Back to Teaching

So far it's been a very good week. First of all, Sunday I got most of my lights replaced, finally, so I now get to read by glorious artificial light after 7 pm or so. Teaching is going well, it's actually kind of nice to be back into the old routine, but that doesn't mean the news I got today was bad. Turns out, tomorrow's a holiday. It's Union Day, celebrating the union of TANganyika and ZANzibar to become--TANZANIA. Pretty exciting. What's funny is how many teachers at the school didn't realize tomorrow was a holiday until today. So in honor of the holiday we will be celebrating volunteer solidarity as the Peace Corps and KOICA (that's Korea's Peace Corps) of Nsumba and Nganza Secondary Schools will get together and make a huge pot of chile. The Koreans have cooked Korean food for Ryan and I before, so we are finally going to return the favor with some wicked hot American chile. I'm pretty excited. Ryan's recent purchase of a pressure cooker(brilliant) and meat grinder (more brilliant) make this exciting event possible. I can hardly contain myself.

On top of all that great stuff (electric lights and chile are enough to make a week great in the Peace Corps) finally, finally, it looks like I'm going to get that security gate on my door. My headmaster brought a fundi (that's Swahili for a guy who makes and/or fixes stuff, I guess you could say "handyman") to my house today to look at my house and give him an estimate. He should start in the next couple of days. I'm glad this is finally being done because both I and the Peace Corps were losing patience with my school. With the extra security I won't be too worried about leaving my house to travel in June and July.

So I notice my mood is dramatically different from my last post. Well, let's just say that emotions are pretty far from constant here in the Peace Corps. In fact most days I will experience the mood from this post and from the other each several times a day. "Emotional roller coaster" really is the best way to describe this service. The ups and downs are more extreme and come more quickly than I have ever experienced before. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it's horrible, but it is never boring (except when you're sitting at home alone in the dark, but that's not a problem at the moment). It's an amazing amount of stress and I imagine I'll look five years older instead of two next time most of you see me, but it's an amazing experience that I'm lucky to have. Who knows, maybe I'll even have a positive impact here? So until next time, this is Andrew Clark, signing off from the University of St. Augustine computer lab, Mwanza, Tanzania.

Electricity

As loyal readers know, TANESCO, the company that holds a monopoly on electricity in this country, and I are not exactly the best of friends. Well they managed yet again to find a way to foil me. No, my electricity isn't exactly out. In fact it's been on pretty much all week. However, there seems to be a problem with a transformer around my school and for a couple of days the current was so low it hardly lit the light bulbs and wouldn't start the fluorescent lights. Then for a short time things went normal, then the current spiked incredibly high. This blew out all my fluorescent lights, most of my light bulbs, and my phone charger. They said they have to get another transformer from God knows where and install it, so I'm sure it'll be here by year's end. In the meantime, there's no use replacing bulbs that will just blow out in the periodic spikes, so we're waiting until the transformer is fixed. The school will replace my lights which is a good thing because one fluorescent tube is a good four days' pay for me, and I lost three of them. So despite having electricity, I still am again stuck with candles. I did replace my phone charger, which cost $10. Even that's pricey as I make $6 a day.

Ok, sorry about that rant. On the other hand it's been a pretty quiet week. I'm catching up on my laundry and grading tests. I kind of wish I could have travelled but I don't want to leave my house until the security improvements are done. Unfortunately, still nothing but promises there.

So a lot of whining this entry, but I guess I have too much time on my hands. Next week it'll be back to the old routine, which will be ok. There will only be about six weeks of classes before the long break when I will have a lot more going on. Hopefully things will be relatively calm until then.

Conference Over, Life Back at Site

The conference is over, so back to normal life. After the conference, the people going back to Bukoba couldn't leave until last night because of the ferry schedule, so they came up to my place Saturday with Meena (from Musoma) and we had a big dinner. They stayed around until last night and then got on the ferry. The whole time was really great and it was nice to see everyone. The only problem was that when I returned home on Saturday I found that even though a student was staying in my house to watch it someone tried to break open my bedroom door (which I had locked) and a few small things were stolen. The whole security thing is becoming really frustrating, so I'm really pressuring my headmaster to improve the security at my house. He's being very responsive. He was not around for the last few weeks so he likely wasn't aware that promised improvements have not yet been done. Hopefully it'll be done soon. I'm certainly not going to leave my house overnight again until I have more secure doors and windows. I think PC will put a lot of pressure on him too so I hope it can be taken care of shortly. I know volunteers who have been temporarily or permanently removed from site because of security concerns, and that's really something I don't want to deal with. People back home shouldn't worry to much. I've never felt physically threatened. I think stuff will be stolen but I think it's extremely unlikely I'll be hurt.

Anyway, other than security things are fine. I think I'm going to enjoy a week to relax. Of course there is also a lot of house work to do and tests to be graded, but it won't be too bad. And after the break it's maybe six weeks until we have the much longer break between semesters. Time actually is going pretty quickly right now. So I'm off for at least one day of utter laziness. Since I have a lot of time this week I may be able to use the internet a little more so I may update this again in a couple of days.

Break from Teaching!

Well, in the continuing saga, my electricity is back now, but I'm not at home. This week I'm staying at a lovely Catholic conference center in town where six other volunteers and I are at a conference for PEPFAR, which is the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Tanzania is one of the 15 target countries for the program and Peace Corps carries out some of the programs. Most of those are done by the health volunteers, but the rest of us are encouraged to do some secondary projects in HIV/AIDS relief. It is an area where there is a lot of grant money available, so if something comes up I may go in that direction. There are a lot of options though and I'm still pretty new at site so I haven't made up my mind on what kind of project I'll do. Time will tell.

The conference itself has been a blast. I hadn't seen most of these volunteers in several months and one I just met. It's been real cool to get together and go out on the town each night, including a great time last night for my birthday (25, now, which according to my cousin Erika means I'm "half dead"). Following the conference I'll have about 10 days off from school, so it will be nice to rest and collect myself. I won't travel too far, but may make some small trips or have a visitor or two. We'll see.

I got a text message today from Laura, a volunteer out in Tanga (on the east coast near the Kenyan border) who is a good friend of mine. Apparently her students just killed a 12-foot python that had just eaten a goat. Unfortunately I have no exciting wildlife stories to report. Being at a site so close to a big city, in many ways I'm just "Peace Corps Lite," except I have more security problems. Like I've written previously, it's different enough being where I am, but you get out in a village and it's another thing entirely. It's really amazing how much the PC can differ between volunteers in the same country. I'm sure I'll get out there to Laura's site sometime and get a little more insight into the differences. Until next time.