The Andrew Clark Field Guide to Kiswahili, Vol. 1

Christmas was good, but not too much going on now, so I thought I'd bring you the Andrew Clark Field Guide to Kiswahili. The following guide will help you understand the basics should you ever come to Tanzania or at least understand the occasional Kiswahili word I am sure to through on my blog now and then. the ACFGK goes way beyon an ordinary dictionary to give you the nuance behind what you're saying and hearing.

Habari za...: Habari literall means "news." However, it is used as a greating asking you how your doing. The word after za can be anything such as Habari za asibuhi (how's the morning?). The third word doesn't matter really, you always respond with something like nzuri (good) or salama (safe). Responding anything other than the positive only leads to a lot of annoying questions you don't want to deal with. Of course, we in the Peace Corps take this to ridiculous levels like "Habari za cheeseburger." Salama, incidentally, is also the name of the leading brand of condoms, which I think is appropriate.

Shikamoo: This is a greeting you give someone older than you or in a position of authority over you. It literally means "I hold your feet." The response is marahaba which means "delightful." Personally I don't know what's so delightful about someone holding your feet.

Karibu: This word means "welcome." You will hear it when someone invites you into their home or if you are a visitor or new to an area. You will also hear it when offered something, like food (karibu chakula) or tea (karibu chai) or whatever. Also you can offer somone a glass of tap water and say "karibu amoebic dyssentary." The correct response is asante (see below).

Pole: This word is a way to express sympathy for someone from the trivial to the devestating. If you trip or if your mother dies you'll hear pole. It sounds strange, but it's the correct, polite thing to say in either case even though the best translation I've heard for pole is "it sucks to be you." Again, the response is asante (again, see below).

Asante: This means "thank you." You also use it as a polite way to refuse somethign you're offered, whether it's more tea or if some guy on the street is trying to sell you a spear or something. In the case of responding to a pole or an annoying vendor, the best translation is "screw you!"

Safi: This is one of my favorites. It means "clean" but is used as slang like "cool" in America. If something's really cool you say safi kabisa which means "completely clean." The PCVs tend to love this one and I know we will confuse and/or annoy a lot of Americans with exchanges like the following:

Someone else: How was the food?
Me: It was completely clean.
Someone else: But did it taste good?
Me: I just said it did!

Fupi: This means "short." No big deal, but I just think it sounds cool.

Another great thing about Kiswahili is that there are many cases where it doesn't translate directly into standard English, but it does translate into Southern English. For example:

ninyi: y'all
Habari zenu: How y'all doin'?
Kule: over yonder. This actually is the best translation because pale means "there" but kule means a less specific "over there somewhere" kind of thing, so the best term for it probably is "yonder."

So that's it, you're first few words of Kiswahili. You already know as much as a Kenyan! Look forward to further installments of the Andrew Clark Field Guide to Kiswahili.

Merry Christmas from Bukoba

It's Christmas Eve in Bukoba, and most of the lake PCVs are up here to celebrate Christmas. I took a long ferry ride across Lake Victoria to get here yesterday, but it's certainly been worth it. The PCVs up here have great sites and it's really beautiful on the western shore of Lake Victoria.

This will be the first Christmas in my memory that I haven't spent in Polk County with my mom's side of the family, so that's real sad. I hate to miss the annual event, but I'm glad I'll at least get to spend Christmas with some people I'm close to. Have a great Christmas in Columbus and I'm sorry I can't be there!

Not too much to report right now. Things at site are starting to feel normal so I'm having an easier time of things but just the same I'm glad to have this little trip. After this it'll be about ten weeks before I'm allowed to leave site again for more than one night. Fortunately now that I have some buddies at the school, that won't be a problem. So anyway, Merry Christmas everyone, and of course, Happy New Year.

Getting Settled In

It's been about ten days since my last post, but things have been moving at a relatively slow pace. I spent most of my time last week exploring both center city Mwanza and the area around my house. I took some long walks along the lake and discovered a very beautiful beach. I have also met most of the teachers at the school and am getting along quite well with them, particularly a few who are around my age. It has been a strange time because for the first time since July I've been living at a place on my own. The privacy's nice but the quiet in a new place can sometimes be disconcerting. Fortunately I have a very nice house with electricity (most of the time) and running water (at least some of the day). That has made certain things a lot easier. Hauling water can really be a drag, especially those who walk a kilometer a more to the lake to carry it home by the bucketload.

