Saying Goodbye to my Fellow teachers/ Tanzanian Friends =(

 One of the sad things about the Tanzanian education system is that teachers come and go.  I have spent the past month getting to know my fellow teachers and heartbroken that my only friends in my village are leaving.  I live next door to the Second Master of our school and his two brothers.  His brother Sumaye is a teacher and Eliakimu is a form four student with a passion for learning English. Like many of the other teachers, Sumaye is leaving for University.  Mr. Humphrey my other friend and fellow teacher is also leaving for University.  They have both been very good friends to me and help me with kiswahili, so I will miss them when they go.  I think I am about to be the only full time teacher at the school, so I will keep you posted on how that goes...

From left to right:  My Second Master, Eliakimu, Me, and Mr. Sumaye

Mr. Sumaye, Me, and Mr. Humphrey

My Mommy Came to Visit!!

My Mom (yes my real mother from America) had planned a September trip to Kenya back when Peace Corps told me I was going to the Caribbean.  So since she was so close to Tanzania, she wanted to squeeze in a trip to see her favorite daughter (luckily I am the only daughter she has, so my competition is pretty pathetic). The trip was far too short!  As my friend Sian said best, her trip was a tease.  She flew to Mbeya on a Monday morning and left Wednesday morning.  While in my village she was able to help me teach students songs in English in preparation for the graduation ceremony. 

My Mom and I

Getting on the plane back to Dar

My Mom with my fellow teachers

Preparing for NECTAS!

Form four and form two students in Tanzania must take a national exam called the NECTA at the end of the school year and students are busy preparing and studying.  These exams are similar to what an AP exam in the United States would look like because they are on various subjects.  The main difference is that these exams are in English even though the students are native Kiswahili speakers. Also, they must pass these exams in order to move on in their education.  If I had to take all of my AP exams in Kiswahili, I would not have graduated!  Although the students must take the exams in English and write in English, many of their teachers use Kiswahili as the mode of instruction and their English skills are poor.   If the pressure of the exams and the English requirement were not difficult enough, students are trying to prepare for their exams with no books and no teachers! Many of the teachers were university students who finished their internship teaching month and went back to school.  Other teachers have other jobs and only teach at our school part time.  And I think some of the other teachers just don’t feel like coming to school every day.  But to make a long story short, yesterday I was the only teacher.   I cannot bear to watch students sitting in a classroom doing nothing, so I decided to give English lessons and assignments to every form and will spend my weekend grading English essays filled with countless grammatical errors.  Luckily, I teach at a very small school with only about 20 students in each classroom.

I live and teach at a small boarding school in rural Mbeya.  My site placement was amusing to me because I actually spent my high school years at a boarding school.  I am able to relate to the students here, but it also means that my expectations for student performance are quite a bit higher than other teachers.  For example, if you live at school you have no excuse for being late to class.  I also know that studying is the student’s main responsibility and this makes me feel no guilt assigning tons of homework.  I spent a majority of my free time in high school studying and I expect these students to do the same.  During internship teaching we were told not to assign homework because students would not do it, and grading would be difficult with 70 students in a class.  Fortunately, I will not have these constraints and the academic master given me the freedom to pretty much do whatever I want.  I have a theory that most teachers do not assign many writing assignments because they do not want to grade them and refuse to do work outside of school hours.  But for me, having students write essays is pointless if you don’t give them feedback and make corrections. Otherwise they will just continue making the same errors…

The form four students took a regional mock NECTA exam in August and the scores were terrible.  I was one of those nerdy overachievers in high school and thought a B was failing, so imagine my shock when I saw all D’s and F’s on these exams.  The average score in the English subject was a 26% and the scores in other subjects were almost as bad.  The headmaster was happy because the school did not have the lowest scores in the region, but I was horrified.  Needless to say, I will have lots of work to do over the next two years!  Peace Corps generally advises us not to teach form two and form four because we are not familiar with the NECTA exam and may not prepare them adequately.  However, since the students are already failing the exams I could not possibly cause them to do worse.  The academic master has been letting me teach whatever I want to any of the forms, so students are now in what I will call “Madame Becca Bootcamp.”  Form four students will be doing practice test questions and intense English Grammar review while everyone else gets daily writing assignments and lessons taught by yours truly.  In spite of this, I was called a lazy woman for the first time in my life by the only other female teacher at the school (who has not taught a class all week).  I find cross cultural differences so fascinating.  I spend my days teaching, grading assignments, tutoring students and practicing speeches andsongs for their graduation ceremony next week.  Then I spend my evenings preparing dinner, lesson planning, grading, going into the village or playing sports with my students.  Yet, I am considered lazy because I am not domestic and do not like to clean my house every day!  Go figure…

