The Home Stretch

I've started my last semester teaching here in Tanzania. I'm pretty busy trying to get the kids prepared for their exams, so I guess I haven't dwelled too much on how I feel about this. It was actually good to get back. Teaching as gotten much more enjoyable as time goes on. I really do enjoy the work and as great as my vacation was, I'm glad to be back.

Speaking of vacation, after my last post I attended the wedding of Steve Veryser, a former PC volunteer who was marrying a Tanzanian girl he met in the first of his three years of service. I met Steve during training when I visited his site for a few days for my "shadow visit" where you go see a volunteer at site to get an idea of what life's like there. He gave me some interesting, and I see now quite true, advice about being a volunteer. He said, "there are some people who come here hoping to change the world, but they all went home." I can see now that he's quite right. You're not going to come here and fix all the problems of Tanzania or even your one school. You can do some good of course, and I'm sure that I have, but the main motivation for this kind of thing has to be, well, selfish. Otherwise during one of the many times when you're beating your head against the wall because it seems like nothing you aren't accomplishing anything you'll give in and go home. If you're here for what you'll get out of it, how you will change, and the with the idea that you'll have a positive impact, even if it's quite small, you'll do fine. I've always been idealistic, and I still am, but I also have a very practical mind and I have certainly learned a lot about what I can and can't do to help people here, and what the people here need to do for themselves.

Anyway, back to Steve, we hung out a few times later on as well, and we ended up having an interesting parallel in our service. He started in Mwanza, like I did, and then had to change sites to a rural mountous region, only in his case it was the Southern Highlands instead of Lushoto. So The wedding was quite interesting because it was obviously a mixed crowd. The wedding was done in Tanzanian fashion and most of the guests were Tanzanian, but Steve had his dad and a group of eight or nine current and former PC volunteers to act as his family. The wedding was a blast, and we tried to mzungu it up for Steve a little bit so he could feel a bit more at home. I think his dad particularly appreciated it because I think he was pretty overwhelmed by the whole thing.

I took some great pictures of some of my kids harvesting beans the other day, but this computer isn't cooperating with my camera, so I'll post them in a couple weeks.

That's all for now. Enjoy the rest of your summer. We're about to head into springtime up here.