Friday, October 24, 2008

Still Here

hi all - yes it's finally me posting from TZ. Thanks to Diane who posted my word docs for me last time! The sign in stuff was in Hebrew and I couldn't switch it to sign in! Things here are good, but as you may have heard I think about coming home just about every day. It's a weird phenomenom to describe because there isn't any one thing that is bad here and the conditions are fine. I just am still attached to my life at home. I'm giving myself one day at a time to get attached to life here, but may decide to put a year in and head home. We'll see!

In other news, Swahili is still frustrating, but getting better. I understand more than I can speak, but that will come with time I hope. Last weekend we went to Mikumi Nat'l Park and saw giraffes, elephants, zebras, buffalo, hippo, alligators, baboons, etc. No lions, though. No pictures either - I don't have enough time to load them. Maybe someday.

I've read four books so far: Twilight, New Moon, Mercy, & Vagina Monologues. I am currently reading Three Cups of Tea.

What do I need sent to me? Tissue packets - lots of them! Baby wipes - travel packets like from Target or elsewhere. Granola Bars, Hot Tamales (the candy - for a friend!) something to shave the dead skin off of my heels,letters, newspaper articles. I get mail and/or packages every week and it's fabulous so keep it comin'.!!

I started a blog at home that I didn't save to my flashdrive so I'll attempt to recreate part of it here.

The Five Senses According to me in TZ.

Sight: I see - beautiful sunsets/sunrises, lots of trash, nice smiles, people picking their noses (socially acceptable here), goats being walked on leashes

Smell: Oil cooking, animal smells, dagaa (dried sardines that stink to high heaven & they make sauces, etc. out of them),

Hear: Animal noises in the morning, babies crying, the Mosque calling, the choir at mass w/ my family (awesome, but LONG service)

Taste: Good food, but lots of oil to cook w/, cold sodas after school that will never taste as good at home, treats from home that are savored, great fruit - better than any at home

Feel: Heat & sweat on my skin (it's about 95 everyday now), dust on my skin, breeze that changes from hot to cold in a moment (like swimming in a pool and finding hot spots/cold spots), dust on my feet all of hte time.

Ok there's more, but that's all I can think of right now!

Friday, October 10, 2008

Updates about Life in General

Time


Time takes on a completely different meaning here in TZ – literally & figuratively. First, the time it takes to do normal everyday tasks is tripled here in TZ. There is no running water at my homestay, so taking a “bath” takes on new meaning as well as more time. First, you have to prep the water – boil a small amount for heat, then add cold water to temper, put it all in a bucket. Then take the bucket to a room (indoors) that resembles a large telephone both. Take all of your shower belongings & a pitcher of sorts. Take bucket bath. It conserves a lot of water compared to what we do in the US, but takes more time. Getting places also takes more time. I ride a bike to school everyday – not fun on the “roads” here in TZ. (imagine BMX racing/x-games) You can catch a daladala, but that takes time to wait for it & to wait for 20 people to “banana” (squeeze) into a van built for 8. Cooking takes forever on the small kerosene or charcoal camping-type burners they use to cook on. My family has several which lessens the time, but it still takes a lot of back breaking time to cook that way. It’s amazing how my mama can put several hot dishes on the table when they were all done at different times. She puts a plate on top of the serving dishes w/ hot coals on the plate to keep the contents hot.


In the other sense, time is literally different here. There is “English” time which all watches & clocks are set to & then there’s TZ time which everyone goes by. Since we live close to the equator, they get 12 hours of daylight & 12 hours of dark everyday. Therefore, their time is based on sunrise. Sunrise is at 6am, so that is the beginning of time for the day. At 7am, (1 hour after sunrise), TZns say it is 1 o’clock. Basically, add or subtract six hours from TZ time to get English time. It’s funny how they refer to it as English time because when you hear them talk about it, it’s like the Amish at home talking about us as the English!