The Apple of My Eye

Relationships between men and women are so fascinating to me. Love is an interesting concept that expands across cultures, but its expression varies.  In Tanzania, affection between men and women is supposed to be kept behind closed doors.  So often times you will see couples maintain the distance of strangers.  I have not seen public displays of affection amongst Tanzanians here.  Well let me be clearer, I have not seen public displays of affection between members of the opposite sex.  It is perfectly normal for two men to walk down the street holding hands- that is considered a sign of friendship.  I think I will have to wait for another day to talk about homophobia in Tanzania and how the behavior associated with gay men in America is a cultural norm here….it’s fascinating really. The absurdity of it all intrigues me.   But I am digressing…

Yesterday I was having a conversation with one of my male Tanzanian friends and he gave me some insight into the world of dating here.  I was eating an apple (a luxury item I treated myself to) and he explained to me that usually if a man gives a woman an apple, it means he wants her to be his girlfriend.  The reverse is also true so needless to say I was a little embarrassed after I offered him an apple.  So the phrase “the apple of my eye” quickly had a whole new meaning.  He was not sure why apples were associated with love and romance.  Perhaps it’s because apples are sweet and very expensive here.  In this discussion I also learned that love has a very different meaning to Tanzanian men.   Since I have lived in this country, I have had several marriage proposals and declarations of love.  I thought this was odd because generally it takes American men more than 10 seconds to love a woman.  I am not saying I don’t believe in love at first site, but I think it’s an exceptional thing and here it has become the norm.  I was trying to explain that love takes time and that in America, we do not say “I love you” right away or fall in love with someone as soon as we see them.  Then he explained how famous soccer players would find a woman they loved in each city so it’s similar.  Finally it dawned on me that for many Tanzanian men, “I love you” means “I want to have sex with you.” I explained that these famous soccer players did not love these women.  They just found them attractive and had sex with them. So ladies, if you travel to Africa and a Tanzanian man tells you he loves you after knowing you for only a short period of time, be very skeptical!!!

I am considered very beautiful by Tanzanian standards, and have had some problems with unwanted attention since I have been in country.  I decided to buy a ring and claim to have a fiancé in America as a result. This was a great decision!  I already wrote about how I am not domestic and would fail as a Tanzanian housewife, but recently I have realized that I would fail as a Tanzanian girlfriend.  I am very happy I have a “relationship” back at home because I don’t think I could date a Tanzanian man.  Clearly I am far too progressive for this patriarchal society.  Most of my fellow teachers are men, and you should have seen their faces today when I said men in America cooked (even ones with wives and daughters!).   I think their reaction would have been similar if I told them men were breast feeding babies in America.   Maybe I will get used to it over time, but I don’t like the way women are treated here.  For example, a group of students from a nearby university were doing their internship teaching at our school for one month.  Four of them lived in a house very close to mine (one girl and three boys).  It surprised me that the female student did all the cooking and cleaning for the house.  She was not the mother, sister, girlfriend, or wife of any of these guys but she did all of the household chores simply because she was a woman.  And they expected her to do these things so very few thank yous were exchanged.  I tried to put this in an American context….imagine a group of college students living together and the girl being expected to do all the cooking, cleaning, etc. for the entire house.  That is a big cultural adjustment for me.  I am very happy to be living alone in my own house without a man to cater to! 

An Undomesticated Woman

I should start by saying that I would make a terrible Tanzanian housewife!  I am not a domestic woman and loathe housework.  Even with all the American machines and luxuries like a washing machine, dryer, dishwasher, vacuum cleaner, etc. I do not enjoy chores around the home nor am I good at them.  So try to picture my life in a rural African village. The first most basic necessity for household chores is water and even this is a struggle for me.  Water is a huge problem in our village and I must make a very short trip to a nearby stream to load my buckets of water needed for bathing, cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, dishes, etc.  Unfortunately, even this everyday practice is a challenge for me.  Upper body strength has never been one of my admirable qualities and the women in Africa are ridiculously strong. I struggle carrying one bucket filled with water from the stream to my house.  It continuously baffles me how women manage to carry three buckets filled with water (one in each hand and another on the head) half way across the village.  Even young girls, and I am referring to seven or eight year olds seem to have more upper body strength than me.  But I am sure with time my bucket workout will pay off and I will develop arms of steel.

