After a loooong couple of months packed full of traveling and trainings and teachings, I’m finally back in Mbeya. All of the things that I was doing while I was gone were all good and valuable things to be doing, but its nice to be home. Being away for so long then coming back here just makes me realize all over again how much better the Southern Highlands are than the rest of Tanzania. No offense, but its true. The weather is so beautifully chilly and clear here after the sweltering mugginess of Tanga. The laid back atmosphere is a stark contrast to the busy intenseness of Dar es Salaam. The familiarity is nice after being in Morogoro where you’re just another mzungu among the many. So I’m going to try to enjoy it for the few weeks that I’m here before I have to go back to Dar for our Mid-Service Conference at the end of August.
Last time I wrote, I believe I was in Dar after a crazy three weeks of family vacay time. After that I made my way back up to Tanga region for my turn as PCV of the Week, which was really fun. It was nice having people ask me for my advice, it made me feel like I’ve actually made some progress here. I remember Pre-Service Training quite clearly and all I could think was that I was so happy to not be in their place. I know they are anxious to be done and get to their sites. Then, lucky for me, the week that I was there was their one free weekend away from their host families (when we went on the safari to Mikumi last year). Since PST was moved to Muheza in Tanga instead of Kilosa in Morogoro this year, they were too far away from Mikumi to make that their weekend trip so they ended up going to a beautiful beach resort in Pangani Beach and I got to accompany them. This place was really nice. Like the first thought I had walking up to it was I-feel-like-I-should-be-getting-married-here nice. Its run by a former Peace Corps Volunteer and she gave us a huge discount as a special favor to the trainees. So we spent a really nice relaxing weekend on what felt like a private beach or a deserted island in the lap of luxury eating delicious food. There was one little bout of excitement when I few of us decided to walk along the beach to the town to use the ATM while the tide was coming in and had a slightly terrifying moment of having to cling to a wall of coral as the waves got bigger and stronger crashing into us and we kept having to climb higher and higher to find footholds, but we made it out ok, and decided it would be best to take the main road back to the resort.
Last week I was in Morogoro doing a Community Theater workshop where we, along with a counterpart from each of our villages, learned how to use plays to teach about HIV. It turned out to be pretty fun and I actually learned some new presentation techniques and games to use in my village. And if there was an award for most improved actress, it would definitely have gone to my counterpart. She’s generally a pretty shy person, but by the end of the workshop she had really turned it on and gave a great turn as the star of the final play that we preformed at a local high school about stigmitazation.
I got back into Mbeya late Saturday night then Sunday I had another interesting day. I went with my boyfriend out to where he works cutting blocks of stone out of the mountains about 45 minutes away from Mbeya Town. His boss is here from Italy right now and wanted to do something nice for his Tanzanian employees and their families so he paid for an entire cow to be butchered and brought about 100 sodas for the village to have a little meat and soda party. They hooked up a radio to a car battery and had a good time dancing and singing and eating. And despite not particularly eating meat and having to ride down the worst road I have ever been on to get there, I was glad that I got to go. But seriously, that road was terrible. The first quarter of it was like driving through a pile of flour it was so dusty. On the side of the car against the wind, clouds of dust were being hurled up against the window like sheets of rain in a hurricane. I’ve never seen anything like it. But after we passed the dusty part, it seemed that we were driving on a dry river bed. I definitely would not have taken my car down there. It definitely required 4 wheel drive. There were huge rocks everywhere. I’m surprised I didn’t get a concussion banging my head up against the side of the car as we tumbled over them.
So now I’m just looking forward to getting back to work and trying to accomplish some things I wrote down on my to-do list while I was away. But first I guess I should just walk around my village convincing people that I didn’t go back to America, which is what I’m sure they’re all thinking at this point.
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