Homestay


My homestay consists of a mama, baba, and 2 dadas. No, not two fathers, 2 sisters. Baba is father, dada is sister. My sisters are 14 and 10, both fabulous, but still shy around me. Mama and Baba are both teachers at the school where I go for Kiswahili everyday. Mama teaches Chemistry & Biology. Baba teaches civics/government/history. I have my own room w/ bed, desk & mosquito net. I’m still living mostly out of my suitcases, but that’s ok as I’m not dragging them around anymore. We have electricity, but not running water. My older sister or mama take kerosene type containers to a tap every other day when the water is sent to our village to collect water for the next few days. Sometimes the water isn’t sent when it’s supposed to be & water gets tight. I do have an indoor bathing room & indoor toilet facilities, but nothing quite like home! It takes all of my yoga training to get into the correct squat position to use the porcelain hole in the floor. It’s actually easier than it sounds. Mama boils water w/ ginger in the morning for chai which is fabulous. Dinner is many dishes usually rice and/or potatoes, cabbage of some sort, fresh fruit, beans, chipati (like a flour tortilla or crepe depending on who makes it). I’m eating well, so my hopes of a PC diet are fading. We have chai-break at school everyday around 10am which is a great break from the day. US schools should have this! My sisters help me with my homework at night & we’re usually in our rooms between 9:30 & 10. My family has piglets, 2 dogs, ducks, and chickens. The roosters are the worst (everyone’s not just ours) as they crow constantly starting around 3am. It makes it hard to sleep through the night. I swear one hangs out right outside my window just to piss me off.


Daily Routine


There is very little time for me to do anything here other than study, so few letters have gone out and I’ve made no trips to town to check email, post blogs, or even buy a phone. We have classes every day M-Sat from 8-5. This is after getting up at 6:30, bucket bathing, eating breakfast, and riding my bike to school – up hill no joke. (ok, slight grade to the “road” i.e. dirt path w/ rocks thrown in, lots of chickens, people, motorcycles, other bikes, etc.). We study either Swahili or TZ education system all day long. Then ride home again. I usually hang out w/ my friends from PC until 6 or so, and then go home. Then I bathe again, try to help w/ dinner which has been refuted thus far, do my homework, try to talk to the girls, eat dinner between 7 & 8, go to bed after studying flashcards. Repeat. The only variation would be on the days when we meet w/ one other language group (5 more people) or on Fridays when the entire group of PC Eds. (33) meet to do fun things like inoculations, or learning to prick our fingers and make slides that we send to Dar in case we might have malaria. Yes, I really had to prick my own finger and make slides of my own blood. My shot count is up to 5 total. I still have 4 more that I know of. Today, being a Friday, I was with the entire group where we had sessions on malaria (thus the finger pricking lab), we made our own water filter system out of buckets & ceramic filters, and reviewed some PC policy stuff. Fun Fun!

Eidd El Fitr – The end of the Ramadan. As I am not Muslim & neither is my family, why is this important? We had a day off of school. It was great to sleep in and relax. It also meant the end of the Mosque’s calling at 3am to remind the Muslims to eat before sunrise. I do not mean this to be in anyway anti-Islamic, but the calls from the Mosques are not pretty. The chanting uses an “ugly” part of the voice and, to me, it is not a comforting sound, but a jarring noise, regardless of the time of day in which I hear it.


Transporting goods – it’s amazing how many ways there are to transport goods here that I cannot get over. The women carrying items on their heads is forever amazing to me. Apparently many of them have spinal problems in their necks due to carrying loads over many years, but I still think it’s awesome to watch. I’ve also seen amazing loads carried via bicycle that I would never dare to try – of course I can barely carry myself on my bicycle without falling over! The carts of bricks being pushed/pulled by several people is amazing to watch. It makes me realize how wimpy we are as Americans. If we have a heavy load to find someway to roll it to a motorized vehicle and then drive it to where we are going. No such luck here. Also, the way the women carry their babies in kangas is amazing, too. They tie those cloths around them in such away that their kids are never going to fall, plop in the kid, and off they go w/ both hands free.


Speaking of kangas – they are the most useful pieces of material ever. The brightly colored pieces of cloth serve as towels, shirts, dresses, skirts, water strainers, cheese cloth, baby carriers, and a multitude of other purposes. Ironically, however, their guinea hens which are the most annoying creatures in the world (more hated by me than the roosters) are also called kangas. Why? Do they have many useful purposes of which I am not yet aware? Currently they just make a lot of f-ing noise and fight w/ each other!


