 6 hours late. It actually even says in our cultural adjustment book that time is the tool and servant of the people; there is always more time. Relationships come first here. If you have a meeting to go to but a guest stops by when you’re on your way out, the meeting can wait.
So anyway, the meeting got started pretty late. And when it finally did get started, we weren’t really getting straight answers to a lot of our questions. When asked if the students received any direct sex education in schools or any type of info about the prevention of HIV, the answer was at first yes, then a muddled up version of kind of, then one of our language teachers who also works as a teacher here pretty much said it doesn’t happen. They train the teachers to teach the kids about health issues, but it’s not really a mandatory curriculum that is enforced. Sex is a really taboo and private subject here so it is a little difficult to teach them how to prevent STIs when you can’t talk about sex openly.
Later that day me and the other trainees in my CBT were walking around Magomeni and we stopped to talk to some Masii that were playing pool in the middle of town. I may be spelling that wrong, but the Masii are the most well known tribe in Tanzanian. They are cattle herders that live in the bush and dress in traditional garb. However, at least in Magomeni, they also come into town to hang out and play pool and talk to us Wazungu. Its pretty interesting. One Masii man was trying to sell another Masii man to my friend Catherine for four cows so she could take him with her back to America. Unfortunately she didn’t bring her cows with her that day so we couldn’t seal the deal.
Today was MATI day, which is the day that all of the CBTs get together at the MATI training center in Ilonga. I think I’m really going to continue looking forward to these days. Its nice to see everyone else and hear what’s been going on in the other villages and just to get out of Magomeni for a little while. We heard that two more people have decided to go home, so that means we’ve lost three in our first two weeks. We got another vaccine today, which makes that I think the fifth one I’ve had in the last 3 weeks, but it’s all good. Today we talked about mental health and the prevention of STI’s and HIV for ourselves, not to teach others. We even brushed up on how to put a condom on correctly, which had that whole awkward 5th grade sex education feel to it, but it made for a fun day.
I laughed a lot today and I was in a really good mood until the ride home from Ilonga. The roads here are so bad, which is not so good for those who get car sick. So I was feeling really nautious when we got back, and when I’m sick, I get in a bad mood. Which was made worse by the fact that as soon as we got out of the car a guy on a bike stopped to talk to us and tell us all that he wanted to marry us so he could go to America and whatnot, which can get kind of old pretty fast when you’re already not in a good mood.
I was kind of upset that my good mood was ruined so fast. This is the most bipolar experience you could possibly imagine. So feeling pretty annoyed/depressed, I decided to go lay in the grass with two of the other girls in my group, which turned out to be all I needed. We spread out a cloth and lied down, and pretty much immediately a crowd started forming. First it was just one man, who I think was asking us in Swahili why we weren’t at home cleaning. Then he started asking us what a bunch of different Swahili words are in English. Then he just kind of stood there staring at us. And a couple more guys came up and stood there staring at us. Not saying anything at all, just standing over us staring. So when the three of us evaluated the situation, we discovered how hilarious it was and we just cracked up laughing and talked in English about how awkward it was to us and how it was not awkward at all to them to just stand over us staring. Then eventually a crowd of kids came up and we had an all out audience sitting there watching us lay in the grass. Apparently that was entertaining enough for them. And it was entertaining enough for us, because we just kept thinking about how weird it was and laughing hysterically. Laughing is good for the soul. So I soon forgot about how down I was feeling just a few minutes before and was able to find the humor in the situation. I know that’s going to be essential for me to survive here. You just have to be able to laugh.
June 28, 2008 Rats, and Bats and Spiders, Oh My!
So as you can tell by the title, the creatures have started to show themselves for the wazungu. One of my fellow trainees was telling me that there was a bat dive bombing her mosquito net the other night, which sounds pretty horrible. I had a spider on my wall the other night, and might I say, one personality development that has already occurred for me is that I have turned into an insect killer. I used to just let them do their thing as long as they weren’t bothering me, but I have no qualms about squishing a bug these days. But at least I’ve only had a few bugs in my room so far.
However today we did have a rat in our classroom. It was a very interesting experience, as most things have been here in Tanzania. None of us saw this rat when we came in this morning, but about two hours into our lesson, Catherine (a fellow trainee in my CBT) looked under the table and very calmly said, “Um, has that been there this whole time?” And I, who was sitting right next to her, looked down and saw a considerable sized rat chilling by our feet, so we all got up relatively calmly and soon realized it was dead. We’re all convinced that it had eaten some rat poisoning earlier in the day and crawled under the table and died without us noticing, which is really weird. But it made for an exciting morning anyway.
Other than that things are moving along quite nicely. I’m feeling pretty good about my Swahili and I can’t wait to learn more and more everyday. I’m still feeling that daily short little pang of “what in the world am I doing here?” but I’m at least starting to get into a routine and I’m becoming pretty good friends with the other 4 trainees in my CBT, which is really helpful. Yesterday Catherine came over to my house and we just sat and talked about life, and love, and all kinds of existential and important things like that. And it was nice to be able to see that we’re all in this together.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Sunday, June 22, 2008
The First Two Weeks in Tanzania
6-14-08 Arrival in Africa 10:00PM
It feels so strange to finally be here. I have been imagining what it will feel like for a while now, but somehow this isn’t what I had in mind. I thought I would be scared, or anxious, or feel out of place, but I actually feel fine. I know I’ve only been here a few days so it’s hard to tell but so far I think I’m going to really enjoy my time here.
