Tayari or not....

Where to begin? Since my last blog post things have moved relatively quickly as far as Tanzanian time is concerned.

[Now might be a good time to mention that Tanzanian time is nothing like American time. In the US time is considered to be money, here in Tanzania everyone seems to have enough time and not enough time can be spent enjoying others’ company. So, things in general move pretty slowly here, i.e. events do not start on time and people are not always where they should be at the specified times. The concept of time here is something I am slowly adjusting to and slowly starting to appreciate living in the moment and enjoying the people around me.]

For instance in the past week, I took my mid LPI (language proficiency interview) and written exam, hiked up into the Uluguru mountains, taught my first class, cooked an American dish for my family and assisted in the killing of another chicken.

In a previous post I posted a picture of the Uluguru Mountains that form the backdrop for the town of Morogoro. This past Sunday a group of about 20 of us (PCTs) took a guided trek up into the mountains. It was a beautiful sunny day and our hike started at about 8:00 am. We broke up into two groups to decrease the likelihood of theft. By about 10:00 am the second group caught up to the first group and we hiked as one large group and by about 8:15 am I had broken out into a full sweat. I don’t think I have ever sweat so much in my life besides in a BWC body circuit when the Murphs would not open the doors to the let the breeze in. Okay, so….back to the hike, our first stop was an old German hotel called Morningside. It was built in 1911 as a resort for the German colonists in Tanzania, but has since gone to ruin. The building is run down and covered with writing, bright tropical orange flowers and vines. Morningside is now primarily used by one of the local universities for soil and agricultural research.  The hike up to Morningside was absolutely beautiful. People have settled all the way up the mountainside and it was amazing to see that most of them were farmers. It rains often in the mountains because of the elevation so irrigation is natural and plentiful. They grow everything from carrots and cabbage to bananas and avocadoes.  I was completely amazed to see beds of crops on steep mountainsides! After stopping at Morningside we continued on through small hill top villages to a local waterfall, which I also found to be very beautiful. The people who lived in the village near the waterfall followed us down and watched all 20 wazungu enjoy the scenery. The waterfall was not flowing at its max rate because it is currently the dry season in Tanzania, but it was still an aesthetically pleasing sight nonetheless. At this point most of us realized that not only were we soaked with sweat, but also we were wicked sun burnt…. After stopping at the waterfall for about twenty minutes we continued our hike down hill to home. All in all I had never been on a hike quite like this one. The trail was very narrow and steep at times. We arrived back in Morogoro at about 3:30 and even upped with our tour guides.  The guides cost each of us Tsh 11,500, about  $7.66. It was nice to discover that the money that the national park receives from guided tours goes to the people in the villages that the tours pass through. If anyone is ever in Morogoro for an extended stay, I highly recommend taking a guided tour up into the Uluguru mountains.

This past Tuesday night I decided to take matters into my own hands at home. I was going to cook a dish for my Tanzanian family, come hell or high water. Too many times I have been kicked out the kitchen and told to go watch TV (we get three channels in case anyone was wondering) because of my poor knife skills and my apparent inability to stir rice. So, I went to the super market in town (more like a Cumbies) and picked up a package of bow tie pasta, which surprisingly enough my host family referred to as macaroni. Anyhow…I made homemade pasta sauce (tomatoes, garlic, onions, green peppers, carrots and salt) and pasta for my family. I was pretty impressed with myself because I made the whole meal over a charcoal fire. My host family enjoyed the meal, but found that it lacked salt….

Wednesday, I took my written Kiswahili exam as well as my oral interview. I felt that both went very well, but they were just for practice and as a progress marker. The final exam, in a couple weeks, is the one that will determine whether or not I will be sworn in as a volunteer or not. Thursday, I taught my first class in a Tanzanian classroom. To prepare for the lesson, earlier in the week I visited the class to see where they were in the syllabus. After a little deductive reasoning I learned that they were studying plant and animal cells, so that’s what I prepped for. [Note on Tanzanian classrooms: They are similar to American classrooms and also very different. They are set up relatively the same way, but there are in some cases two or three students to one desk and the school is run in a more “old school” way than one might be used to in the US. For instance, when I entered the classrooms the students are programmed to stand and greet me, “Good afternoon, Teacher” to which I am to reply “Good afternoon, Class. You may sit”. ] All in all I felt the class went very well considering the fact that last year I taught a class of nine students every day and Thursday I taught a class of about 35 or so.