The school seems very nice, but I haven't met any of my students yet since they are on break. I have met some of the older students who are in A-level (for advanced). The way the system works here the secondary school is divided between O-level (o for ordinary) for four years and A-level for two. Very few students make it to A-level, and they are on a different schedule than the rest of the students. I will be teaching O-level.

I am taking a trip up to Bukoba for Christmas. Bukoba is a fairly good sized town on the western shore of Lake Victoria. I'm taking a ferry up there with Kathryn, a volunteer from my training group whose site isn't too far from here. We're visiting Rob, Aaron, and Jodi, all from our training group and all in Bukoba. The five of us, plus Patrick (who won't be making the trip) were the six who had all the time in Dar and Zanzibar. We were around each other constantly for awhile, and then all of the sudden I was on my own, so it will be good to see them again. Of course, now it's already getting a lot easier than it was last week since I'm making friends with some of the other teachers. Before too long I'll actually start preparing to teach. The school opens one month from today.

Oh, also my new address is:

Andrew Clark
PO Box 4058
Mwanza, Tanzania

Getting mail always makes my day, so send something! Only 80 cents from the US. Have a merry Christmas.

I'm Home!

So I finally made it to Mwanza, which will be my home for the next two years. The area around my house and my school are incredibly beautiful. I'm a 15 minute walk from Lake Victoria, and I can take a short hike up a hill and get a great view of the surrounding area and watch the sun set over the lake. I have electricity and water, but right now the rainy season is late in arriving so the lake is really low. This means that my water is intermitent. Still, since I seem to have water at least some of every day, I can stock up and I won't suffer too much. I hope the rains come soon though, apparently the lake is the about lowest people around here have ever seen it.

My house is perhaps a 20 bus ride outside of the city center. Mwanza is not a beautiful city, in fact it suffers from some horrible urban sprawl, but I like it anyway. There's just something about the activity of cities I find appealing. There are a few really nice restaurants that are too expensive for me to enjoy often. There's even a casino in one of the nice hotels. A great thing about Mwanza is that you can take a ferry from here to other parts of the lake, including some beautiful islands, and hire tours of the Serengeti, which is fairly close. I'm looking forward to having a chance to do that sometime. I've met all the volunteers in the lake region now, and they all seem like good, interesting people. Of course, there was a lot of turnover in this region this time as six of the nine volunteers here were in my training group. Some who are on other parts of the lake I won't see too often, but two of them are really close.

I've met a few of the teachers at my school and they are very nice and helpful. I think they will be good to work with. Classes don't start until January 21, so I have lots of time to get used to things and get to know the area. Readjustment will take a little time since I've been surrounded by people, either my host family or other trainees, ever since I've been in country. Of course, there are lots of people around where I live, but I'm living alone. It will be quite an adjustment, especially all the cooking. I have a kerosene stove and a pretty nice kitchen, so I'll be alright. Real soon I'm planning on posting some pictures both from training and of the area I live. I'm in town now, but I hear there is internet at the university right by my house, so I'll probably be able to get online more frequently than in training. Of course, I will actually be working and have limited funds, so no promises. As for now, it's kind of a relief to be at my site, but I am a little nervous now. I'm now on my own and it's up to me to do my job and make some sort of difference here.

Zanzibar

So it's my last night in Zanzibar. I've had a blast hear. We spent two nights on the northwestern coast of the island on possibly the most beautiful beach I've ever seen. Even though there are four hotels right in a row, the beaches are very far from crowded. Each hotel also has a restaurant and bar along the beach so there were a few places to choose from. Today we came down to Stone Town, which is a very old town with incredibly narrow streets that wind around like a maze. We spent much of the day wandering through them aimlessly never really knowing where we were. Tonight we ate dinner along the harbor where you can pick out some fresh fish that will then be grilled for you. It was pretty nice.

Zanzibar is an interesting place because of the mixture of African and Arab culture. It's also the most touristy place I've seen so far in Tanzania, so the locals are pleasantly surprised when you speak Kiswahili to them. I'm feeling a lot better about my language skills because as long as I try not to be too deep, I have very few problems communicating with people. I feel confident that I will continue to improve even though the formal lessons are over.

Tomorrow we go back to Dar where we will be until we leave for our site on Thursday. It will take maybe 2-4 days to get to Mwanza. I've been having a great vacation but I'm ready to get to site. I will probably have an opportunity to post again before I leave.