The flight here definitely felt like it took forever. We had to check out of our hotel in Washington DC at 5:30 AM on Tuesday, then go get a Yellow Fever vaccine, then chill at the airport for several hours, then fly 8.5 hours to Frankfurt, then wait, then fly an hour to Zurich, then wait, then fly another 8 hours to Nairobi, then about another hour to Dar es Salaam. When all was said and done it was about 9PM Wednesday at the time we arrived to the place we stayed in Dar es Salaam.
We stayed in some kind of Catholic Mission School in Dar where most of us had our own room and shower and sink and toilet with running water. Granted that water was cold, and sporadic, but it was more than I thought we would have which was really nice. And to top it all off we even had electricity with an electric fan. I was pretty excited about that. In Dar, we pretty much just hung out mostly. We went over a few important things to keep in mind for food and water safety and got 3 more vaccines, which were really not cool. Generally I don’t mind needles, but I must admit these kinda made my arm hurt all day long. But I decided I’d rather have a Hepatitis A Vaccine than have Hep A so I went with it. We had some time to get to know fellow trainees and just try to recoup from jet lag, which I don’t really think I had in the first place, but it was nice to be able to relax a bit.
The other day a few of us walked around the back end of the compound to throw a Frisbee around and a couple of Tanzanian boys riding their bikes around stopped to play with us. They were so cute. Later another man stopped to play with us to and he was so friendly. He really wanted us to come by his house which was pretty much right where we were playing. He spoke a little English and we tried to speak whatever Swahili we knew. He introduced us to his sister and sister-in-law and they taught us a few things. It was really nice. Tanzanian people really are warm and friendly. We talked about how to deal with all the attention we would most likely be getting in our villages because a lot of the people we will be living around may have never even seen a white person and they will probably all be staring at us all the time. In Dar, I’m sure many of them have because it is a big city with an international airport, but nonetheless, people looked at us of course. But I found that every time I greeted them in Swahili they smiled and greeted me back.
We also had a little boy come play hackey-sack with us (and by us, I mean the people who know how to play hackey-sack and not so much me). He was so funny. Instead of kicking it, every time we gave it to him he would walk up to this little slab of concrete and throw it as hard as he could like a pitcher. And we kept trying to ask his name in Swahili but he was being shy. We he finally kicked it, he thought it was so funny and he just kept kicking it and laughing hysterically. It was so adorable.
Today we left Dar and had quite a life experience bus ride over to Morogoro three hours in from Dar. Let’s just say that our bus driver was in a hurry and he was very confident in his control of the road. As if it’s not enough to get used to that they drive on the other side of the road here, apparently there are no traffic laws either. But hey, it’s all part of the adventure. They’re from here and I’m not, so I’m going to go ahead and trust. I figure I ride with enough crazy drivers in the US to be used to it (you know who you are people).
Morogoro is really beautiful. There are giant mountains right behind the place we will be staying for the next two days and just really nice landscape all around. And there are fewer mosquitos here so that is nice.
We finally started our formal Kiswahili lessons today but we didn’t do too much. We pretty much just learned greetings, which most of us had already learned on our own by interacting with Tanzanians that we staying at the same place as us in Dar, but I know we have to start somewhere. I just can’t wait to learn it. I really want to try hard to be as fluent as possible. I feel like the more language ability I have, the more personality I will be able to have, and I really want to integrate into Tanzanian society as much as I can.
So I am really looking forward to training. Pretty much everything is going well. I am kind of concerned that I am already starting to get tired of eating the same thing everyday, but I think once I get to my site I will be able to have more control over that so it won’t be so bad. Not that it is bad now, I mean the food is good, it’s just always the same. For breakfast its generally some kind of bread that has been fried that tastes somewhere between a biscuit and a donut, some wonton like thing with meat inside, hard boiled eggs, watermelon and either mango juice, coffee, or tea. Lunch and dinner are usually rice, some stew like substance with beef chunks (I’m guessing), shredded cabbage dish, something like lo mien noodles, fried potatoes or bananas, fish and or chicken wings, and some other lentil dish. At the place in Dar they served us pizza they tastes like the Chef Boy-R-Dee kind that comes from the box and hamburgers, but I feel like maybe that we just because we’re American and they thought that would be a nice thing to feed us. I don’t really know if they actually eat that themselves or not.
Just so everyone knows, from what I can gather it’s going to be about week 8 before I get a phone, so hopefully you can try to not forget about me from now until then. I’m hoping I will have some internet access during the wait until then, otherwise these blog entries will be pretty useless, but please feel free to write letters until then. I promise I’ll write back.
6-18-08 Settling In
Tonight is my third night in my CBT village. CBT stands for Community Based Training. Our group of 49 has been divided up into several small groups of 5 or 6 and placed in smaller villages in the district of Kilosa. The village I am staying in is called Magomeni. Every morning, Mon-Sat the four other trainees in my group and I will meet with our teacher at the house she is staying at in Magomeni for Kiswahili lessons. Except every Thursday will go to Ilonga to a place called MATI to be will the entire group of 49 and learn more about health and security, have workshops for our technical job training, get vaccinations and things like that.
I am staying with the Kigaile family and they are wonderful. There are a bunch of kids that are always around their house. I know that most of them live here, but I’m not sure about some of the others. I was a little confused at first because my “mama” told me she had five kids but there were definitely a lot more than five kids around. And later I asked the oldest daughter Fatuma to write down everyone’s names for me and she wrote about 4 girls and 3 boys. It made a little more sense today when I found out that my “baba” has two wives. So the first one I met is “mama mkubwa” (which means big mama) and the other one is “mama mdogo” (which means little mama).
