Rolling Rock Gathers No Moss (11/20/2005)

This week I was a pebble in a river. The water moved me from Morogoro to Dar es Salaam. I was beat into lots of other rocks, meeting lots of people and navigating a new city with PCT other than my language group. There are slow eddies where I begin to settle. After a few days of walking around the neighborhood of Safari Inn it begins to feel like a new home.But a new rain comes and again I am in the swift current traveling to Njombe. The water is strong enough to break a few pieces away from me. My watch, which recently lost its band, was lost before the band was fixed and a pair of pants was also left behind in the hustle of moving. I am swallowed by fish only to be excreted where I started. After a few days in Njombe, we returned to Morogoro. I was not overly impressed by Dar es Salaam--the city seemed very dirty. I did not really notice lots of litter, most likely because my eyes are so used to seeing it everywhere that I think I have begun to filter litter out of my vision. So when I say seemed dirty it is because you can see the dirt covering all the buildings and there is a persistent stench of unregulated vehicles and other unidentified unpleasant human odors. However, I don't want to give the impression that I did not enjoy Dar es Salaam. My expectations were so high that I must have believed I was going to the Emerald City. Also are group was so large that we spent most of the time waiting for somebody to get ready, and then after everybody is ready it takes forever to eat because there are so many people. Thus I did not get to explore many of markets and other attractions of Dar.It was relaxing to hang with the other volunteers and eat Indian food and ice cream. We did get to the American Embassy, Peace Corps office and the American Club.
I think the subjects of bus travel and Njombe are for another email.
T.

Little News Little Culture (11/12/2005)

First I should address the cultural issue of touching. It has been pounded into us that Tanzanians view men and women relationships differently. We have been told that the Tanzanians don't really believe can be just friends. Therefore between men and women it is not culturally acceptable to hug in public, holding hands is viewed as way of showing off a relationship and in general touching should be avoided. The only two exceptions I know of are 1) handshakes when greeting 2) dancing/party. Because of this training there is approximately zero physical contact between guys and girls, however it was not until I was being tapped that I really noticed this void. As I mentioned above dances/parties are one of the few exceptions to the rules and during Eide my host sister took me to party/dance. A lot of the music is American but some of it is Bongo Flava. Bongo flava is the Tanzanian music that sounds kind of like a reggae, it is pretty good and during these songs people often circle up and do a dance that is similar to the train dance. A really popular song is African Queen. I got out of my shell and had a great time dancing. The next day we played a game of ultimate frisbee. It was a lot of fun to chase the disc around but I made the mistake of diving for a couple of disks. Not only was I scraped up but my clothes were significantly harder to wash. Which brings my to my next point that now that I am washing my clothes by hand I am much more conscientious about not getting my clothes dirty. This week we learned about NGO's and about how to assess the community's needs before selecting a secondary project. We learned the importance of getting the community to drive the project. Then today we had a competency exam. It was not a surprise to find that I was not good at reporting a crime in Kiswahili but it was rather embarrassing to find I had no clue what was being asked. The high point was being able to bargain in Kiswahili and getting my change back. Baadaye, Thomas

Tanzania News (11/06/2005)

Well I did not write last week because the internet was full of PCV, so I have to cram in two weeks of news.Two weeks agoI took the midterm laguage assessment tests. These are very similiar to the exams we have to pass at the the end of training. We took the written exam on Friday and the oral exam the next day. I passed the written test and am ccurrently an "intermediate low" Kiswahili speaker. This means I can tie my shoes and talk about simple things that I have done or will do. To pass the final exam I need to improve to an intermediate mid by the end of four weeks. Friday was a happy night out and everybody was relieved to have taken the written exam and find it was not as hard as they expected/feared. Also I met a girl who is a healthcare PCV and six months into her service. I noticed that she tapped me to get my attention, because the girls never touch guys here (largely because of our cultural training). But more on that later, what is important is that Friday was alot of fun and Saturday had the oppurtunity to be just as enjoyable. However at end of the our Saturday training they announced one of the trainees would be going home early. The rest of the evening was rather somber as many consoled Brian. The evening was epitomised by the fact that even though all Brian wanted to do is enjoy an Indian dinner, by the time dinner was served he was already in a state that prohibited eating.
My second week of teaching the teacher let me teach without his presence and I had greater difficulty maintaining student participation while minimizing unrelated chatter. The highlight of week was seeing kids partake in the game I made. Not only were they enthusiastic about the game but I could see they learned from playing it too. Last Week. The third and final week of teaching training was a bit chaotic. I was better able to control the class but I was thrown a few curve balls. First I planned one class to teach a topic that apparently was already covered so I readjusted by having the students work challenging problems. Then when teaching a new ( and uncovered ) topic I was getting blank stares when I asked the students to do graphing functions. Near the end of class said they learned functions by writing tables not graphs. Finally Eide was this week so the chaos was finding out if I was going to teach. Eide is particularly interesting because is a national holiday for two days but it starts the first day after the new moon is sighted. This means that nobody knows when the holiday will be except the night before. I guess I am not going to get that cultural bit in. Sorry, T.

