The picture is taken from Mbelei Secondary, the school in the foreground. This is where Isaac, another PCV teaches. I went up to visit him last weekend. He lives on top of a mountain while I'm on the floor of the valley. If you look directly above the building in the middle of the picture, at the back of the dirt area, you can just make out a rooftop in the valley below. That's Kongei, my school. Interestingly enough, despite what is obviously not that far, it took me over three hours to get from my site to his. That's how transport goes in the mountains.

I didn't get to write in advance this time, so not much to write. Tonight it's movie night because fellow PCV Becky was recently in America for her sister's wedding and brought back some movies. Exciting stuff.

School's still going well. The students are working, but it was a week of difficult material so sometimes it felt like I was beating my head against the wall trying to get them to understand. That's going to happen sometimes, no matter how good the school. I can't let myself get too spoiled at Kongei. It seems that now I'm experiencing Peace Corps Lite not because of the urban setting, but the quality of my school. As Bob Dylan said, "I can't help it if I'm lucky."

Small Victories

Last week I got up to Mlalo where we had a get together of many of the volunteers in the region. It was a nice time. Hilary, the second year who hosted the shin dig, is a great cook and the proud owner of a meat grinder and a grill. That’s right, we had grilled burgers! We even had home made buns to go with them. Not only that, but she baked a cake, and made potato salad (first time having it in 11 months) and humus. It was amazing. When I have to live off my cooking, such days are really appreciated. I’ve really been spoiled so far since I’ve spent time with at least one other volunteer every weekend since I came to the new site.

School is going really well. I am really impressed by my students, especially the Form IIIs. Of course when you’re teaching they’ll be times when they don’t understand something the first time you explain it. My experience before was that most students gave up on math a long time ago so they just let it go and you really struggle to figure out when they are or aren’t getting it. My girls here at Kongei ask questions when they don’t understand! That’s right, they know that just because they didn’t immediately get it doesn’t mean that they can’t eventually figure it out or perhaps it could be explained better. I can’t tell you how exciting this is for me. In the practice Form IV national exams this year Kongei scored 5th out of 70 schools in the region and as good as the Form IIIs are they can perhaps do even better. By the way, with the attitudes this country has about women, it’s especially gratifying when a girls’ school does so well.

Another small victory I’m very proud of is with the local primary school kids. They would always shout “Good morning, sir!” when they saw me home in the afternoon. So now and then I would call one over and explain in Swahili that in the afternoon you don’t say “good morning” but “good afternoon.” Apparently the few I explained this to told all the other kids because now when I’m walking home I hear, “Good afternoon, sir!” Because of that, even if I left today, I think my Peace Corps service would be a success. Fixing the little things, that’s what it’s all about. One little thing down, only eight million to go.

Now that I’m getting more used to life in Tanzania away from the big cities, certain things have become easier. For example, now that I’ve been here awhile, that 50 minute walk to the road seems like nothing, and in fact I’m lucky to be that close. I can’t just walk out the door and hop on a daladala, but I have an easier time with transport than most volunteers. There are two towns I can get to in an hour and a half at the most. Granted, one of those towns, Soni, is barely more than a village and Lushoto’s no Mwanza, but I can get most of what I need. The variety of produce is amazing and most things are cheap so I’m not going to run out of money, which I could have done in Mwanza if I wasn’t careful. I’ll easily be able to save lots of money for travel which is going to be very nice.

So I have the satellite radio now, which has been amazing. I can listen to the BBC, CNN, and (oh boy!) NPR as well as lots of music stations. The sound quality is great too. The only problem is I am going to go through a lot of D batteries until (and if) I get hooked up with electricity.

Two more things. Some of the other teachers who are about my age are interested in having American pen pals. If anyone's interested, let me know.

The Cold and Wet

One of the biggest differences at my new site is the weather. Lushoto is very cold and wet. Now of course the temperatures aren't freezing or anything, but you have to understand that buildings here are not built for cold. There is no insulation, let alone heat. In fact, often the windows don't have glass. This means that though it's not that cold, you can never get out of the cold so it kind of slowly seeps into you. I've kind of gotten used to it, but I find that I can't sit still too long before I get too cold and have to move around. They tell me that things will warm up in September. I hope so.

It's also raining quite a lot. No one seems to be able to tell me if it's the rainy or dry season because it's not torrential rain, but steady drizzle. It's enough to make many of the roads a muddy mess and there are some areas around where buses aren't running. Fortunately I can walk to the paved road in just under an hour so it hasn't really affected my transportation. Of course, walking in a cold rain doesn't make for a fun walk. Between the more or less constant cold rain and the fact that I live in this steep valley almost makes me feel like I'm living in a Scottish glen. For those of you who haven't known me that long, I spent about six months in Scotland and am quite attached to the Scottish highlands so this is quite a nice feeling.

