Continuing to adjust...

So I’ve just finished my first lab. It brought up an interesting issue: the fact that words are not the only impediment to understanding. Cultures have many differences but one I had never considered when crossing languages is the different connotations of the very same words. I gave instructions to take each measurement they recorded three times by saying just that, take each measurement three times. I thought I was very clear. The entire class proceeded to take one measurement with one weight, a second measurement with a different weight, and the third measurement with yet another weight. Each group I stopped at, I had to explain what I really meant was take the measurement with one weight three times and it often took me a good minute to have them truly understand. They had a lot of trouble understanding why we’d want to take the same measurement three times but I think we eventually got the point across. It’s just another example of the differences I’m seeing in the languages. I’ve also been noticing lately the way Tanzanians speak English is pretty much the same. Word orders that seem strange to me are repeated between Tanzanian English speakers. I’m thinking this would be a good reference to learn how I should order my words in Swahili, a sort of key translated to English. Hopefully I learn soon how to better explain myself, but I suppose this is the first step.


It’s the Monday of the week of January 11th and I find myself with no shortage of free time. I thought after this last week I’d be overcome by a fury of new engagements would struggle to keep up with. We’ll just leave it as that’s yet to be the case. I understand Peace Corps’ tentativeness with which they have new crops of volunteers ease into their assignments but I think building a lifestyle of lethargy is really only perpetuates that pattern. Today I taught from 7:30-8:50, same as always, the difference was, that I went into class with no lesson plan. I’ve been happy to find that my students increasingly ask questions and so I decided to give them a review day, which they fully took advantage of! I’m choosing to look at this as a positive that they’re engaged in class and not as the obvious negative: that I can’t teach them. I figure if they really thought they couldn’t learn from me they wouldn’t ask questions so I’m happy to take them. So, simple successes aside I’m home by 9am which leaves me about 14 hours to prepare for tomorrow. Perhaps I’m lacking long-term vision here and in a couple of weeks I’ll be cursing my time spent on Halo books and transit systems, but I do not foresee significant changes to my schedule. I have double the teaching to do come March but that will simply take a few extra hours and I’ll still have 8+ left. We’ll see.


No one ever glorifies the volunteer. Save perhaps the military volunteer. When you think about movies, there aren’t movies or tv shows about a teacher in a foreign land. When people are gone, it’s always about the return home. Never about what they did. It’s easy to picture your perfect world, how every day you’ll want to be exactly where you are and the people you’re working with are receptive and learn everything they need to from you. Hollywood kind of does a disservice by making everyone believe that there are people out there where everything they do is truly for the benefit of others. I think there was only one man for whom that was truly the case and I would argue he was more than a man. Most of those people serving others are actually in it somewhat to serve themselves. To satisfy that desire to do good in the world and that’s fine. They are helping, just not completely selflessly. I don’t think it’s human to think of others 100% and not think of yourself at all. But when your selfish humanism isn’t satisfied with the selfless acts you’re doing, conflict reigns. The dreams start shifting to other glories, the return home to care for those there or the next project you could take hold of with better authority from your learned experiences here. But the problem is every time is the first time, yes you can improve but not all improvements on your previous problems are solutions for your current ones. I find that I’m a dreamer, continually looking to the future and what fantastic things it holds, but I’m finding my focus on the present suffers. I can fill notebooks and files with ideas for something that will never be done but I can’t wait to finish my work for tomorrow so I can think about what happens a year from now. I need to change that, or at least control it. Focus on the now, and trust that the tomorrow will be there. I’ve spent my whole life preparing. Moving from elementary school where I prepared for middle school, which prepared me for high school, which prepared me for college, which prepared me for……certainly not this. I didn’t realize quite the change I made when I chose the Peace Corps. I’m in a holding pattern for two years, at least relative to my “preparation”. I suppose this is preparing me for life experience and blah blah blah but that’s not why I say I’m here. I’m here to take my preparation and apply it. Something I’m really inexperienced at, I’m realizing. My mindset is wrong. I’m thinking what I have to do to achieve the goal and move on to the next level. What does it take to be prepared to go back to the US? A plane ticket. That’s it, and I can get that at a moment’s notice. The return is not the end game, it’s the end of the game, and it’s not even a game. There’s not really a way to win or lose. I’m here to help, and interact, and teach. I suppose I can “win” if my students all pass and move on, but there’s more to it than that. I always think I’ll know answers eventually, like once I do enough preparing, I’ll be ready to be wise. But with the dissolution of my future last year and little resolution on the horizon, I’m starting to wonder where I’m going and if I’ll know it when I get there. Or maybe I’m here? Eventually I’ll recognize where I’m going when it is in hindsight, I just want to know it as now-sight too!