The Adventure Continues (10/25/2005)

Hi all,
I realized that even though I gave you my address I do not have many (any?) of yours. So if you would like post from Tanzania you had better send me your address.

This week I saw my first corporal punishment in the class room. My mentor teacher punished over half the class for not doing their homework. It was not as disturbing as I was expecting. Earlier in the week we had a class about disipline and the horrors we should expect to see. In the session we were told that sometimes teachers would break the student's hand they would hit it so hard. Or they would not follow the rules that stipulate that you can only hit the student on the hand or normally clothed buttocks. What I saw seemed to follow the rules but the kids seemed to be joking and laughing afterwards, which made me feel slightly better but at best this was a waste of time.

There is almost always fire on the mountain, but usually you can only the see the smoke from Morogoro. Last week there were several fires that were big enough that I could see the flames and one fire looked like a snake burning in the night.The moon is nearly full and the sky had a beautiful sunset last night. I also noticed recently that the sun actually shines almost directly over head at high noon which means two things: first you cannot see the sun unless you tilt your head way back; second you cast practically no shadow since the shadow of your body is cast on your feet.

I start teaching this week and am excited about it, however I also need to learn boat loads of Kiswahili we will see how it goes. Also the methiquine used to prevent malaria has side effects that can be really cool or scary. About half of the PCVs look forward to the dreams they have but many also feel woozy or have hallucinations so are trying to lower the dosage to reduce the side effects. I fall into the first camp the dreams can be pretty bizarre but still feel very real.

I think that is all I have time for this week,
Kwaheri,
T.

Climbing the Mountain (10/22/2005)

This week I discovered my muscles have atrophied when I went hiking yesterday. We hiked 2 and a half hours up and on the way down my legs were tired. I only went half way up the mountain because I did not bring water or tell my host parents I would be gone. There were about 17 PCV (Peace Corps Volunteers) and we all piled into the daladala. FYI a daladala is a bus the size of a van that does not move unless it is so full that a sardine would feel cramped. On the hike there were many people farming on the mountain and we saw many tethered goats and children (untethered). The trail was narrow and had many forks. Even though the group accidentally got broken up and took different paths we all managed to meet at Morning site, which is a house halfway up the mountain. From a local I learned that there are snakes large enough to eat a whole goat.

I finally started teaching this week and it went fairly well. The 80 minutes that I teach goes by so fast I feel like I write one sentence and it is over. My board work has improved alot and I am now pretty comfortable looking at blank faces. One girl was practally falling as sleep at the start of class, but later she perked up, it is apparent how my enthusiasm tranfers to the class.I think my sleep is less restful during the night when I take the malaria pill. I think I will switch the days so that the next day does not affect my teaching.

This has been a tough week for my host family a neighbor died and so did the grandfather on the father's side. I am not sure how the grandfather died, but the neighbor was run over by a truck. The grieving process is a bit different here. People gather at the home of the deceased for several days hanging out and they spend the nights there too. Then the body is buried. I went to the house and saw the men and women divided outside. I think you are only supposed to go in the house if you are invited so I did not enter. Also there is a guest book where you are supposed to sign and write the amount you donate. The money goes to pay for the food, etc. and apparently the donations are public knowledge so PCV are expected to attend funerals and donate money to strengthen community ties even if you did not personally know the person. I think that is all for this week.

Oh yeah, sorry for the double spaces and other typos and thanks for writing
T.

I am in Tanzania (10/09/2005)

Hi All,
As many of you know, I am in Tanzania training for Peace Corps. I am able to check my email and write a little once a week. So it would be great to hear from you. I have been in Tanzania a little over two weeks and recovered from my first illness yesterday. Yesterday I woke up and had to take a trip to the bathroom about 3 AM. After several trips to the bathroom and experiencingwarm chills I knew I was sick. Fortunately yesterday was the day everybody meets at WAMO so I was able to talk with somebody who had similar symptoms earlier in the week and got Cipro. Cipro was able to stop the runs and after drinking a little over a gallon of water my fever went away in the middle of the night.

Tanzania is wonderful. The people are incredibly friendly. It takes about five minutes to say hello because you are supposed to ask how everything andeverybody is even though the answer is always the same nzuri. I am in Morogoro and surrounded by beautiful mountains. At night the stars are incredibly clear and the moon fills like water in a cup (up and down not sideways like it does up north). Yesterday I saw my first monkey, but thereare many birds that I have seen before here. Every morning I wake up to the roosters crowing the cows mooing, birds chirping and dogs barking, did I miss anything? Oh yeah every around five am there is a morning prayer person hollering in the streets. Time is distorted here some moments I can hardly believe I have been heretwo weeks because it feels like I got here yesterday, other times it feels like I have been here forever. Kiswahili is a fairly simple language and I think there are few irregularities. Of course I have only been learning for two weeks but already I know almost all of the 11 noun classes and all three of the verb tenses. So I have learned almost all of the grammar and a couple hundred words.

My time looks like it is about to run out. Things can be sent by to :Thomas CurtisPeace Corpse TanzaniaPO Box 9123Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It takes a couple of weeks and apparently things in envelopes take much less time than boxes. Also FedEx should not be done because I would have to pay extra for delivery to a remote place.