The older kids are helping me learn Swahili and one of the boys that is in school has me pronounce some of his homework words in English, and might I say, they are teaching him so strange and difficult English words. Last night he asked me to pronounce “grooved” like a grooved wheel. I wanted to tell him that we never use that word so he shouldn’t worry about it. He also had me say “adultery” and I really wanted to ask why his school felt like that was an important word to know. Tonight he wrote down “urine” and asked me how to say it, which I thought was pretty funny.
The younger kids are making this process so much easier for me. It started to hit me yesterday that this is how I am going to live for the next two years. I’m not going home in a couple of months. I’m in it for the long haul. I got a little freaked out so I started getting homesick, which was made worse by the fact that I do not have phone yet so I can’t call home to talk to anyone. The fact that they do not have a post office in Magomeni doesn’t help either. I have to go into Kilosa Town for that. Our group figured out that we can rent bikes and try to ride there on a Sunday when we have to day off from studying to use the internet café and post office, which makes me feel little better. I think some of that fear comes in realizing that almost everything is different. The language, the bathing methods, the cooking, even the way they tell time is different. Here, when you wake up in the morning (which is assumed to be 6am) that is twelve, so seven, when you have been awake for one hour that is one, eight is two, etc. I was feeling a little overwhelmed with it all and started to question my ability to finish what I started. But then I realized that today was only my second day in Magomeni and everyday by the end of the day I feel better than when it started. I’ve learned a little more Swahili. I feel more comfortable talking to the villagers. And everyday when I get home all of the little kids want me to dance with them. They have a radio that is always on. Every time a song comes in English they want me to sing it. Sometimes, when its 50 Cent for instance, I don’t know the words and they don’t really understand why I don’t because they know that I am from America and 50 Cent is from America so I should know his songs. They all seem to like 50 Cent and Akon, and I’ve actually heard several people ask me about Shakira. If we aren’t dancing around in the kitchen, then we are sitting out in the courtyard area and they are teaching me songs and words in Swahili.
I’ve had more than one person start singing the Akon song “Nobody want to see us together but it don’t matter, no…” But what is funny about it is that they don’t understand what he says after that so they’ve just made it up in Swahili as far as I can tell. Instead of saying “…cuz I’ve got you” next like Akon says, they say “…saa tatu” which means –its three o’clock-.
Today when I got home they taught me a game. It’s basically a combination of dodge ball, jacks, and monkey in the middle. Two people stand a little ways across from each other and they are the ones who throw the ball. One person stands in the middle. In the middle there is also a pile of bottle caps on the ground. The object of the game is basically to pick up all the bottle caps and then drop them all and pick the all back up again as many times as you can before the people hit you with the ball. But if you catch the ball that is thrown at you then you can toss it away so the people on the outside have to go get it which gives you more time to pick up the caps. It was pretty fun, but I was pretty much no good at it. They were impressed that I at least understood the rules just by watching a couple of times though. I guess I’ll have to practice.
I understand what Peace Corps means when the say that you are going to feel like a rock star in your host country. Everywhere I go I have a little posse of kids following me around. A lot of times when I great them in Swahili they will answer me then laugh and run away, then sneak back up and follow me around. Its really cute. When I’m with the kids in my host family, they all want to dance with me or sit with me or hold my hand. It is really cute. However, what is not so cool is that the baby cries every time she gets close to me. I’m pretty sure I’m the first white person she has ever seen and she is so scared of me. They kept saying to her, “Sakina, dada.” (Sakina, this is your sister) She would look about it quizzically, but if they tried to hand her to me, she started screaming. Yesterday they were trying to tie her to my back the way that they carry their babies here and she was freaking out. I felt bad for her. One of the neighbor babies started crying when she saw me today too. Its funny. I think they’ll warm up to me eventually.
Everyone wakes up really early here. I don’t have an alarm clock but there are plenty of roosters around to make you aware of when the sun is coming up, and to them that means get up apparently. The first day I thought they would wake me up when I should get ready for school, apparently not, I was like 25 minutes late to school, oh and I broke a plate when I was trying to eat breakfast quickly before I went. Great start, huh? But it got better. I really like the other people in my CBT group and it’s nice to be able to hang out with them all day and share this experience with other people going through the same thing. Today I tried to get up earlier so I wouldn’t be late. I got up at about 6:25 and I felt like I had plenty of time, but tonight Fatuma told me to wake up faster tomorrow. Apparently I’m going to have to get used to going to bed early and waking up early. I guess that makes more sense because there is more to do in the morning than at night. I have to wake up early enough to walk to the well to pump my water, which is kind of exciting. I have not attempted to carry the water on my head yet, but I think I will soon. It’s just that there are a lot of people out at the well early in the morning getting water for the day and I don’t want to look dumb if I can’t figure out how to get it on top of my head without spilling it everywhere. I do have electricity where I live, but that doesn’t mean much. We have one radio in the kitchen which is nice, but it’s not like I can sit around watching HBO after dinner or anything like that. I am glad to some electricity though so I can keep a charge on everything that needs one. Only three out of the five of us have it, so I am lucky.
I feel like such an old lady going to bad so early, but I think I have to if I am going to make myself into a morning person. Lala Salama (Sleep Peacefully).
6-20-08 Surviving Week One
I’ve only been studying Swahili for four days now and I am already feeling a little more confident in my ability to talk to people. In Tanzanian culture, greetings are very important, so you’re off to a good start if you know a variety of greetings. Greetings can take 10-15 minutes sometimes…(How is your father, how is your mother, how is your studies, are you well, how are your chickens and so on and so forth). Its kind of nice actually. I’m starting to get to know some of my neighbors. They all remember my name is I’m trying really hard to remember other people’s names. I must admit, this has been a pretty exhausting few days though.
