Dunia Duara..go wherever you go, but you'll return to the same old place...

Sorry but I haven't been on the internet for a week. It's funny how a week seems like a long time when I used to check my email every few hours daily! Please send me your emails, snail mail, and phone calls! I can probably get to the internet about once or twice a week at most. Here is a recap of the recent busy week with the highlights but the structure of what I am trying to write is pretty disorganized, so please forgive me for that. I am also warning you all that this is a long post. I will try and put up pictures of the school sometime later.

We went to Morogoro and were greeted with some dancing to the drums (kucheza ngoma). Morogoro is a nice small town 3 hours from Dar, comparable to Cusco in Peru or Xian in China yet a bit smaller than those. Pretty dusty, warm in the afternoon, and cool at night as it is dry season. Currently there are very few mosquitoes but I have been applying repellant every day just in case. In the main town there are internet cafes and some modern conveniences. I have seen some Indians and Arabs immigrants, expats from various European countries, and local Tanzanians.

After settling into Morogoro, we started our learning of the Kiswahili language pole pole but little by little it is coming along. Our first few days we learned greetings. Greetings are very important in Tanzania. It is proper to greet everyone you see with a greeting dependant on their age and how many one comes in contact with. Right now we are learning present, past and future tenses as well as verbs to describe daily activities. It's funny how far people come along in language when being immersed in it.

We also have learned a little about the Tanzanian school system. There is primary and secondary school. So in all there are 13 years of schooling with people starting at age 7. There will soon be pre-primary which will start students at age 5. Primary school is taught in Swahili and secondary school is taught in English, which can cause some language barriers in secondary school. Secondary school is broken down into O level and A level. As a computer teacher, I will be focusing on a level (grades 12-13) or I will be placed in a Teacher’s College (training teachers). In order to get to A level they have to pass a national exam after O level, very few people in the country pass. I will try and explain more as I learn it but that is the basics for now.

Currently I am staying at a fellow Tanzanian’s house who is not married at the moment but there are two house girls (sort of like maids) who are my dadas (sisters). She is a very welcoming hostess and her place has electricity which is very nice. There is running water but it is currently not working as there is a drought in the area so they carry it from a nearby well. It’s amazing how much I expected it to be like my grandmother’s old 100 year old house in India, instead it is more like my aunt’s place in Mumbai (except that it is a standalone house). I have my own room with my own private bathroom with a Western toilet! And a full sized bed with mosquito net! What luxuries! I do take a bucket bath and most houses do have pit latrines. The food they make is wonderful, as well as the fresh fruit juices. One night I got to help her make some avocado and passion fruit juice. It was yummy! Food wise I have had rice, ugali (spongy maize staple similar in consistency to mashed potatoes but tasteless), uji (sort of like congee but with millet), various types of beans, vegetable stews, eggplant, two kinds of spinach, cassava, chapati, fried dough, bagee, peanut butter with toast, milk, etc. Let’s just say for a vegetarian I have been eating pretty healthy. They cook on a charcoal stove which seems like a lot of work to me. My mama also has an electric stove but it looks like I will have an charcoal stove when I move into my place. Oh and she cooks with a pressure cooker! They have them here and she uses it for beans. They clean (sweep and mop) the house daily due to the dust build up as they don’t have glass windows since that would make the house hot, instead they have screens (to keep out bugs) and bars (to keep out intruders) on their windows. They also wash clothes and dishes by hand- no machines. Yet most middle class families have house girls/boys which are sort of like maids (for the daily cleaning), yet they are considered part of the family and usually live with the family. It hasn’t been to much of a shock as it is similar to the way of life in Indian. I am actually enjoying it here, I don’t feel as though I have to adapt too much.

My day consists of waking up, taking a bath, eating, going to school, having chai, having lunch, coming back from school, studying/playing, eating dinner around 8 pm, taking another bath, and then going to bed. They take bucket baths twice a day here due to the weather. I have been going to school from 8 AM to 5 PM, 6 days a week, but there are lots of breaks during the day for chai (around 10 AM) and lunch (around 1 PM). Pretty soon we will be interning at a school, that will be lots of fun. So far I have taken a look at the curriculum that I will be teaching. It is mostly on how to use the various Office products like word processors, spreadsheets, making a presentation, and making a webpage.

One thing to get used to here is Kiswahili time. Even though it is 7 hours ahead of Eastern Time zone they start their day differently here. 6 AM is considered 12 AM, 7 AM is considered 1 AM, and so on, so to get the Kiswahili time from the real time you need to subtract six from the real time. The reason for this is that they start the day at sunrise and they end the day at sunset. If you ask someone for the time here they will give you it in Kiswahili time, this will take some getting used to but one day I will get used to it.

Some other interesting things are that they drive on the left, unlike the States, but that is something I won‘t take long getting used to. And most roads aren’t paved in town. Most women wear long skirts here but I have seen a few wearing pants. There is no real dominant religion on the mainland but in Zanzibar island it is predominantly Muslim. Yet, everyone gets Eid as a holiday and I can hear the call of prayer in the morning (evening though I am on the mainland). Also, the women and men carry heavy loads on their heads sometimes just balancing it with no hands! Hopefully I can master that someday.

So far my first mini taste of an adventure was going to Morogoro town. We walked into town (about 4 km) but it was getting later in the evening and we wanted to be home before dark, so we wanted to take a daladala (a minibus/minivan). We went to the daladala stand, but one of the guys looked at us foreigners and told us to take the taxi (thinking we were rich). We refused and took another daladala with some nice women who helped us with saying the right thing to shushe (stop) the daladala. Oh independence..it feels so good to explore somewhat on our own. It was also nice to be able to greet everyone on our way into town and surprise them that foreigners know something besides jambo (which is not the proper thing to say).

Well that is it for now. Kwa heri! Tutaonana baadaye!