Wednesday, November 26, 2008

PCV- It's official...

So we are officially PCVs. These past few days consisted of leaving our homestay families, getting ready for swearing in today, and meeting our headmasters of school. Leaving our families was sad. I can say at least for me it was really like leaving a mother. :) I will try and keep in touch though.

The next part was meeting our headmasters. I met my head of department (computer department), as my school is pretty large. He seems like a cool guy and I am excited about teaching and living in Mbeya. We will be traveling together from Dar to Mbeya tomorrow.

Then we have swear in which to the families was graduation of sorts. Some volunteers put on a rocking skit which we all took part in. Then another volunteer said a thank you to the families in Kiswahili which I thought he did well at. We also had speeches from various officials. It felt long as the room was hot but it was like a typical graduation type thing.

The cool part was that the swear in oath we stated is the same oath that our new president will state when he comes into office. Apparently it's the same oath that military personnel and foreign officers state when representing our government.

Overall it was good to see our families and finally feel closure with the first chapter in our PCV experience. Looking forward the next one! Kwa heri till I am in Mbeya. You can check for swear in pictures, in the Swear In folder at: Swear In Pictures

Friday, November 21, 2008

Bustani kwa miasha bora..garden for a better life

Today we learned about permaculture and how we can develop gardens in our communities as a way of making a sustainable food source. It was an interesting topic as the guy who taught it was very passionate about it. I definitely learned alot and feel ashamed of my paltry little tomatoes plants that somehow grew in the Northeast with my obvious lack of knowledge on what the heck I was doing. We learned about double digging, creating a bed, and how to space out seedlings..to make a garden with only a jembe (hoe) as a tool! We also learned how to create a compost pile. I hope to have a garden at my site..that is if I actually have land. On another note pretty soon mango season will hit us over the head..it's in December! And one more note..kiti moto (translates to hot seat) is the term for pork here, because if you eat pork and you are Islamic you will be in the hot seat. On my way to school here I passed an interesting sign..Pata Kiti Moto Kwa Afya..get pork for health. I don't know what to think of that being the vegetarian that I am, but I did take a picture of it.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Shadow and Site Annoucements

Thanks for the bday wishes! I got them. :)

I spent the last week shadowing a fellow PCV in the Pare Mtns and then going to Dar for Site Annoucements. The Pare Mtns site is absolutely beautiful and the work she does is awesome. Her students are real smart as they are Form 5 and 6ers. I can definitely see the difference between them and the Form 1-4er's we taught in Morogoro. Her secondary project that week was to get the students HIV tested as HIV/AIDS is a problem in TZ- they call it UKIMWI over here. Later we met up with some other PCTs and PCVs to go hiking near a waterfall and to see another PCV's site. Then we headed out to Moshi to eat some Italian food, go dancing, and to catch the bus the next day to Dar. We stayed at Backpacker's Hostel in Moshi which was pretty clean and had real showers that were hot! :) My first hot shower in TZ, boy did it feel good.

For Site Annoucements: We had dinner in Dar and celebrated two bdays. Then the next day we had site annoucements. I am going to Mbeya to teach computers at a higher institution of learning (like a college). In case you didn't know Mbeya is in the Southern Highlands area of TZ so that means mountains! I am excited! And apparently there is lots of fruits and veggies there. Yummy. But it is similar to Seattle weather right now: rainy. Half the year is a very cold, dry season and half of it is rainy and less cold but overall it's much cooler than most of TZ. It can get to zero Celsius there! I would say about half our training group will be living in Southern TZ. After site annoucements we had a pre-Thanksgiving dinner at one of the staff member's house in Dar. It was absolutely beautiful house..I felt like I was in the US again.

On another tangent or two:

It is funny to finally meet people's whose blogs I have read before coming out here. It is interesting to finally meet the people behind the writing, some are different in personality than I expected and some are similar. It makes me wonder will the reverse happen when new trainees come next year?

Learning Swahili I find that a few things may carry over when I come back to the States like pole instead of sorry. Bei when someone calls my name. Haya when I want to say ok or when I want to end the conversation.

And here are some pics from shadow/site annoucement week:

Shadow Week Pictures

Monday, November 10, 2008

Piga Picha

Some photos of my time so far in TZ:

PC Tanzania Training Photos

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Visiting other regions..safari njema..