When everyone kept saying that all you’re going to want to do at the end of the day of training is to go right to sleep, I was saying to myself that I wouldn’t, that I would be the one that was up all night with nothing to do. But that is most definitely not the case. Last night I went to sleep at 9PM and I was half asleep an hour before that. I really wanted to just skip dinner and go right to bed, but I thought that would probably be rude. Its tough to adjusting to feeling like a child again, like I can’t make my own decisions. I eat when I am given food and I eat what I am given. They’ll tell me when the day is for clothes washing. I don’t feel like I can go sit in my room alone until its time to go to sleep because all of the kids want me to play with them. They are fun, and I do want to spend time with my host family and learn as much as I can, but when I’ve been at “school” for 9 hours, I would kind of like to just sit down and relax for a few in relative quiet. I say relative quiet because these kids LOVE the little noise makers that you blow for New Year’s Eve. EVERYONE has them and they start it up at around 6 or 7 am and keep it going until probably around 9 pm. But I’m in my room with my “relative quiet” (i.e. I definitely can hear all the noise makers outside) right now writing this, so I guess next time I need some time to myself I should just ask. I found out last night that I am the third volunteer that this family has had so I think they’ll understand.
Yesterday our teacher stopped class a few hours later and walked with us into Kilosa Town so we could see what all is available there. I was finally able to mail some letters, which makes me feel a little better, and we found an internet café that we plan on walking to every Sunday afternoon. Loyce, my teacher, said it would be ok if we ended class a little early once every couple of weeks so we could make it to the post office before it closes. There are shops that sell ice cream and chocolate in Kilosa Town too, which is pretty exciting I must say. I looked into the phone situation to see if a SIM card from a service that operates around here would work in my old phone that I brought with me from America, but that test failed. So it looks like it is indeed going to be about 2 months before I can get a phone because even though I have the money in US Dollars, I don’t think there is a place around here that exchanges money. So I have to wait until the end of week 8 when we go to Dar es Salaam again for site announcements so I can exchange money to buy the phone and SIM card. So it looks like its going to be mostly email for now. So definitely email me (kgillman@ufl.edu) or send me a message on facebook or whatever you want.
I’m still basically experiencing the same ups and downs, but that’s what the Peace Corps handbook said it would feel like. Some people get in country and start counting down the days until they can go home, but for most people they get comfortable and that feeling goes away. Right now it’s just difficult because everything is so different from what I know so there is so much adjusting to do. We all have to remember to celebrate the small things. For instance, yesterday I carried a bucket of water on my head from the well to my house for my shower. I don’t see how these women carry so much stuff on their heads. I just had that one bucket of water that I was supporting with both hands and didn’t have all that far to walk and it hurt my head pretty bad, it actually left a bump. I think next time I’m going to try to wrap a khonga (piece of cloth) around my head first for some padding. I’m just going to take is slow. I saw a girl with 2 buckets of water stacked on her head today, I have no idea how she did that.
Every time I walk to or from school I have a little posse of neighbor kids that follow me for a while jumping up and down chanting “Mzungu! Mzungu!” which is what they call foreign people. Its not an insult, its just a label I guess. I think it’s funny when the kids say “Shikamoo Mzungu” to me. Shikamoo is the proper way to greet a person who is at least four years older than you to show respect.
So as of right now, I’m just going to keep on keeping on. It’s been an interesting experience thus far and hopefully I’ll settle into a routine soon.
6-21-08 First MATI Day
Not too much to add today. Just that today was our first day meeting as our whole group again since we all went to our homestays. We will be meeting once a week at a place called MATI in the village Ilonga. One person decided to go home the day after she got to her homestay. Nothing against the family, I think she had already decided that this just wasn’t for her. Which is understandable, it is definitely hard. But other than that, it was nice to see everyone else again and talk with other people about how their homestay families are and hear stories of what kinds of funny cultural misunderstandings have gone down so far.
For instance, one of my friends was trying to practice her Swahili with her family and she was telling the all what they were doing at the time in Swahili. However, whenever she tried to tell her host sister that she was drinking water, which would be unakunywa, she accidentally told her she was pooping, anakunya. I think that who ever invented this language made those two words so similar on purpose just so that situations like this could occur.
Another one of my friends was trying to tell her host sister that she thought that she had pretty eyes, but her host sister was not understanding what she was saying at all. She came to find out later that what she was actually saying was more like, “I think you have an eye.”
I found out there have been several instances of dropping or almost dropping things down the choo (the hole where you use the bathroom). Glad I’m not the only one. The area where I take my bucket baths and the area where the choo is, is only separated by a short wall at my house. When I take my bucket baths I put my soap and such on this wall. Yesterday I nearly knocked my face wash down the choo, which would have been unfortunate.
After all the story sharing, we had a nice long lovely chat about malaria, and got our second dose of the lovely rabies vaccine and talked about our training site’s emergency action plan. Then finally we divided into our health and environment groups and got an introduction to technical training, which was very energizing to me. We went over what the Health Education Program’s goals and objectives are and discussed some possible projects to implement that would address the different goals. It helped remind me what exactly I am doing here and it made me very excited to get out there and do something!
Tomorrow I am going to hand wash all of my clothes and help sweep and clean up before walking to town to use the internet so I better go ahead and get some sleep. More to come next week…
It feels so strange to finally be here. I have been imagining what it will feel like for a while now, but somehow this isn’t what I had in mind. I thought I would be scared, or anxious, or feel out of place, but I actually feel fine. I know I’ve only been here a few days so it’s hard to tell but so far I think I’m going to really enjoy my time here.
