Saturday, December 15, 2007

Dec 15, 2007 Update and Pics: training, site arrival!

The Last Few Days of Training:

By the end of training we were subject to a ton of assessments on our new language/culture/technical skills (more test than I can count) and also a lot of hanging out. Below (the contrast is off...) are Jacob, Leiha, and James hanging at CCT.


We were also preparing to leave each other for site in various parts of the country. My host family and the families of four other volunteers had the huge going-away party for us all. There was plenty of food, and dancing (see below, me with little Sosi) and even presents.

It was all so overwhelming and at one point we each got up to give little thank-you speeches (which I stumbled through in kiswahili), and I even played a little guitar, so not that different from family parties at home! But sitting there at the very decorated table with the other volunteers (which kind of made it feel like we were all getting married). it was so bittersweet to have to leave our families in Morogoro. Below is me with my Mama, Baba and little brother.

Kind of a funny side-note, to dress up we volunteers all wore clothes like Tanzanians, but to dress up our families wore western formal-wear. A strange exchange of cultures!

Swearing-in Ceremony:

To become actual volunteers we were sworn in by the U.S. Ambassador to Tanzania. The ceremony was a big deal, with speeches fromus volunteers, the Morogoro District commissioner, Country Director of PC, Ambassador, and even the Tz Minister of Education. There was also plenty of entertainment, including a poetry/dance/music section from the volunteers (I co-wrote/sang a song with Jenna, another very talented volunteer, to thank our homestay families) and also some local dancers as well (shown below).

The best part was when the TZ minister of education got up to give the Tz dancers money (which is customary) and started dancing with them a bit too. Would that ever happen in America? People love having fun here!

Afterwards a bunch of us went out and took pics of all of us in our traditional garb (I'm wearing something my T-Fam gave me!).

Here are Me, Molly, Leiha, Laura, and Jenna all decked out!. Below are my sitemates, Leiha and Ethan, who are still pretty far away, but I will get to that.....



Arrival to Site:

The next morning we all left for our respective regions! It was so exciting/sad! I headed to Moshi with a bunch of others, only a 6 hr trip, where we stayed at the very nice YMCA ($5/night), the deck from which you can see Mnt. Kilimanjaro.



So beautiful but less and less snow atop every year... We met up with volunteers that night, and the next day were delivered to our respective sites.

My site is Lomwe Secondary School, in Usangi, Mwanga District (just south of Moshi) in the Kilimanjaro Region. It is in the Pare Mountains, shown below in the distance:
If you look really closely you can see a road snake up the side of the mountains; that is the road to my site. It takes about 1.5hrs once you enter the mountains to get there. My site is like a mini-paradise, set in a secluded valley (shown below) where the school lies. My house is about a .5 mile hike up the side of one of the mountain, and on a clear day you can see Mnt. Kilimanjaro in the distance.

Its prime hiking land, except you have to be careful about where you go. I expressed interest in climbing to the top of the mountain I live on, and found out that it is sacred land, the home of a few tribal gods, and that the punishment for entering it without permission is death by the gods/tribal elders. Supposedly someone fell victim a couple years ago, so I guess I'm glad I asked before venturing that way! That's one way to enforce land conservation!

My house is very very nice, and I have many other teachers/locals as neighbors.

You can see my house in the foreground and my neighbor's in the back. It has running water and Electricity (half the time), a big living room, bathroom (with western toilet!) kitchen, and two bedrooms.
Most other volunteers aren't so lucky to have a lot of stuff in their house already (I'm replacing someone) but it was lucky that I did since I started teaching a few days after getting to site! I'll be teaching a-level Mathematics (like senior year hs/freshman yr college) and o-level (high school) math. Each level is on a different schedule, so right now its just the a-level math. The students are wonderful and all of the teachers have been so welcoming! Although we are supposed to teach in English, Kiswahili is just about ubiquitous outside the classroom, so when I'm not lesson-planning or cleaning my house I try to study Kiswahili. All and all things are going well, and its tons of fun to walk about the village, to the market, greet people, and tell them about the U.S.. I can't count the number of U.S. maps I've drawn in the past two weeks! The only problems I've run into are with the bugs that have been inhabiting the house for the past three months during which it has been vacant. Spiders as big as your hand, I kid you not! And some fun other surprises, like acid-spitting flies. Also, the green mamba's that supposedly dwell in the brush in my front yard, will have to look out for them....

I will try to update more, but there is a lot to tell and no time to describe it all! I will rant a bit about the travel in this area...

A little bit of travel...takes a long time!

The other day I tried to visit Leiha who lives a few towns over. What a hassle! I got to the bus stand at 7:30am, waiting 45min for a bus to come, waited half hour for it to load up, and finally drove to the next town. We didn't have enough passengers, so ended up going back to Lomwe, and by 9:30am I was in the same spot I had started. When we finally took off for real, I got the junction town between our two villages, found out that if I went to her village I would have no ride back, went anyways on the next bus over, and didn't even make it all the way before the bus stopped. So Leiha met me a town over from where she lives, and we talked for 45min (as the whole village looked on, two wazungu is a big deal) and then I hitched a ride from some Fundi's delivering truck wheels to moshi back to the junction town. From there, waited two hours and finally got back to my town at 4pm. The breakdown:

Total travel time: 8.5hrs
Total visit-with-leiha time: 45min
Total actually - moving time : 3hrs hrs
Total waiting time : 4hrs 45min

And you though SEPTA was bad.