The time is passing and slowly we will be off to our respective sites on Thanksgiving day. The beginning of next week is our final language exams so wish us luck. More ongoings of Morogoro include finally trying out Mama Pierna's which is an Italian Greek restaurant. I tried the pesto there and it is fantastic.

Also we visited local NGO's, one that we visited was Chadoye which uses traditional dancing and drumming to talk about HIV prevention and life skills here in Tanzania. It was interesting to visit and we got to dance to the drums at the end. Apparently they are having a performance on Tuesday and some of us are planning to go. We have secondary projects here besides teaching that we will implement, which include talking about life skills and HIV prevention as it can be a problem here at a young age (whether young gals sleeping with teachers/villagers because they are poor and need money or female circumcision). Also there are various other secondary projects to implement which include: helping villagers generate income, girls empowerment, building a library, etc. We learned how to do a Needs Assessment to find out what the community wants and needs which was interesting to learn how to do. I think this will be very useful at site and I hope to focus on girls empowerment, as women here do all the chores and end up being the ones that drop out of school.

After the exams next week, I will be traveling with another fellow trainee, he is also from Michigan. We will be going to the Kili region to shadow another education volunteer. Our first long distance trip on local transport in Tanzania..I am excited! Though I will definitely hate the sitting on a bus part. After that we are going to Dar (we will be there during my bday) for site announcements. All the possible places for the ICT volunteers (there are only 3 of us) seem great to me, I have no preference of one over the other, they will either be in Southern or Central Tanzania. We will also have a early Thanksgiving dinner while in Dar which will be nice considering we go to site during real Thanksgiving and will not be with the rest of the group.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Shinda

Obama has won! All around Tanzania today we were hearing people happy about Obama's victory as we walked through the market, when riding on the daladala, and when we visited the fundi who makes our clothes. For those who think that he has no ties with his family back in Kenya, do not think that way. It is a collectivist culture here and family is very important no matter any issues that one has. Therefore, the people of East Africa associate with this new president elect.

We were at the local expat hotel at 6 AM in the morning and we saw Obama's speech as well as McCain's. We noticed for once the headlines around the world were cheering at our new president elect. This is an important time in our country's history, Obama represents for many the ideals of America and of course it comes at a time when this nation's economy is how it is. I feel Obama has alot of work to do in his presidency, and I hope he can fulfill those shoes. I am sure he can. I wish him good luck.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Election Day

Walking around Tanzania you see lots of support for Barack. In case you didn't know his name means blessing in Swahili. Apparently his baba is from Kenya, his bibi lives there now, and they will have a party in the town where his father was from if he wins. I don't know if this is true..this is all heresay. It's amazing the support here and the fact that lots of Tanzanians know about American politics..though them knowing is not so odd..most countries know what happens in America. Lots of the people here hope Obama wins but at the same time don't think he will because he is black. I hope the American people can prove them wrong. I tell them it doesn't have to do with what color he is, it is the issues that are important. Here is an example of support for him that we saw walking around Morogoro:



On that note: Please vote today..no matter your choice as I am sure I have friends who's choice differs from my own..it is important. I voted by absentee from Tanzania. Tomorrow the people in our trainee group are getting up at 6 AM in the morning to watch the election results here in Morogoro. We are aware that Daylight Savings time has happened in the States. And here is a picture of the beautiful surroundings of the town of Morogoro just to invoke peace:

Monday, November 3, 2008

Halloween

So we sorta celebrated Halloween. I definitely didn't get into the spirit as I usually do..I do miss carving pumpkins. A few others made interesting costumes using their creativitiy. Some interesting observations here: The word tako means butt..so we can't say we eat tacos..otherwise we get people laughing at us. Also it's really interesting the amount of used clothing you see here. I see Michigan t-shirts on people who have no idea what Michigan is. :)

Next week we get to visit local NGO's that will be fun! I signed up to visit a NGO that focuses on teaching children about health issues using traditional methods like song and dance. I am pretty excited to visit.

This weekend people from my group came over and we made American food. Like guacamole, pico de gallo, chips, pizza (5 types including roasted garlic and eggplant), and real chocolate chip cookies! Apparently you can make chocolate chip cookies without brown sugar they came out alright...a little moist. The sugar here in TZ is similar to the Sugar in the Raw in the States. 2 more weeks till we find out where we'll be in Tanzania for the rest of our 2 years!