I'm Going to Mwanza!

I'm sorry I haven't updated in awhile, especially because a lot has happened since I last posted. The biggest, most exciting news is that I will be in Mwanza. Mwanza is the second largest city in the country and is located right on Lake Victoria. I will be living inside the city limits about eight kilometers south of city center teaching at Nsumbe Secondary School. It is a fairly large school that is in the process of converting to an all-boys boarding school. It also has a very good reputation in Tanzania, so I'm excited at the opportunity. I'll be living in a three-bedroom house on campus that is within walking distance of the lake. My neighborhood is also home to a university and a seminary, so there will be a lot of students around. Mwanza is the point where many Serengeti tours leave and there is also a national park on an island in the lake you would take a ferry to from Mwanza. Supposedly it is an amazing park that has a population of chimpanzees, but is the least visited of all of Tanzania's parks because of the relatively remote location. Mwanza also has some great restaurants including Indian and Chinese places right on the lake. For those of you who may wish to visit, I will have lots of space and you can fly straight into Mwanza. If you're a little squeamish about living the Tanzanian lifestyle, they will soon complete a five-star hotel 2-3 km from my house that will be ridiculously cheap by Western standards. So basically, karibu Mwanza (that means you're welcome in Mwanza)! I am extremely happy about my site.

In other news, Thanksgiving at the Ambassador's place was great, and the food was great, while it lasted. Fortunately I wasn't at the back of the line and I got my fill of turkey and dressing. I did feel pretty bad when I found out it had run out, but there wasn't really anything I could do. I must say though that it was real cool of the ambassador to invite Peace Corps somewhere where there was an open bar.

This past Monday I moved out of my host family's home. I will miss them, especially little Tina, because they were really great to me. Before long I'll post some pictures of them. The day after I left was the swearing in ceremony, so I am now officially a Peace Corps Volunteer. It's a pretty exciting thing. I am so, so glad that training is over and I can get on to my site. Even better, I get a week-long vacation first.

Right now I'm in Dar es Salaam. They are driving us out to our sites and all the cars are out taking other people now so the six of us in the lake region have to wait for them to return. Fortunately PC is covering our living expenses while we're here. Yesterday we went to a beautiful beach resort outside of town and stayed in these great huts right on the beach for $8 a person. They also had a bar and great food. The beach was absolutely beautiful and the water was great. We had a blast, but it's going to get even better because today we got permission from the country director to go to Zanzibar! We don't need to be back here at the PC office until Thursday, so we're going to take the ferry out to Zanzibar for a few days. If you don't know anything about Zanzibar, look it up on the web. It is an amazingly beautiful and exotic island off the coast of Tanzania. Zanzibar was briefly an independent country before it joined with Tanganyika in 1964 to form Tanzania. A lot of PCVs take vacations out there and it sounds pretty amazing. Since over land I am about 2-3 days away from Dar where you take the ferry out there, it will be pretty difficult to make the journey out there later. I'm glad I have the chance now.

Sorry this jumped around a lot, but a lot has happened. I'll try to post about Zanzibar and first impressions of Mwanza ASAP. I should arrive in Mwanza on the 10th or the 11th. And seriously, anyone's welcome to come. I am not free to travel during school, but I am always free to have visitors for up to one month.

Njombe

So the last few days I've been in the Njombe area and last night we came into town. I was visiting Steve, an education volunteer about an hour out of town. His site is right in the highlands and is absolutely amazing. I'm really hoping to get placed down here now. Njombe is a pretty nice town too and there are a lot of PCVs in the area. They seem to be a pretty tight group because it's a little bit isolated from the rest of the country, though not as much as some places. The weather here is beautiful. It's not hot and there are no mosquitos. I was actually a little bit cold last night. In just two days I will find out where my site is, so I can't wait. Of course first I have to get through the seven or so hour bus ride I have tomorrow. It actually won't be that bad because the scenery is amazing and we go through one of the national parks. On the way down I saw an elephant, some giraffes, antelope, a zebra, and some baboons. It was my first good look at wildlife here so I was really excited. Unfortunately there was no time for pictures. This afternoon we're going to take a short walk out of town to one of the waterfalls. A lot of the PCVs in the area came to town this weekend so we should have a pretty good group. I really can't contain my excitement about being done with training in a little over a week.