This is my house!  Well the right half is my house.  Eventually another teacher will live on the other half.

I live in a village where agriculture is the main source of income.

A picture from behind my house.  You can see the main road that goes from Mbeya to Dar

I am living at a boarding school and Sundays are apparently chore days for everyone.  Today I was feeling extra motivated by the pile of dirty clothes waiting for me and decided to begin my weekly task of clothes washing.  I have learned in my past three months of living in Africa, that washing clothes by hand is no joke.  It is time consuming and requires a surprising amount of arm strength.  In theory, washing clothes is easy.  All you need is soap, water, and a line to hang clothes on. Yet for some unknown reason, this simple task is a struggle for me.  I scrub and scrub my clothes, but they still seem dirty.  I squeeze out the soapy water and transfer to a bucket of clean water; I scrub, squeeze, then transfer to another bucket of clean water and repeat the same process.  I have not quite figured out why my clothes always seem dirtier after I wash them, or why there is that soapy residue after they dry.  The best part of the day was that after I spent hours cleaning my clothes in the freezing cold water, the wind blew them off of the clothes line and into a pile of dirt.   As you probably know, dirt sticks really well to wet clothing.  Needless to say the clothes washing process had to be started all over again. Believe me when I say teenage boys are better at washing clothes than I am.  Yes, TEENAGE BOYS!  I do not know how they get their clothes so clean. It’s a little embarrassing actually.  Washing clothes in Tanzania is considered a woman’s job (along with cleaning, cooking, carrying water, raising children, etc.) so my daily struggles with everyday tasks offers my students a constant source of amusement.  Rather than consider myself inept, I am trying to use my struggles as a lesson to my students on the absurdity gender roles.  Clearly gender roles are socially constructed and although I can bear children due to my biological parts, they certainly do not help me with domestic tasks!  And if anyone figures out how I can use my uterus to facilitate the clothes washing process, please let me know.  I have been trying to assimilate into this culture as much as possible, but do not be surprised if you read a future post about the amazing Tanzanian woman I hired to do my laundry.  

Mountain Prayer

Today I saw my life flash before my eyes!  I love adrenaline rushes, but only in controlled settings and my heart is still racing from what happened today….

I will start from the beginning. First, I should tell you that I live in the Mbeya region which is absolutely beautiful.  Mbeya is filled with mountains and my village is at the base of the mountain they refer to as “snake mountain.”  According to my Second Master, they call this “mlima nyoka,” or "snake mountain," because the road winds through it like a snake.  There is one narrow road with many twists and turns. If there were actual lanes I would say that it was a two lane road, but a more accurate description would be that there are cars going in both directions.  They generally stay to one side or the other, but sometimes the drivers like to switch it up or drive down the middle of the road.  The important note here is that this one road takes you from my village up the mountain to Mbeya town.  Now I had not planned to go to the main town of Mbeya today, I was actually supposed to attend a religious graduation that was being held at our school.  Unfortunately, I had an emergency situation that required me to go to town and immediately buy a plunger.  The details are far too embarrassing for me to write online, but I honestly think God uses my life for comedic entertainment.  Needless to say, this was not the relaxing Saturday I had imagined. 

One of my students was going to town as well, so he helped me find a plunger (there is not really a word for it in Kiswahili and most people do not have Western toilets so this search was an experience in itself). After we completed this task, I treated him to pizza at a restaurant in town then we split up so I could buy some groceries and see another PCV who lives in town.  He went to see his brother and uncle, then we met up to ride back to our village together.   And this is where my true adventure began.  I wanted to buy some oranges (machungwa) in a town called Uyole on our way back, so we had to take a dala (small van) from Mbeya to Uyole and another one from Uyole to our village.  The stop and journey to Uyole was fine, the only annoyance was that vendors always add the mzungu sales tax and my Peace Corps salary does not allow for the inflated prices.  In other words, Tanzanians think I am rich and white so even though I make less than $8 a day, they try to swindle me.   But I am digressing…my attempt at creating suspense is clearly turning into rambling. 

