And the Site Goes To...

Well, it's official. I received my site placement this morning. And the winner is....

I will be in Iringa Region in the district of Njombe living about 8km outside of Njombe town. This is a good thing! I'm closer to the town than any other PCV and there are a lot of PCVs in that area. This means I'll be visited a lot by PCVs who're coming to town. I'll also be able to get to internet fairly easily (like once a week or so). The town also has a store that sells cheese!!!! This is a big thing! The weather is really nice there, too. I was there on my shadow visit last week and it was the "hot" season - I was comfortably wearing jeans & a t-shirt. Guess I'll have to load up on warmer clothes for the cold season in June/July when they get frost. Keep in mind that the houses are not insulated or heated! I'm excited, though. I'd like to get my haircut as soon as I move down there since I won't need to keep it tied up anymore! My site is a new site, so we don't know too much about it. The sheet provided by the headmaster says the house has electricity, water & a "western" toilet, but since no one's been there before we really don't know what it'll have. PC has checked the house out for safety, security, etc. so it'll be livable. The school is a boarding school for about 550 students, 8 teachers, and my house is on the school campus. That will have its own benefits & drawbacks, I'm sure. Don't get excited about the "boarding school" name. Many TZ schools are boarding schools because the kids have to walk for hours to get there and/or there's little transportation & BAD roads to the school, so they just live at the school. Some of my friends from training are nearby (like 25km to 110km which is hours by TZ travel standards), but they'll have to come to my town for banking & better groceries, so I'm guaranteed to see more of them than others will. Some of my other good friends are further away, but visitable, while others I won't see for a long time :( That's just the way it goes I guess. I'm not replacing another volunteer. This means my house will have minimal things & I'll have buy most everything (like kerosene/charcoal stoves, buckets, pots/pans, dressers, couch, etc) and figure out how to get it to my house. That part is a pain, but I guess it'll give me something to do in Dec. plus the school has no one to compare me to! Another benefit of Njombe? No mosquitoes, no bug spray needed & no mosquito net needed!! Yeah! I still have to take my malaria meds each week in case I decide to travel to other regions & there are some mosquitoes in Njombe, just very very few! I'm so sick of bugspray & being claustrophobic under my net!


Tomorrow we head back to Morogoro to our homestays for about 5 more days. Then we move into a training center for a day or two for our swearing in. Then back to Dar to catch buses to our sites w/ all of our crap! Basically I have to drive 3 hours one way to turn around and drive 11 hours back the other way. Grrr - doesn't make sense to me, but oh well.

Other than that, I'm doing well. Tonight PC is having Thanksgiving Dinner (a week early) for us because on Thanksgiving Day we'll be on buses traveling to Dar (I think)or to our sites.

Oh, went to a dentist in Dar yesterday. It was a Swedish dentist in a Swedish hotel - weird, but a totally normal dentist's office - smelled like all dentist offices do! He took impressions of my teeth & recommended I get a Maryland Bridge (had one about 10 years ago) instead of another flipper so I didn't have to worry about it breaking "out in the bush" as he called it. He has to send them to Nairobi to get it made, so, after I get to my site I'll have to come back to Dar sometime in Dec. to have it installed in my mouth.
Yippee - more 12 hour bus rides w/ no bathrooms & by myself - YIKES!

Until I get my new address keep sending stuff to Dar - should be a new address w/in the next 2-3 weeks.