When I first decided this is what I wanted to do, I had a way of describing the opportunity that has stuck quite well throughout my service so far. The Peace Corps, is by far the most terrifyingly exciting thing I have ever done. It comes in waves, and I’m for sure on a crest right now. We arrived and were herded around a tiny conference complex in Dar learning simple greetings thinking maybe we could survive. Then we moved to Morogoro, where we sat in our family’s living rooms staring blankly at them when they tried to converse in even simple language, and thought maybe not. But slowly over time we were able to get by and by the end of training were quite comfortable in our routine. Then we leave our comfort zone again, moving to a place where we make the meals and clean the floors in addition to completing our daily activities, and think well, I can fry an egg, so maybe I’ll stay alive. Then after a month of getting a routine at home and realizing I can do everything I have to and even still have time to kill, we’re feeling pretty good about ourselves. I got there. I was functioning in a third world country with a basic vocabulary to interact with my fellow Tanzanians. I can cook, clean, teach, read, relax, and pretty much do anything else now. But then, just like before, a new challenge is here. I can function here, now I have to excel. Excelling is more than frying eggs, and washing clothes by hand, and teaching to a class that can learn from your English. Today, I added adult education classes to my list of things to do. These are people who for one reason or another did not finish their studies and are trying to after years outside of school. They are not great English speakers, and in fact, they are probably inferior to regular students at their level of studies. I’m going to have to go beyond just being able to explain ideas well. I’m going to have to explain ideas well in a language I’m learning as I use it. This is terrifying. This is exciting. This is why I’m here. These are the most motivated students I will encounter in Tanzanians schools. Many students try to leave school because it’s just easier, and they know they’re going to end up in the same job after they fail their exams anyway. So, in a society that does not see education in the same light as America, these are rare opportunities. Now I just have to make the most of it. I can be a good teacher for these students if I take the time to learn the language and relay the ideas well. I hope in two years, I can say I did.

And just a side note, I can do 3 consecutive pull ups :D I haven’t been able to do a pull up in about 5 years!

Here is Picture Post Number 1! Mostly just photos but I'll narrate a little. The above photo is from Mikumi National Park. We went as a group during training and saw many of the characteristic Africa savanna animals.

So here are the two lions we saw. Apparently seeing them was rather unusual. But rarer still was what happened afterward. They.....enjoyed each other's company :P

Fellow volunteers observing the hippos. OK I admit it wasn't candid, but they did look like this before I asked them to repeat it!






My host family's house in Morogoro. It was quite nice considering. I was extremely fortunate!



The group at the end of training! I can name names later maybe....


When some of us weren't taking our oral exams we were learning a new sustainable gardening method. It has very exciting applications!


The farewell dinner with my host family and CBT mates!


This was my best picture of our swearing in. Sorry! I'll see if I can get better ones.


Next few pictures are from Christmas in Mbeya with another PCV Kate and the NGO she works with. She and Deb were wonderful to host us for the weekend!



We climbed the mountain behind their house and these pictures are from the walk to and climb up the mountain.




Theo couldn't climb his rocks so he settled for a tree.





The following are pictures of the valley that I live in. I took them when staying with another PCV Katie for New Years.







Hope you enjoyed them! I hope to do this again soon!

Something to say.....

First of all I wanted to wish everyone happy holidays! So far, mine have been quite enjoyable and relaxing, perhaps too much. But now, as I’m in between Christmas and New Years I wanted to write a few thoughts down. First of all, I have been continually blown away with the beauty of this region. If you’re considering a trip to Africa at all, I would highly recommend this region of the continent as it is absolutely gorgeous. All through training, my experience had been places that looked old and tired, as if the very first humans saw the exact same landscape when they walked this area. But here, in the southern highlands, the landscape is so much more alive…….and green. This is easily due to the rains that fall frequently here but it’s still quite a masterpiece. Forests on the mountains blend into giant tea farms with these hardy bushes that are harvested in a way so that it looks like a perfect sea of green. There will be smaller hills that are completely devoid of trees but are a solid green from the rows of tea bushes on them. If there are trees, they are quite often banana trees and they often dominate the valleys. It’s hard to really describe and I hope to put up pictures eventually! The other day I spent a lot of time standing at an overlook that I can’t help but think needs a blue sign on the road nearby telling traffic they should stop and look in a ¼ mile, even though they’re driving 80 in the left lane. Check that, we’re in TZ where 4-lane roads don’t exist, but I think you get my point. I’m quite happy with the physical location of my site, I just wish I had easier access to the view!