After I bought my oranges my student and I boarded the dala from Uyole to our village.  The driver drove very fast through the mountains and we were making good time.  Then, as we approached the top of one of the mountains, the van gave out.  It started sliding backwards and there was smoke. After several attempts to restart the engine and get the van up the mountain, the passengers decided to get out.  After the dala was emptied, they were able to drive it over the hill and stop at a minor plateau.  So we, the passengers, got to hike up the hill to meet the van.  The driver told all of the passengers to get back inside, and I assumed that they had fixed the problem.  Never make assumptions! Especially when you live in another country and the driver is motivated by money not safety.  We all get in the van and start driving.  I notice there is smoke rising from the car (not outside, literally rising from the middle of the car).  Then I notice that the brakes still aren’t working well and whatever problem the dala had was clearly not fixed.  I asked my student if it was a good idea for us to be riding in this van since it was smoking, and he explained that it was very hard to get another van to come especially since it was almost sunset.   When I told him that the brakes didn’t seem to be working well, he said, “Don’t worry.  The driver put the car in neutral.”  Now I am not an expert mountain driver by any means, but I am pretty sure that you aren’t supposed to put the vehicle in neutral when you are driving down a STEEP mountain with many turns and bad breaks.  But what do I know. So then I asked my student what he thought we should do, and he told me to pray. 

As the van was weaving between cars, driving on the wrong side of the road, speeding through curves, and accelerating to an unsafe rate down the mountain, God and I had an intimate conversation. And I am thankful that He loves me so much!  Fortunately, we made it back to our village safely and the dala driver avoided a major accident.  On our walk back to the school, my student admitted that he was scared too.  He was just trying to act like it was no big deal for my sake… 

Cross Culturally Sick

People across the world get sick.   However, the way we treat people who are feeling sick varies across cultures.  Today I experienced being sick in Tanzania for the second time (the first time was in homestay during training).   This morning I woke up feeling terrible with basic flu-like symptoms so I contacted my Second Master and told him I would not be at school today.  I was looking forward to a day of just resting alone in my house with my nice bed and lap top to keep me company.  Little did I know, Tanzanian culture clearly states that the sick should not be left alone.   Every two hours I heard a knock at my door and was visited by teachers, my Second Master, and students.  One of the perks of living at a boarding school is that my house is easy access.  I appreciate all of the love and support but imagine feeling sick, looking disgusting, and having your boss show up at your house.   The men I could just greet at the door but the women all wanted to come in and ask me questions about how I’m feeling and tell me I have malaria, need to eat, rest, etc.  A simple phone call would have sufficed, but I was touched by the kindness of people I have only known for two weeks.  When Americans are sick, they generally like to be left alone.  Tanzanian culture is something I am still trying to adjust to, but hopefully we can do some cross culture exchange when it comes to visiting me when I’m sick.  By the end of the two years, I will either need to cut the visits down to only 2 times a day (as opposed to the 6 groups of visitors I entertained today) or learn to love the company.  

Return of the VEGETARIAN!!!

One of the things I love most about being at my site is the edible freedom.  By edible freedom, I mean that I can essentially eat what I want when I want.  If I am not hungry, I do not have to force feed myself in order to be polite to my host family.  And the most exciting part is that I can enjoy an abundance of fruits and vegetables! No longer must I endure the carb heavy meals that I received from my host family.  I have loved cooking for myself.  I am lucky enough to have both a refrigerator and gas stove, so I have been cooking up a storm. After training I made a big decision that will greatly impact my Peace Corps experience over the next two years.  I am now a vegetarian….again! 

I spent four years of the past seven years my life as a vegetarian and am excited to switch back.  Although I began eating meat again three years ago, it was mostly poultry and fish.  I was never able to truly embrace red meat or pork, and it was a STRUGGLE for me to eat it in Tanzania.  The animals here are free range.  They are not as fat as they are in America, so the meat is less tender.  Since the animals have more muscle here, the meat is tougher and harder to chew.  While I was not a fan of the taste or texture, the real reason I had to change my diet was because it did not agree with my stomach.  Perhaps this was partially because I did not eat red meat enough in America and maybe over time my intestines would adjust to the diet here.  But I made a promise to my digestive track that after homestay I would not force myself to eat meat.  And it has been working out great so far!