The flight here definitely felt like it took forever. We had to check out of our hotel in Washington DC at 5:30 AM on Tuesday, then go get a Yellow Fever vaccine, then chill at the airport for several hours, then fly 8.5 hours to Frankfurt, then wait, then fly an hour to Zurich, then wait, then fly another 8 hours to Nairobi, then about another hour to Dar es Salaam. When all was said and done it was about 9PM Wednesday at the time we arrived to the place we stayed in Dar es Salaam.
We stayed in some kind of Catholic Mission School in Dar where most of us had our own room and shower and sink and toilet with running water. Granted that water was cold, and sporadic, but it was more than I thought we would have which was really nice. And to top it all off we even had electricity with an electric fan. I was pretty excited about that. In Dar, we pretty much just hung out mostly. We went over a few important things to keep in mind for food and water safety and got 3 more vaccines, which were really not cool. Generally I don’t mind needles, but I must admit these kinda made my arm hurt all day long. But I decided I’d rather have a Hepatitis A Vaccine than have Hep A so I went with it. We had some time to get to know fellow trainees and just try to recoup from jet lag, which I don’t really think I had in the first place, but it was nice to be able to relax a bit.
The other day a few of us walked around the back end of the compound to throw a Frisbee around and a couple of Tanzanian boys riding their bikes around stopped to play with us. They were so cute. Later another man stopped to play with us to and he was so friendly. He really wanted us to come by his house which was pretty much right where we were playing. He spoke a little English and we tried to speak whatever Swahili we knew. He introduced us to his sister and sister-in-law and they taught us a few things. It was really nice. Tanzanian people really are warm and friendly. We talked about how to deal with all the attention we would most likely be getting in our villages because a lot of the people we will be living around may have never even seen a white person and they will probably all be staring at us all the time. In Dar, I’m sure many of them have because it is a big city with an international airport, but nonetheless, people looked at us of course. But I found that every time I greeted them in Swahili they smiled and greeted me back.
We also had a little boy come play hackey-sack with us (and by us, I mean the people who know how to play hackey-sack and not so much me). He was so funny. Instead of kicking it, every time we gave it to him he would walk up to this little slab of concrete and throw it as hard as he could like a pitcher. And we kept trying to ask his name in Swahili but he was being shy. We he finally kicked it, he thought it was so funny and he just kept kicking it and laughing hysterically. It was so adorable.
Today we left Dar and had quite a life experience bus ride over to Morogoro three hours in from Dar. Let’s just say that our bus driver was in a hurry and he was very confident in his control of the road. As if it’s not enough to get used to that they drive on the other side of the road here, apparently there are no traffic laws either. But hey, it’s all part of the adventure. They’re from here and I’m not, so I’m going to go ahead and trust. I figure I ride with enough crazy drivers in the US to be used to it (you know who you are people).
Morogoro is really beautiful. There are giant mountains right behind the place we will be staying for the next two days and just really nice landscape all around. And there are fewer mosquitos here so that is nice.
We finally started our formal Kiswahili lessons today but we didn’t do too much. We pretty much just learned greetings, which most of us had already learned on our own by interacting with Tanzanians that we staying at the same place as us in Dar, but I know we have to start somewhere. I just can’t wait to learn it. I really want to try hard to be as fluent as possible. I feel like the more language ability I have, the more personality I will be able to have, and I really want to integrate into Tanzanian society as much as I can.
So I am really looking forward to training. Pretty much everything is going well. I am kind of concerned that I am already starting to get tired of eating the same thing everyday, but I think once I get to my site I will be able to have more control over that so it won’t be so bad. Not that it is bad now, I mean the food is good, it’s just always the same. For breakfast its generally some kind of bread that has been fried that tastes somewhere between a biscuit and a donut, some wonton like thing with meat inside, hard boiled eggs, watermelon and either mango juice, coffee, or tea. Lunch and dinner are usually rice, some stew like substance with beef chunks (I’m guessing), shredded cabbage dish, something like lo mien noodles, fried potatoes or bananas, fish and or chicken wings, and some other lentil dish. At the place in Dar they served us pizza they tastes like the Chef Boy-R-Dee kind that comes from the box and hamburgers, but I feel like maybe that we just because we’re American and they thought that would be a nice thing to feed us. I don’t really know if they actually eat that themselves or not.
Just so everyone knows, from what I can gather it’s going to be about week 8 before I get a phone, so hopefully you can try to not forget about me from now until then. I’m hoping I will have some internet access during the wait until then, otherwise these blog entries will be pretty useless, but please feel free to write letters until then. I promise I’ll write back.
6-18-08 Settling In
Tonight is my third night in my CBT village. CBT stands for Community Based Training. Our group of 49 has been divided up into several small groups of 5 or 6 and placed in smaller villages in the district of Kilosa. The village I am staying in is called Magomeni. Every morning, Mon-Sat the four other trainees in my group and I will meet with our teacher at the house she is staying at in Magomeni for Kiswahili lessons. Except every Thursday will go to Ilonga to a place called MATI to be will the entire group of 49 and learn more about health and security, have workshops for our technical job training, get vaccinations and things like that.
I am staying with the Kigaile family and they are wonderful. There are a bunch of kids that are always around their house. I know that most of them live here, but I’m not sure about some of the others. I was a little confused at first because my “mama” told me she had five kids but there were definitely a lot more than five kids around. And later I asked the oldest daughter Fatuma to write down everyone’s names for me and she wrote about 4 girls and 3 boys. It made a little more sense today when I found out that my “baba” has two wives. So the first one I met is “mama mkubwa” (which means big mama) and the other one is “mama mdogo” (which means little mama).