Last night I had a really interesting conversation with a Tanzanian and a couple of PCVs about Tanzania. We were talking about how Tanzania has been so successful in uniting all the different groups of people (an amazing feat compared to so many African countries) but has so far been so unsuccessful at pulling people out of poverty. Grant, the Tanzanian, was very frank about the certain areas where Tanzanians themselves are to blame. For example, many people here focus on providing one day at a time, never looking to go a bit beyond and build for the future. On the other hand, Tanzanians will always share whatever they have with their neighbors in need. In America of course, people tend to look out for themselves and other people's problems are other people's problems (of course, I'm generalizing). We agreed that there must be some sort of medium of doing for yourself but helping others who are in need. Part of the conversation came around to what motivates us to leave the wealthy world behind and come to Tanzania. It's an interesting question. I suppose it's because the wealth of the West isn't enough to satisfy us, and yet more wealth here would make life so much easier and in many cases possible where now it is not. At the same time, the sense of community and of caring for others that exists here would make life in America so much easier and better. I think our two societies have a lot to learn from each other, and I think I'm incredibly lucky to have that opportunity. I am just blown away by how much I've already gotten from this experience even though it has hardly started. Again, I can't wait to get done with training and get to my site! Hopefully next time you hear from me I'll be able to tell you where I will live for two years.

Howdy from Dar es Salaam!

Howdy everyone. Sorry for the errors in the last post, the Morogoro network is a bit unreliable. Fortunately I am now in the bustling metropolis of Dar es Salaam, which I'm really enjoying. It is much nicer and seems a lot safer than I expected. Tomorrow I will leave for three days of shadowing a volunteer in Njombe, which is in the southern highlands not to far from Lake Nyasa. I'm very excited because I love mountains and I hear there are two patches of rain forest and several waterfalls within walking distance of town. Also it is actually very cool there and there are almost no mosquitos. From what I know about it I'd think I'd really like it if that is where I am placed. The only drawback is that it's almost 12 hours from DSM. Monday we will find out where our site actually is. I am very excited and hope that I'm in the highlands, either north or south.

The other big news is that I now have a phone. Anyone who wants to call can because it's free to receive, but keep in mind that I'm 8 hours ahead of EST. The Tz country code is 255 and my number is 787 212 257. I really would love to hear from everyone, so please feel free. Also you can try to send text messages because I can receive them, but I'm not sure how well they work with international calls. Also keep in mind that there are many places in country where service is not very good, so sometimes you may not be able to get through.

In other news I have been having a great time the last few days. Dar has been a lot of fun and it has been so nice to be out of Morogoro and see some more of this country. I also had quite an experience last week because my buddy Wes's host sister had a send-off. This is a big party a bride's family throws a few days before the wedding. My host mama was the "matron" which means she is the maid of honor but in the send-off it is even more involved. She is almost as much a part of things as the bride. It had quite a lot of interesting ritual and was quite a party. Wes, Michael (another trainee) and I even participated by opening and spraying champagne and then running around the room giving everyone a little in their glasses for the toast. It was a lot of fun and incredibly hard to describe. If you ever have a chance to attend an East African send-off, I highly recommend it. I imagine I'll see quite a few before I leave. It was also a very late night. We didn't get back home until 2:30, which was quite late considering we're up with the sun pretty much every day.

I hope the post goes through this time. Thanks for the comments and keep them coming. Hopefully I can post soon after Monday to tell you where I will live for the next two years.

Training is Winding Down

Only 26 short months left. Where does the time go?

Last Sunday I came into town to use the internet, but the Morogoro network was down. Fortunately, I bumped into Nathan, one of my good PCT buddies and we decided to go have a soda. We ran into some PCVs at our watering hole of choice, Mama Pierina's, and later went out for ice cream where we met an Australian man and Irish woman travalling together. Our now fairly large group ended up having quite an exciting afternoon. I ended up getting to do everything except what I set out to do. Such is life, especially in Africa.

The last two weeks have been very good. Each week is easier and going by faster than the week before. I'm making a lot of progress with the language and am to the point where I can get basic information across and understand simple things said to me. Teaching has started off great too. My first lesson was a little rough, but the second one went extremely well. I am becoming extremely confident about my ability to perform both in the school and in this culture. I know it's going to be far from easy, but at the same time I know I can do it.