The other big reason why I decided to become a vegetarian is because I enjoy being detached from the animals I eat.  I miss going to the grocery store and buying my boneless, skinless, chicken breasts already packaged and cleaned for me.  I do not need to see the animals that I am going to eat in their living form.  In my village, there are goats, cows, and chickens all around my house.  If I don’t see one the next day and my neighbors are eating meat, I know exactly what happened! God forbid I form an attachment to some of these animals, especially the adorable baby goats.  If I were to eat meat here, I would have to go to the butchery and see the bloody animal parts hanging.  No thank you!  One perk of not cooking meat is that I can save money and spend it on luxury items like chocolate. 

Oh, and in case you were wondering, Tanzanians think I am really weird.  They already think I’m strange, but since I don’t eat meat they think I am really odd.  There are not many vegetarians here (I have not actually met a Tanzanian vegetarian yet) and meat is a big part of the culture.  I had a conversation with one of my fellow teachers who is Muslim and was fasting for Ramadan. He told me, “It would be easy for you to fast because you don’t like to eat food.” When I asked for clarification, he claimed that since I did not eat meat, I must not like the taste of food.   Clearly I only ate for basic nourishment because only a fool would deprive themselves of meat.  Maybe one day he will understand that I do not just eat to live.  It’s actually the other way around.  A life without good food would be depressing. No matter how hard I try to explain myself, Tanzanians do not understand my dietary preferences.  I think the only vegetarians in Tanzania are people who cannot afford to eat meat. 

My neighbor, the Second Master at our school, is Masai and he was explaining how important meat is in his tribe.  The Masai even drink the blood of an animal after it has been killed.   Picture the dead cow on the ground and people gathered around it drinking the blood (un-boiled blood).  I have been invited to visit my Second Master’s village and learn about the Masai people and I am excited to experience another way of life; however, it would take a serious act of God for me to participate in the cultural practice of blood drinking.  

Pole Sana!

Dear Friends and Family,

I apologize for taking a long break from blogging and realize I have not updated this blog in over a month.  I promise to work hard to catch you up on the big events in my Peace Corps life that you may have missed, so keep checking below for backdated posts.  In Kiswahili, “pole” means “sorry” and “sana” means “very.”  All I can say to my dedicated readers is pole sana.    I have no excuse for not writing more.   My camera broke early during training, and I have had to rely on the generosity of my Peace Corps friends to get pictures to share. I was able to buy a new camera last week, but unfortunately technology has been fighting with me since I arrived in Tanzania. Recently, I have had some external hard-drive trouble but am hopeful things will get resolved and I can continue blogging about my life.  Sadly, my external hard-drive was the home of stolen pictures from other PCVs...

Many things have happened over the past month.  First of all, I am now an official PEACE CORPS VOLUNTEER (PCV)!!! We had our swearing in ceremony in Dar es Salaam at the US Ambassadors house and I traded in my title of trainee for volunteer.   As you could probably guess, this means that our 10 week training in Morogoro is over and I am now living at my site in Mbeya.  I will be here for 2 years and am working hard to integrate in my community.  I live in a rural village at a small boarding school.  My house is very nice.  It’s small but has running water and electricity.  Well in theory I have running water and electricity.  Tanzania has a problem with water so even though I have a shower, I have not been able to use it yet (and I have been in my house for almost a week!).  But luckily, my host family taught me the joys of a bucket bath and I have been able to maintain my hygiene.   The electricity is inconsistent but I have no complaints.  It comes on at least once a day and I am able to keep my phone charged.  

Saying goodbye to my host family in Morogoro

I will work hard to catch you up on my life so bear with me.  Expect blog posts to come relatively soon.  During training, we went to a game park which was fun.  I also shadowed a Peace Corps volunteer living in Tanga for a week.  We took exams to test whether we learned a sufficient amount of Kiswahili during training and said goodbye to our host families.  We went to Dar es Salaam and stayed there for a few days to meet our heads of schools, prepare for our swearing in ceremony, and tour the Peace Corps office.  I was able to spend lots of time with my friend Danielle who has been living in Dar for the past 3 years. She showed me her house, places where local Tanzanians spend time, and some of the best restaurants in Dar that only foreigners can afford to eat at.   I am envious of Danielle’s fluency in Kiswahili and hope to be as good as her in the near future.   After our short time in Dar, all of the new PCVs from my training class said goodbye and went to our new sites all across the country.  I am now learning about my new home in Mbeya and will write when I can.   At the moment, I must go to my banking town to use the internet but am hoping to get a modem for internet at my house.