The older kids are helping me learn Swahili and one of the boys that is in school has me pronounce some of his homework words in English, and might I say, they are teaching him so strange and difficult English words. Last night he asked me to pronounce “grooved” like a grooved wheel. I wanted to tell him that we never use that word so he shouldn’t worry about it. He also had me say “adultery” and I really wanted to ask why his school felt like that was an important word to know. Tonight he wrote down “urine” and asked me how to say it, which I thought was pretty funny.
The younger kids are making this process so much easier for me. It started to hit me yesterday that this is how I am going to live for the next two years. I’m not going home in a couple of months. I’m in it for the long haul. I got a little freaked out so I started getting homesick, which was made worse by the fact that I do not have phone yet so I can’t call home to talk to anyone. The fact that they do not have a post office in Magomeni doesn’t help either. I have to go into Kilosa Town for that. Our group figured out that we can rent bikes and try to ride there on a Sunday when we have to day off from studying to use the internet café and post office, which makes me feel little better. I think some of that fear comes in realizing that almost everything is different. The language, the bathing methods, the cooking, even the way they tell time is different. Here, when you wake up in the morning (which is assumed to be 6am) that is twelve, so seven, when you have been awake for one hour that is one, eight is two, etc. I was feeling a little overwhelmed with it all and started to question my ability to finish what I started. But then I realized that today was only my second day in Magomeni and everyday by the end of the day I feel better than when it started. I’ve learned a little more Swahili. I feel more comfortable talking to the villagers. And everyday when I get home all of the little kids want me to dance with them. They have a radio that is always on. Every time a song comes in English they want me to sing it. Sometimes, when its 50 Cent for instance, I don’t know the words and they don’t really understand why I don’t because they know that I am from America and 50 Cent is from America so I should know his songs. They all seem to like 50 Cent and Akon, and I’ve actually heard several people ask me about Shakira. If we aren’t dancing around in the kitchen, then we are sitting out in the courtyard area and they are teaching me songs and words in Swahili.
I’ve had more than one person start singing the Akon song “Nobody want to see us together but it don’t matter, no…” But what is funny about it is that they don’t understand what he says after that so they’ve just made it up in Swahili as far as I can tell. Instead of saying “…cuz I’ve got you” next like Akon says, they say “…saa tatu” which means –its three o’clock-.
Today when I got home they taught me a game. It’s basically a combination of dodge ball, jacks, and monkey in the middle. Two people stand a little ways across from each other and they are the ones who throw the ball. One person stands in the middle. In the middle there is also a pile of bottle caps on the ground. The object of the game is basically to pick up all the bottle caps and then drop them all and pick the all back up again as many times as you can before the people hit you with the ball. But if you catch the ball that is thrown at you then you can toss it away so the people on the outside have to go get it which gives you more time to pick up the caps. It was pretty fun, but I was pretty much no good at it. They were impressed that I at least understood the rules just by watching a couple of times though. I guess I’ll have to practice.
I understand what Peace Corps means when the say that you are going to feel like a rock star in your host country. Everywhere I go I have a little posse of kids following me around. A lot of times when I great them in Swahili they will answer me then laugh and run away, then sneak back up and follow me around. Its really cute. When I’m with the kids in my host family, they all want to dance with me or sit with me or hold my hand. It is really cute. However, what is not so cool is that the baby cries every time she gets close to me. I’m pretty sure I’m the first white person she has ever seen and she is so scared of me. They kept saying to her, “Sakina, dada.” (Sakina, this is your sister) She would look about it quizzically, but if they tried to hand her to me, she started screaming. Yesterday they were trying to tie her to my back the way that they carry their babies here and she was freaking out. I felt bad for her. One of the neighbor babies started crying when she saw me today too. Its funny. I think they’ll warm up to me eventually.
Everyone wakes up really early here. I don’t have an alarm clock but there are plenty of roosters around to make you aware of when the sun is coming up, and to them that means get up apparently. The first day I thought they would wake me up when I should get ready for school, apparently not, I was like 25 minutes late to school, oh and I broke a plate when I was trying to eat breakfast quickly before I went. Great start, huh? But it got better. I really like the other people in my CBT group and it’s nice to be able to hang out with them all day and share this experience with other people going through the same thing. Today I tried to get up earlier so I wouldn’t be late. I got up at about 6:25 and I felt like I had plenty of time, but tonight Fatuma told me to wake up faster tomorrow. Apparently I’m going to have to get used to going to bed early and waking up early. I guess that makes more sense because there is more to do in the morning than at night. I have to wake up early enough to walk to the well to pump my water, which is kind of exciting. I have not attempted to carry the water on my head yet, but I think I will soon. It’s just that there are a lot of people out at the well early in the morning getting water for the day and I don’t want to look dumb if I can’t figure out how to get it on top of my head without spilling it everywhere. I do have electricity where I live, but that doesn’t mean much. We have one radio in the kitchen which is nice, but it’s not like I can sit around watching HBO after dinner or anything like that. I am glad to some electricity though so I can keep a charge on everything that needs one. Only three out of the five of us have it, so I am lucky.
I feel like such an old lady going to bad so early, but I think I have to if I am going to make myself into a morning person. Lala Salama (Sleep Peacefully).
6-20-08 Surviving Week One
I’ve only been studying Swahili for four days now and I am already feeling a little more confident in my ability to talk to people. In Tanzanian culture, greetings are very important, so you’re off to a good start if you know a variety of greetings. Greetings can take 10-15 minutes sometimes…(How is your father, how is your mother, how is your studies, are you well, how are your chickens and so on and so forth). Its kind of nice actually. I’m starting to get to know some of my neighbors. They all remember my name is I’m trying really hard to remember other people’s names. I must admit, this has been a pretty exhausting few days though.