I'm enjoying the Swahili. As I mentioned, it's really coming along, but it's also a great sounding language. The language uses a lot of prefixes for agreement between nouns and adjectives and subject prefixes for verbs. The cool thing about that is that it means Swahili often lends itself to a lot of fun alliteration. For example: "Watoto wetu wawili wafupi walikuwa wanifunzi wazuri." That sentence means, "Our two short children were good students." The stuff with the noun-adjective agreement is pretty complicated and to large extent it seems arbitrary why a noun is in this "class" or that one. The class of the noun is what tells you what prefixes you will need on adjectives, numbers, and even the Swahili word for "of." This aspect of the language is what I'm finding hardest to learn.

As exciting as linguistics are, I will move on to different things. I am definately getting comfortable at home. Communication is much easier and washing clothes by hand and bucket showers now seem pretty normal. Pretty soon our training schedule will get much more exciting. We're going into Week 5, and in Week 8 we will visit Dar es Salaam and shadow a volunteer in the field. The week after that is Thanksgiving and we have been invited, along with all PC staff and volunteers, to the US ambassador's residence for Thanksgiving dinner. We just found out about that this week. Needless to say it's a very nice surprise. Five days after Thanksgiving, we swear in, and then it's off to our site.

We still don't know our sites, but that's mainly because Peace Corps hasn't matched people to sites yet. We talked to them about what we want in a site, but I figure I'll most likely be ok with it no matter where it is. I did tell them I like mountains though. It would be really great to be in the southern or northern highlands, both because of the scenery and the weather. Time will tell, I'll find out in about a month.

Unfortunately, I'm running out of computer time. It's very hard to focus my thoughts so quickly. I may start writing the entry before I come and just type it in here. Things are still going well, and I appreciate the emails, letters, and comments posted here. Keep them coming. Bottom line of my situation is that while it's far from easy, I'm having a good time and I'm adapting well. Until next week, or perhaps the next.

Updating already?

That's right, I was here just three days ago, but I'm back at the internet cafe. We are still training hard, but on Sundays we have the day off. Earlier I washed all my clothes by hand. That was quite a chore, and now my knuckles are rather raw. Fortunately one of the girls who works for my family helped me out. Tomorrow I will start observing math classes in Kihonda Secondary School. I'll probably observe three or for classes, and then teach my first lesson. Friday we practiced teaching to each other in our language groups, and I think I did ok for the most part. I need to speak slowly and carefully because my students will not be that proficient in English, and I need to practice writing on the chalk board because I'm not used to that and my hand writing is terrible. I'm feeling good about it though. My organization was good and I think I am able to present the material in a way that will be understood.

Communication is improving day to day. I am getting much better at understanding what people say to me. Most of the time I'll still struggle to find the words to respond, but I'm definately making progress. I'm still impatient for training to finish so I can get to my site. I believe it's seven more weeks before I swear in.

First Two Weeks in Morogoro

It has been a very hectic two weeks. This will likely be stream-of-consciousness, so bear with me.

My host family is great. They are a fairly young couple (mid 30s) with two little girls, 6 and 1 1/2. The older is in boarding school and I haven't met her yet. The little one, Tina, is really cute and hopefully I can eventually post a picture. Baba (dad) speaks fluent English but since I'm learning Swahili, we try to communicate in that until we hit a brick wall, then we'll use English. Mama speaks some English too, so when communication is really necessary, we're ok. There are also two girls at the house who are hired to cook, clean, etc. I found out one of them is Mama's younger sister (Mama has 19 siblings). We live in a village called Kihonda outside of Morogoro. It's about a 45 minute bus ride from there into town, so unfortunately I probably won't be able to update this as much as I'd like. I'm doing my training and internship teaching at Kihonda Secondary School. Our training group has four people with our language and cross-cultural faciliator, a Tanzanian named Peter. Peter's a great teacher and a nice guy and I feel like I'm making huge progress in the language considering I didn't speak a word of it two weeks ago. I will also begin teaching a lesson or two week after next, so I'm a bit nervous about that.

The last two weeks have been very fulfilling, but also challenging and stressful. Communication with a lot of people is very frustrating because very few people speak English. We also have very little down time. We did have some time off last Saturday though and several of the area Peace Corps Volunteers were in town. They were all extremely laid back and said that training was intentionally like a boot camp and that the actual service isn't so quickly paced. They all seem to be having a great time and to love what they do, so I am extremely excited. I just am kind of impatient to get through training. The people I'm training with are great, so I hope I will be posted close to some other volunteers so that we can visit each other.