A note, I don’t usually write when I’m connected to the internet which makes it easy to not post right away, so whenever there is a break and the topic changes abruptly, assume we’re hours if not days apart in time. Thanks! :D

So I had a strange thought. I’ve been in Tanzania for two different years. While I know that’s simple manipulation of dates to make it sound long I realized that I have been here undeniably for over a quarter of a year, which makes it seem much much longer. It helps that that 3 months is split up over three very different locations of various lengths, but it’s interesting to think about. In my head I have our time spent in Dar Es Salaam as a very long time, or at least a much more significant portion of training than it actually was. It only seems long because every step was a new experience and I was trapped in a gated compound with no knowledge of the outside community so seeing the same small space made time drag. Training, which is over half of that time, was long enough to develop a routine. And now site for over a month feels like a fairly significant amount of time too, and routines are starting to develop. There is a degree of comfort that I’m finding but I realize at night how easily my comfort is lost; how it’s only skin deep. I don’t know this community like I know home. There, I know what’s around every corner and I know where people are. Here, the set up of cities and towns is not always logical and that makes things unpredictable, which can be unsettling. I remember the first night here I was terrified because I couldn’t see beyond my front porch and I had no idea where anyone was. It also didn’t help that PC had just spent the week before telling me how the whole world was out to get me etc. It’s better now but a city without streetlights is still a terrifyingly dark place. It’s almost like you can feel the people around you but you can’t see them. You know they’re there but what they’re doing, who they are, is all a mystery. One your mind is all too happy to muse upon. I never thought about it but comfort and security are all part of the American dream. The whole point of having your two story house on a cul-de-sac of houses just like it with slightly altered floor plans and a different color scheme is that it’s a controlled, seemingly safe environment. A yard is just space for the kids to play and a house is just wood and brick you live inside, but put it all together with a piece of paper that says you owe $150,000 for it and you’ve got a kingdom that is almost entirely under your control. Here, I live in a space that’s not mine and constantly question whether what I’m doing is “right” in the eyes of the public. As our country director loves to say, we’re on duty 24/7, which is completely true. And it’s tiresome, but it’s part of what we signed up for, and we’ll survive.

I am beginning to understand the value of simple purpose in life. I have spent the aforementioned three months in this country and so far have enacted my purpose for being here for less than a total of 80 min times 8 classes plus another 160 minutes. So 1760 minutes. Considering I have been here for 60 min times 24 times approximately 100 days, or 144000 minutes, my realization of purpose has been unbearably small. Ok, with even the absurd assumption that I’m sleeping 12 hours a day I’ve been here 72000 minutes. Yes, the argument can be made my being here is satisfying the goals of the Peace Corps mission but eventually cooking, cleaning, and sleeping while using enough Swahili to get by is grossly unsatisfying. Which brings me to my purpose for being here, teaching science and math. I will start on Monday, and probably within days regret my boredom and wishes for activity, but when the highlight of my day is making potato chips in a frying pan, I’m having trouble justifying my day. There’s a simple solution, prepare to teach. Yes! I have gone through that logic, and have somehow found every chore I could possibly think of to do before hand. I know I’ve always been an exceptional procrastinator but this is a little absurd. While my culinary experience is improving and I’ve been able to wash clothes by hand, including remove blood from a white shirt which I was proud of, I stand on the top of that hill feeling no sense of accomplishment. I suppose it is appropriate to learn that in any environment the human reactions are the same, do work when you have to and otherwise play. There’s really no point to this other than my being frustrated with my procrastination following me overseas, but it’s an interesting observation that I am who I am, and part of me is a procrastinator. It doesn’t matter if I cook on charcoal, kerosene, electric hotplates, or a gas/electric stove. I’ll look at the sky the same way whether I’m leaving class after a good day of work or getting out of the house because I can’t stand it anymore. Part of my justification for coming here was to improve on parts of myself I didn’t like, and my mastery of the art of procrastination was one of them. So I’ve struggled so far. I can try again tomorrow :)