When everyone kept saying that all you’re going to want to do at the end of the day of training is to go right to sleep, I was saying to myself that I wouldn’t, that I would be the one that was up all night with nothing to do. But that is most definitely not the case. Last night I went to sleep at 9PM and I was half asleep an hour before that. I really wanted to just skip dinner and go right to bed, but I thought that would probably be rude. Its tough to adjusting to feeling like a child again, like I can’t make my own decisions. I eat when I am given food and I eat what I am given. They’ll tell me when the day is for clothes washing. I don’t feel like I can go sit in my room alone until its time to go to sleep because all of the kids want me to play with them. They are fun, and I do want to spend time with my host family and learn as much as I can, but when I’ve been at “school” for 9 hours, I would kind of like to just sit down and relax for a few in relative quiet. I say relative quiet because these kids LOVE the little noise makers that you blow for New Year’s Eve. EVERYONE has them and they start it up at around 6 or 7 am and keep it going until probably around 9 pm. But I’m in my room with my “relative quiet” (i.e. I definitely can hear all the noise makers outside) right now writing this, so I guess next time I need some time to myself I should just ask. I found out last night that I am the third volunteer that this family has had so I think they’ll understand.
Yesterday our teacher stopped class a few hours later and walked with us into Kilosa Town so we could see what all is available there. I was finally able to mail some letters, which makes me feel a little better, and we found an internet café that we plan on walking to every Sunday afternoon. Loyce, my teacher, said it would be ok if we ended class a little early once every couple of weeks so we could make it to the post office before it closes. There are shops that sell ice cream and chocolate in Kilosa Town too, which is pretty exciting I must say. I looked into the phone situation to see if a SIM card from a service that operates around here would work in my old phone that I brought with me from America, but that test failed. So it looks like it is indeed going to be about 2 months before I can get a phone because even though I have the money in US Dollars, I don’t think there is a place around here that exchanges money. So I have to wait until the end of week 8 when we go to Dar es Salaam again for site announcements so I can exchange money to buy the phone and SIM card. So it looks like its going to be mostly email for now. So definitely email me (kgillman@ufl.edu) or send me a message on facebook or whatever you want.
I’m still basically experiencing the same ups and downs, but that’s what the Peace Corps handbook said it would feel like. Some people get in country and start counting down the days until they can go home, but for most people they get comfortable and that feeling goes away. Right now it’s just difficult because everything is so different from what I know so there is so much adjusting to do. We all have to remember to celebrate the small things. For instance, yesterday I carried a bucket of water on my head from the well to my house for my shower. I don’t see how these women carry so much stuff on their heads. I just had that one bucket of water that I was supporting with both hands and didn’t have all that far to walk and it hurt my head pretty bad, it actually left a bump. I think next time I’m going to try to wrap a khonga (piece of cloth) around my head first for some padding. I’m just going to take is slow. I saw a girl with 2 buckets of water stacked on her head today, I have no idea how she did that.
Every time I walk to or from school I have a little posse of neighbor kids that follow me for a while jumping up and down chanting “Mzungu! Mzungu!” which is what they call foreign people. Its not an insult, its just a label I guess. I think it’s funny when the kids say “Shikamoo Mzungu” to me. Shikamoo is the proper way to greet a person who is at least four years older than you to show respect.
So as of right now, I’m just going to keep on keeping on. It’s been an interesting experience thus far and hopefully I’ll settle into a routine soon.
6-21-08 First MATI Day
Not too much to add today. Just that today was our first day meeting as our whole group again since we all went to our homestays. We will be meeting once a week at a place called MATI in the village Ilonga. One person decided to go home the day after she got to her homestay. Nothing against the family, I think she had already decided that this just wasn’t for her. Which is understandable, it is definitely hard. But other than that, it was nice to see everyone else again and talk with other people about how their homestay families are and hear stories of what kinds of funny cultural misunderstandings have gone down so far.
For instance, one of my friends was trying to practice her Swahili with her family and she was telling the all what they were doing at the time in Swahili. However, whenever she tried to tell her host sister that she was drinking water, which would be unakunywa, she accidentally told her she was pooping, anakunya. I think that who ever invented this language made those two words so similar on purpose just so that situations like this could occur.
Another one of my friends was trying to tell her host sister that she thought that she had pretty eyes, but her host sister was not understanding what she was saying at all. She came to find out later that what she was actually saying was more like, “I think you have an eye.”
I found out there have been several instances of dropping or almost dropping things down the choo (the hole where you use the bathroom). Glad I’m not the only one. The area where I take my bucket baths and the area where the choo is, is only separated by a short wall at my house. When I take my bucket baths I put my soap and such on this wall. Yesterday I nearly knocked my face wash down the choo, which would have been unfortunate.
After all the story sharing, we had a nice long lovely chat about malaria, and got our second dose of the lovely rabies vaccine and talked about our training site’s emergency action plan. Then finally we divided into our health and environment groups and got an introduction to technical training, which was very energizing to me. We went over what the Health Education Program’s goals and objectives are and discussed some possible projects to implement that would address the different goals. It helped remind me what exactly I am doing here and it made me very excited to get out there and do something!
Tomorrow I am going to hand wash all of my clothes and help sweep and clean up before walking to town to use the internet so I better go ahead and get some sleep. More to come next week…
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Reflections on Staging
I've officially made the transformation from Peace Corps Invitee to Peace Corps Trainee this weekend. After not knowing what to expect at all... of my training, of the specifics of my assignment, of the people I will be around for the next 27 months, etc., I feel very reassured about my decision to do this after staging.