Tanzania is a really great place. The mountains here around Morogoro are beautiful. The food is good, though there isn't too much variety. A lot of rice and beans and a spinach-like vegetable (called mchicha). The coolest thing though is that I am yet to have a meal without fresh fruit. My house actually is very nice by Tanzanian standards. We don't have a shower, but we have a tap in the shower room and choo (squat toilet). We also have electricity and even a TV. It is extremely unlikely I'll have such luck at my site. I'll sign off for now. There are about eight more weeks of training, and then the swearing in. I hoping I may get in here on a weekly basis to update, but that may be too optimistic. Until next time!

I Made It!

Unfortunately, I don't have much time, but here's a rundown. I've arrived in Tanzania and am in a town called Morogoro, where I will do my training. It is a beautiful town in the mountains and so far it's been great. We began our training in Swahili today and in two more months I should be pretty close to fluent. There are 36 other volunteers in the group and we are all going to be teachers. It's a great group of people so I think I'll have a blast during training before I go off on my own. More soon.

Expectations

I think it's an understatement that I tend to be easy-going. In general, I don't go into a situation with too much anticipation. Instead I just take things as they come, with very few expectations. I guess I find it's easier to just react to what happens than to make often incorrect assumptions about what will happen. Having said that, with something as big as a two year commitment in the Peace Corps, I do have a few expectations.

The next few months are going to be extremely challenging. I am going to learn a languange I have so far had no exposure to, and I'm going to need to gain a high level of fluency. I'm also going to be living with a family, which overall is going to make things a lot easier, but I'm hoping that it won't be too much of a difficulty for them. I know that this will be a tough adjustment for them, though, and I hope I'm easy enough to live with. I think I am up to the task of adapting to life over there, but I imagine it will at times be frustrating. As I've said before, I think teaching will be hard for me as well. I'm going to go in with extremely limited training. It'd be nice if I could student teach for awhile, but no such luck. Teaching will I think bring my toughest challenging.

If my time in Scotland is any indication, after three months or so it'll really start to feel like home. I'll have friends, know my way around, and really feel like part of the community. I'll settle in to life there and it won't be much stranger than my life in Charlotte. As for the details of what this life will be like, that's anyone's guess.

I'm also expecting a beautiful country that will give me a lot of great travelling opportunities. There is so much I'd love to see in Africa, but there is so much to see in Tanzania alone that I may not leave that country. I am going to see some amazing landscapes unlike any I've seen before and all the famous African wildlife. The more I think about it, the more I think that I'm very lucky to get this assignment.

In the coming months we'll if I'm right about any of this. The next week will probably be a frenzy of preparation. Hopefully I'm right that there will not be any panic. One more thing, my address for while I'm in training is:

Andrew Clark (trainee)
Peace Corps Training Site
PO Box 9123
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

The mail will mean a lot to me, so write! My email address is available on my user profile.

It's sunk in a little...

Over the last two weeks I've been reading my Peace Corps materials and filling out some paperwork. I think it's going to be extremely challenging. I'm actually a little more worried about the teaching part than the fact that it's in Tanzania. I do fairly well trying to teach people one on one or maybe a small group, but I think I will find it very difficult and nerve-wracking to be in front of a class with as many as fifty students. I couldn't ask for a better location, though.

Tanzania is home to Mt. Kilimanjaro, much of the Serengetti, Lakes Victoria, Tanganyika, and Malawi, a national park where you can actually visit chimpanzees in the wild (this group is used to people), and the exotic island of Zanzibar. I don't know what part of the country I'll be in, but no matter what part of the country I am I think it's going to be an amazing place to be.

My salary is going to be $165 a month. That sounds pretty paltry, but when most of the country lives on less than $1 a day, I'll actually be doing pretty well for myself. Most likely I'll have my own place, though I read that Tanzanians don't share the American concept of privacy and that there will likely be people, especially children in and out of my place all the time. I'm really looking forward to this because of the huge challenges I'll face because of culture shock and as I learn a new language and profession. More thoughts as they come.

Tanzania It Is

My name is Andrew Clark and I have just accepted an invitation to become a Peace Corps volunteer. In late September, I will travel to Tanzania to be a math teacher. I will be using this weblog to post my thoughts about preparation and hopefully, once I'm there I'll occasionally be able to post about my experiences. I'll add more thoughts later as all of this sinks in.