Weather – So, this is Africa, and it’s hot here. However, it’s cool at night with breezes almost all of the time. For the past 3 days it’s rained on and off. It starts out really hot and then the temperature drops instantly – seriously. It’s like you go from sweating to cold in one minute. Later it rains. It’s great. It’s pretty dry here, too, so as long as you can get into the shade, the heat’s not so bad.


Swahili – It’s hard. Let me try to explain. Swahili has 7 noun classes. Depending on which class your noun is in, that noun will determine the prefixes of your adjectives and possessive words. For example, say you wanted to say “That is her new table”. First of all, there is a different “that” for each noun class. (also, different these, this, those…). So, before you can say the word “that” you must go through your mind and figure out which noun class “table” is in and then determine which “that” word you’re allowed to use. In this case, “table” is in the n/n noun class, so we use the word “ile” (pronounced ‘ee-lay) for “that”. Then you have to also figure out which possessive word to use. In English, “her” is the possessive meaning the table belongs to her, but in Swahili, you have to again refer to the noun class to get the prefix for the root possessive “her” ---ake. So, we go to the n/n class, look up the prefix for “…ake” and find that it is a “y” and we get “yake” (pronounced yah-kay) to use for the “her”. Finally, we also need to figure out what prefix, if any, is used for the adjective “new”. In the n/n class, only some adjectives get prefixes to match their nouns, but “new” is one of them. The root for “new” is “pya” and it gets the prefix “m” in the n/n class, so we get “mpya” for “new”. So, we put that all together and for “That is her new table” we get “Ile ni meza yake mpya”. Literally translated means “That is table her new”. AHHHHH. It’s not necessarily hard to memorize the prefixes (different for singular and plural as well), but there is just NO WAY to learn which class all of the nouns are in. Basically, you just have to give it your best shot and prepare to have people correcting you ALL OF THE TIME. Try to make that sentence plural and you have to start all over!


I do pretty well when things are written, but oral is difficult. I’m constantly asking people to repeat themselves, “writing” the sentence in my head, translating what I “see”, then saying in English what I think they said to check myself (which must be really annoying to constantly hear repeated what you just said), then trying to construct a phrase in my head, hear it in my head first, then say it, and then check if it was right and/or listen to the correction and say it again. Needless to say I practice oral Swahili the least because it takes so much effort, but it is what I should be practicing the most. Grrr. In about a week I have a Oral Proficiency Exam and a Mid-Term written exam. I’m not too worried about the written one, except that I forget a lot of detailed rules, like changing certain things in past/future tense, but not in present, but the oral test will be hard. We are at least aware of what the testers will be talking to us about, so I can practice a little.



Family/Homestay – things are going pretty well in my homestay. One of my sister’s had the chicken pox the other week. My Mama firs told me she had small pox and I was about ready to get on a plane home! Now she’s better and my other sister has a really bad cold. I’ve been downing the Airborne trying not to catch it. I think they’re allergic to me or something! My family is pretty quite and subdued – much different from the community oriented family I expected. Not a lot of visitors/visits, not a lot of extra people around most of the time. Usually, it’s just the 5 of us which suits me just fine. Some of the other families have houseboys/girls who do a lot of the work and random family members that they can’t quite seem to place. My family is from out of the area, so we don’t have a lot of that. Also, both of my parents are teachers, so they aren’t working in the community/fields/etc. during the day. Like I said, though, I prefer the quiet life and if I had to be socializing all of the time, I might go crazy. Of course, it might help my Swahili, but oh well!