When I first arrived in Washington DC, I must admit I had a slight fear of what the other people would be like and if I would find people that I clicked with and could see myself becoming friends with. I worried that other people would find fast friends and I would be left out. Luckily, that is not the case. We've had so much time to mingle and get to know one other the past two days that I feel like I at least know the other 48 people's names and even feel like I've been friends with a couple of them for years because we are clicking so well.
I feel reassured that other people have the same mixture of anxiety and excitment that I do. Its really important for me to remember that we are all in this together. I know that there will be days during my service that I feel frustrated or sad or lonely, and having such cool people to turn to when you are not in the best of moods is a real comfort to me.
These two days in DC have been really helpful, and not just in the way that they are intended to be, by giving us a lot of information that we need to help us stay safe and healthy and to be successful. The whole idea of not necessarily being home, but also not on the other side of the world has provided what I think will prove to be a crucial transition period. Its has been nice to be able to have my phone here and know that I'm still going to get to talk to whoever I want to at the end of the day and for as long as I want. Its been nice to be able to check my email or update my facebook one last time (as lame as that sounds). But I know after tonight all bets are off. I don't know when I will hear those voices on the phone again after we said goodbye tonight. I don't know how often I will be able to use the internet or when I will be able to purchase a phone in Tanzania. And that is both scarry and exhilerating. (On a side note, please feel free to write me using snail mail until I can get the other logistics figured out. I've always loved getting mail regardless.)
I'm really going to try to go with the flow and be flexible. Not to have too many expectations. Not to be worried about what I'm missing back home, but instead focusing on the incredible opportunities and experiences that I am going to have as a Peace Corps Volunteer.
I'm excited. I'm pumped. I'm psyched. I'm ready....
When I first arrived in Washington DC, I must admit I had a slight fear of what the other people would be like and if I would find people that I clicked with and could see myself becoming friends with. I worried that other people would find fast friends and I would be left out. Luckily, that is not the case. We've had so much time to mingle and get to know one other the past two days that I feel like I at least know the other 48 people's names and even feel like I've been friends with a couple of them for years because we are clicking so well.
I feel reassured that other people have the same mixture of anxiety and excitment that I do. Its really important for me to remember that we are all in this together. I know that there will be days during my service that I feel frustrated or sad or lonely, and having such cool people to turn to when you are not in the best of moods is a real comfort to me.
These two days in DC have been really helpful, and not just in the way that they are intended to be, by giving us a lot of information that we need to help us stay safe and healthy and to be successful. The whole idea of not necessarily being home, but also not on the other side of the world has provided what I think will prove to be a crucial transition period. Its has been nice to be able to have my phone here and know that I'm still going to get to talk to whoever I want to at the end of the day and for as long as I want. Its been nice to be able to check my email or update my facebook one last time (as lame as that sounds). But I know after tonight all bets are off. I don't know when I will hear those voices on the phone again after we said goodbye tonight. I don't know how often I will be able to use the internet or when I will be able to purchase a phone in Tanzania. And that is both scarry and exhilerating. (On a side note, please feel free to write me using snail mail until I can get the other logistics figured out. I've always loved getting mail regardless.)
I'm really going to try to go with the flow and be flexible. Not to have too many expectations. Not to be worried about what I'm missing back home, but instead focusing on the incredible opportunities and experiences that I am going to have as a Peace Corps Volunteer.
I'm excited. I'm pumped. I'm psyched. I'm ready....
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Ready to go
Five more days. It has come up on me so fast.
People keep asking me if I'm scared. I don't think that I am anymore.
I wasn't worried about leaving at all until about a month ago. When the people that are close to me started to realize I am leaving it made me realize that I am leaving and I started to second guess myself. I worried about life in the US moving on without me, missing out on what was going on in my friends' lives. People might get married, have kids, and I would miss it. I started to worry about people forgetting about me.
But by now I feel like I've had a chance to say goodbye. To reminisce on old times and look forward to making new memories when I get back. I've been reassured that people will actually miss me. I've had time to buy all the things I need to bring with me (and I'm sure much more than I really need). I feel ready.
So with these last few days, I'm determined to take in every moment. Between shoving as much Swahili as possible into my brain and eating those last few pieces of sushi before I go, I'm determined to spend time with the people I love, have a few last good times, take lots of pictures, hold onto the memories, make them last me 27 monthes.
So now instead of feeling scared, I'm excited for the chance to make new friends, to explore, to grow. I know this experience is going to push me to the limit and I can't wait to see how far I can go.
People keep asking me if I'm scared. I don't think that I am anymore.
I wasn't worried about leaving at all until about a month ago. When the people that are close to me started to realize I am leaving it made me realize that I am leaving and I started to second guess myself. I worried about life in the US moving on without me, missing out on what was going on in my friends' lives. People might get married, have kids, and I would miss it. I started to worry about people forgetting about me.
But by now I feel like I've had a chance to say goodbye. To reminisce on old times and look forward to making new memories when I get back. I've been reassured that people will actually miss me. I've had time to buy all the things I need to bring with me (and I'm sure much more than I really need). I feel ready.
So with these last few days, I'm determined to take in every moment. Between shoving as much Swahili as possible into my brain and eating those last few pieces of sushi before I go, I'm determined to spend time with the people I love, have a few last good times, take lots of pictures, hold onto the memories, make them last me 27 monthes.
So now instead of feeling scared, I'm excited for the chance to make new friends, to explore, to grow. I know this experience is going to push me to the limit and I can't wait to see how far I can go.
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