This past Saturday all 39 of us took off for our Trainee Directed Activity, a trip to Mikumi national park. Mikumi is located a little west of Morogoro and was about a 1 ½ - 2 hour drive.  Overall the trip was pretty awesome. Mikumi is the fourth largest national park in Tanzania and is home to many animals. Saturday afternoon after we checked into the hotel we headed to the park to catch the animals in the late afternoon. Upon entering the park we spotted a couple of African elephants. On the safari we were lucky enough to see giraffe, impala, warthogs, zebra, oxen, more elephants, a hippopotamus and a pride of lions. At times it was hard to wrap my mind around the idea that I was viewing these animals in their natural habitat. One of my favorite parts of the day was when we stopped at the watering hole and saw a hippopotamus and a pride of lions. The lions were napping and then fighting over a leftover carcass meanwhile the hippo about 150m away is lolling in the water opening its mouth every so often. Besides the animals the park’s landscape is also very beautiful. I was in awe of some of the trees that were going there. They are much different from anything at home and something straight out of standard Africa savannah photo. Upon exiting the park we also saw the most amazing African sunset. It was a combination of red, orange, pink and yellow. The full moon rise was also very pretty. The next morning we woke up at 5:00am to get breakfast and to the park before the sun got too high in the sky. The second trip into the park was just as good as the first, if not better. We saw many of the same animals, minus the lions, but we were able to get much closer in the vans to them.  Waking up at 5:00am did not do much for my level of consciousness, so I slept most of the trip on the bumpy dirt roads and only woke when people in the van spotted animals. When we arrived at the watering hole our guide allowed us to venture out of the van because there were no lions around, there were, however, many wildebeest and zebras getting their fill of water for the morning. Overall, the mini safari was pretty awesome.  *One take home lesson from the whole trip is that it does not take long for three men to change a blown tire on a bus. One of our buses blew a front tire, not once, but twice and I was pretty shocked at how fast and easy it was to fix. Honestly, in the US I would have just called AAA, but these guys could put them to shame.  To entertain ourselves on the side of the highway while the van was being tended to, we played a game everyone likes…. throw rocks at a stone pillar and see who can hit it first from a reasonable distance. Seriously this game can keep one occupied for a good chunk of time.

This coming week is week 5 of training. We will be teaching more and hopefully observed by the PCVs of the week, other teachers and our LCFs. At the end of the week we will be told where we will be going for shadow in week 7. Shadow is a weeklong and about 2 or 3 PCTs travel to a PCVs site live with them and teach at their school. 

Something I have neglected to post in previous posts, or touch on enough in previous posts is how my name is completely unpronounceable by Tanzanians. There is some thing about the “rl” complex in my name that throws everyone for a loop. For instance, earlier in training when one of the LCFs was announcing our CBT groups he read everyone’s name, but mine and just added “and this person too”. My host mama for instance likes to call me Karen, while her little sister likes to call me Carrie. I tried to spell my name in Swahili to see if that would help with people’s pronunciation of it, but it turns out the closest combination of letters I could come up with, Kali, (Kah-lee) means sharp or fierce in Swahili. Prefect for me, for those of you who know me well enough, but it really throws the Tanzanians off. So…. I remain Karen, Carrie, Carolyn and “this person”.



Mikumi National Park |(yes I took this picture)

Once again I hope everything is well in the States. If people want to write, I can receive letters at the address above. Thank you so much to the Pearlsteins! I was so happy to receive your letter this week! Thank you for thinking of me! A return letter will soon be in the mail.  For those of you who are wondering as I am writing this blog post it is pouring outside! Finally some rain to suppress all of the dust….or create a ton of mud. The next blog I will report back as to my preference….mud or dust? We shall find out.