In good times & in bad – I have my ups and downs and there are times when I want to jump on a plane home. One night last week the PCTs stayed in town after a large group meeting to have dinner. This mean we missed our PC vehicle ride home and had to find our own way back. It got dark, we couldn’t get a taxi, and then the electricity went out. I didn’t feel like I could communicate at all and it was so frustrating to not be able to get where I wanted to be, when I wanted to be there, not be able to ask for help (& it sucked to have to ask for help), etc. It became a moment when I realized that nearly all of my independence has been stripped away. That really sucks. As someone who’s taken care of themselves for as long as I can remember, enjoys living alone, and doing things on my own, not being able to be independent was almost a deal breaker. It didn’t help that when I finally did make it home, my neighbors had an all night vigil for someone who had died. The church choir they hired for the event (not kidding) sang from 10pm-5am so I got one hour of sleep and then had to get up and go to school. Those are times when I wonder why I was dissatisfied with my life in PA and think how easy it would be to go back to it. Then I stop myself and force myself to think about why I wanted a change and that if I came home I wouldn’t have my “easy” life back because I wouldn’t be able to get my job back until next year, I don’t have my own place, etc. etc. and then I think I’ll make it here one more day. One more day becomes a week, and so on. A few people have thought about ETing (early termination), but as of yet everyone we started out with in Philly is still here. Apparently when we get our sites and are left all alone is a big time to ET as well as the one-year mark. I can understand that. When I’m having a bad day, I have other PCTs who are going through the same thing and help pick me up. I also almost always have a translator around for when I get stuck. When I’m on my own, most of that support is totally gone. One bad day could turn into many w/o people to help pick you up. I can also see why people leave after the first year. On one hand, people don’t think they’ve made much of a difference or aren’t helping and want to call it quits. Also, I could see having enough of an experience to last a lifetime after 1 year and just being ready to be home. I try not to think too much about where I fit into those possibilities and just focus on one day at a time. As for good times, I can’t think of specifics. Mainly, I’m just enjoying my new environment, friends, schedule, etc. Next weekend we are supposed to go to Mikumi National Park if it gets organized, so that should be fun. It also marks our halfway point, so after that only a few more weeks of living w/ host families, learning Swahili non-stop, etc. Next week we start “internship” teaching. Basically that means that we practice teach, but as our school has few teachers to cover all of the classes, it also means that we are to be regular teachers at the school. I’ll be teaching Form IIA Math. All that means is that it’s a group of kids in their 2nd year of “high school” and the A means that they’re one group. There’s also IIB, IIC, and IID. There is no difference in the groups, just they had enough kids in form II to break them into four groups. Everyone takes the same classes. There is also not one specific math class that I’ll be teaching. Each form has a syllabus that covers some geometry, some algebra, some trig, some statistics, etc. So each year, each form, gets a little of everything. Next week I’ll be starting a new unit w/ Form IIA. Basically the teacher showed me what had been covered and what hadn’t been and I can do whatever I want in what hasn’t been covered. They need to do congruency in triangles, similarity in triangles, and transformations. Basically a lot of geometry stuff. Thank goodness I spent all of that time doing geometry last year w/ my high school kids! Thanks guys!!!! Form II also includes trig using trig tables, which I’ve never done (all on a calculator!), so I’m really glad that’s already been covered! I’ll probably only teach them for a few weeks before we’re done, so it’s not like I have to finish all of the leftover topics. Now to pick what I want to do…


Health, Food & Weight


Thankfully it seems my body has adjusted well to Africa. I have not had any digestion related problems, as have some of my friends, so I am thankful for that. I’m sure it’s a bonus that my mama is a chemistry & biology teacher. She understands the pathogen risks much better than some other host families. She tells me why she does not reuse animal fats after cooking & boils our water correctly rather than just heating it up a bit! As for food, I’m eating more than I did at home. Breakfast is tea & bread w/ jam and/or eggs of some sort. Chai break around 10am each day includes tea & some sort of chipati or donut-like thing. (Although today we had boiled yams which were just about the worst thing I’ve ever eaten – like eating wet chalk). Lunch is prepared by a local mama and brought to the school for us each day. It’s usually beans & rice and/or potatoes, some sort of stewed something for on top, some sort of veggie either cooked or raw (raw tomato & cucumber salad w/ salt/lemon is YUMMY!) and then some fresh fruit. I’ve stopped eating the after school chai because I feel like I’m eating all of the time! Dinner is eaten anywhere between 7:30 and 9:00pm – so late! We eat beans, rice, stewed meats (a tomato based sauce w/ coconut milk is my favorite), fruit, veg, etc. Almost everything is cooked in sunflower oil, so I’m eating a lot of fat : (. However, once I’m on my own I won’t have to cook w/ fat anymore. The amazing thing is the sunflower oil they use is produced by them. The grew sunflowers & harvested all of the seeds. My Baba cleans the seeds & then presses the oil by hand & they use it to cook. Amazing!! With all of those things considered, (not being sick & eating a lot), I haven’t lost a pound as far as I know!!!