Today I'm heading up to Mlalo, about two hours outside of Lushoto. Two volunteers are up there, Josh and Hillary. Josh was in the same group as I was in training and is one of my best buddies in Peace Corps, so I'm glad to be in the region with him. Hillary I've met a few times. Several of us are going up to Hillary's for a party tonight and are returning tomorrow. Fortunately they haven't been getting too much rain up there so we should be ok getting there and back. Again, I marvel at the great PC social scene here (no offense Ryan and Brian, but there are actually girls here, so, well, you know).

Things continue to go well at school. There are the usual frustrations with students used to rote memorization and not really thinking about a problem, but I feel like I'm starting to get through to a few of them. I actually am really lucky with the quality of my students, so I have hope. Also I'm getting along really well with the other teachers and am liking the whole working environment.

My friend Richard from Mwanza came to visit this week. He's a university student who was studying near my old site. It was really cool to have him around for a night, although the poor guy was freezing the whole time. Most Tanzanians are not used to the cold. Unfortunately his wallet was stolen on the bus so it's not just wazungu who have problems with theft.

Ok, well that's it for today. It's actually warm and sunny today so maybe that will keep up. It's hard to believe I'm starting to get close to a whole year in Tanzania. Until next time.

Life at Kongei

I found out my school has a computer. There’s no internet, but at least I can type things for this blog ahead of time. Since half of my internet time was usually just typing, this makes things much easier for me. I can either pay for half as much time, or spend more time feeding my insatiable appetite for news. All in all, this works out very well for me. The only weird thing will be that I’ll often post these entries days or even a week or two after writing them, so I’ll try to keep the dates straight.

The week of July 17 was a really good one. I’m really getting the hang of the school and how things work here. I already feel at ease in the class as I did at Nsumba. I also like the teachers here a lot, and it’s nice that I have my own desk in the staff room. I didn’t have a desk at Nsumba, so it was harder to get any work done at school, so I usually took it home with me. Here I can get everything done at school so I’m always really done when I go home for the day. I think that’s a luxury many teachers in America don’t have. The highlight of the week though was my old buddy Wes came through.

Now by “old buddy” I mean from training. My dad and my brother, who visited recently, are the only people I’ve seen since I came to Tanzania who I knew before, well, I came to Tanzania (or, actually two days before when we had staging in DC). So, since we were in the same four-person group in training, he’s as old as my Tz buddies get. Anyway, his girlfriend’s visiting from America and they’ve been doing a wee bit of traveling and they decided to come through our area. My new place isn’t so far out of the way and Josh, who was also in our four-man group, is around here as well. Wes and Christina, his girlfriend, came here on the 17th and stayed for the night, making them my first visitors. It was a real good time catching up. Tuesday they left, but they came back Friday and we went into town to Ness’s house (the volunteer in the area with a house in town, so a frequent gathering place) where we met Josh and Jen. Wes and Christina could only stay one night, but the rest of us stayed for the weekend. I had a great time. Yet again I think it’s nice to have so many other volunteers around and be in a region where people from other regions, like Wes, can visit without too much hassle. I love my site, but there’s not too much there. There’s the school, but that’s it. Even the nearest village is 5 km away, so it’s nice to get out and be in the bustle of town and see some friends. Plus, I need to go to town anyway for banking, internet, and buying food, so it’s great that when I go to town there’ll usually be some friends there.

The area where I live, as I’ve said, is pretty remote, so at the moment I’m still very much a curiosity. On walking back from the road not too long ago, a couple kids shouted, “MZUNGU!” and began to walk after me out of curiosity. Gradually more children joined the group until I was walking down the road with a pack of about 20 kids right behind me. It was somehow both cute and a little disconcerting. They stayed with me until the one daladala that goes to the village 5 km past my house came by and I hopped on for the last 2 km back to my house. It is a nice, though long, walk to my house from the road. The other times I’ve made the trip I’ve gone by bike taxi. The first time I tried that, I was scared out of my mind, but now I enjoy it quite a lot. At 1000/= (about $.85) I’m pretty sure I’m getting overcharged, despite haggling a little bit. Of course, just knowing Swahili immediately got the price down from 2000/=, so I guess 1000/= isn’t so bad. By the way, the /= is the symbol for a shilling, the currency here.

So, like I said, things are going really well. Sometimes it’s slow and there’s not a whole lot to do at night in the dark, but things are really good. I miss Mwanza and the lake a lot and a lot of the people back there, but the moves going as well as I hoped. Luckily, yet again I’m in a place where it never gets as hot and humid as I’m sure it is in NC right now. It’s still pretty cold here and should be until September. Enjoy the rest of the summer.