Shagalabagala

1.how often do you meet the other PCTs in the area? Good parties? Cool people?
2.are you worried about the swahili test before swear-in?
3. Any ideas/preferences regarding your site?
4. What religion is everyone there?
5. How far are you from the capital?
6. What do they make the alcohol from?
7. What's the country office like? Good CD?
8. Will you date and marry a huge black tanzanian and have brown redhead babies???


I’m staring at a box that represents the potential to communicate with you all at home- to paint a picture of my wild, wonderful, colorful life in Tanzania, and today I have come ill prepared. I forgot my properly written blog in the nunnery (where we stay when in town), I’m hot and sweaty from cramming bodyparts (both mine and others) into a small space in a doladola (tiny bus), and for the first time there is no line for the computer, so I have all the time in the world/my 35:02 minutes remaining to develop something, anything to give you a glimpse of this crazy existence in Tanzania. Lucky for me Drew sent an email with a few questions that I will use as an outline:

1-How often do you meet the other PCTs in the area? Good Parties? Cool people?
I have 6 other PCT (peace corps trainees) in my large town and we spend all day everyday together. We have been through the dumps (and this is a hot topic in our daily communications-who got sick from what, etc.), collectively we received the highest score on our mid-training oral proficiency exam in Swahili, and about once a week we all go to a bar in town and have a Safari lager baridi (you must specify cold or it will come to you armpit warm). Currently I’m I Morogoro with the rest of our training group (46 total) and we are about to be sent our separate ways for “shadow week”. In groups of 2-3 PCTs we’re traveling to the sites of current volunteers where we’ll spend the week figuring out how to deal with the daily tasks of being a Peace Corps Volunteer in TZ—living alone, “working”(the pace of life here makes our notion of doing work a gross exaggeration of what actually gets achieved), greeting people every day, cleaning the dust of the dirt, and fending for yourself in general. I’m going to shadow an education volunteer in Iringa (in the southern highlands) where it is cold at night, and crisp in the morning—like the Adirondacks in August.

As for the group of PCTs in general, we are very lucky. Our group is fairly diverse, we have a volunteer to represent every region of America, and every level of travel experience. We have as much to learn from each other as we do from the land and people of Tanzania. And when we get together after a long hard week/s of training we always make up for lost time. Perhaps this is another reason there is a mental barrier between me and the writing today.

2. On Friday I had my final OPI (oral proficiency exam). I needed to score Intermediate Mid in order to be inducted into the peace Corps on Aug. 20th. I scored Intermediate High on my “mid” training OPI, and I feel really confident with the process of listening and learning and being confident enough to test out my language skills on random people—it’s not difficult to get practice, everyone always wants to talk to the mazungu.

3. Any ideas/preferences regarding your site?
3. A “site” in PC lingo is the village where you will base your work out of. Your town has asked for a PCV and will provide housing for it. The town then expects that the PCV will work with the villagers to improve life in that area. The sites available for people in my group are highly diverse. Some sites are on the tropical coast, some are in a mountainous dessert area, some are in Dodoma where it is dry, and lacking water, and other sites are high in gorgeous mountains where it is chilly, but wonderful. Though I told them that I don’t care where I go, I am of course pulling for the beautiful Southern Highlands…where it is more likely that I’ll be able to do Livestock programs because of the sustainability of the land.I will find out a week from Tuesday.

4. What religion is everyone there?
4.-My village is split with about 40% Muslim 50% Christian and 10% crazy old ladies who worship the witchdoctor and sing all night outside my home. Religion is a stabilizing factor in a life where there is a lot of idle time. Everyone seems to get along…except no one seems to get a lot with the Maassaai sadly…a blog for another day.

5. How far are you from the capital?
The official capital is Dodoma, but hardly anything besides govern meetings occurs there. Dar es Salaam is the main hub of city life in Tanzania. As opposed to Dodoma’s central and desertlike atmostphere, Dar is temperate and situated on the southern half of the coast. Most government officials and major economical players life in Dar and travel to Dodoma for gov. business. Kilosa is about 6 hours on a bus to Dar, Morogoro about 3 ½, where I am going for shadow week in Iriniga is 12 hours on a bus. Public restrooms you may wonder? The bus stops on the highway (one lane, truly one lane, for both sides of traffic) the wanamume (men) go to the left side of the bus, and the wanamamke (women) go to the right side…watch out for snakes in the grass, once I found a snake skin three feet long beneath my feet where I had squatted.

6. What do they make the alcohol from?
6. Lucky for me my mama braught me to see the magic of Pombe (local brew) take place. It was a hot morning, and I hadn’t even gotten the chance to piga decki (mop), when mama dragged me across the village-withough explanation- to a dark nyumbani. There were no lights inside and it took my eyes a few minutes to see what my nose had immediately detected: two giant metal barrels (bigger than me) where my neighbor and some one else where waist deep in mixing the pombe ya mahindi (corn alcohol.. is also pombe ya ndizi (banana) ya pumba (rice), and some sort of sugar one) The smell was all encompassing and when mama scooped out a cup and offered it to me I nearly lost my ugali (dinner from the night before). Pombe…is not made in the most sanitary of ways, it doesn’t taste soo bad…but I like Safari Lager just fine.

7. What's the country office like? Good CD?
7. Because of some form I signed at some point in my first 48 hours in country that I can not answer this question…I’m not sure what else I’m not suppose to talk about…but I do know that if you get on the bad list, it’s fairly easy for PC Tz to find a reason to send you home…this happens several times a year.


8. Will you date and marry a huge black tanzanian and have brown redhead babies???

Hmm, will Greta date and marry a huge black Tanzanian and produce brown redheaded babies, stay tuned….



Alright, I’m off now for the beautiful southern highlands where there’s mountains, water, and yes cheese. I’ll return next weekend to Dar to find out my site placement and hopefully give an update to the blog before I’m sent out for my first 3 months at site. Hope all is well on the Western Front!

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G