Let's talk about kids...

I can't tell who is more obsessed with whom...me or the Tanzanian kids.

It takes a while to notice this specific difference because so much here is different; and pointing out one difference seems...silly. But after a while it starts to dawn on you that a huge differences between the US and TZ is the number of children.

Most people I know in my village still make a living from farming. Even the teachers here all have farms on the school property. Two kids is almost unreasonably small (not nearly enough to help with a farm) and so there are kids everywhere and they do the absolute funniest, cutest and weirdest things you can imagine. Some of the village kids, the young ones who have never seen a white person before, burst into tears when they see me. This is my least favorite. Their mothers mostly think this is hilarious and I guess I understand that it is a little funny. But, secretly, it actually does hurt my feelings.

My next-door neighbor Upendo's littlest Derek (he's one year old) was like this at first; but now we're good friends. Upendo lets me carry him on my back in a sling. Derek has the nicest smile and he loves the game "this little piggie" even if he doesn't speak Kiswahili yet, let alone English. I'm still working on my second master Robert's kid Grayson. He'll come close to me now and he doesn't scream. When he's in a good mood he'll crawl towards me and even let me touch his hands; but he won't let me pick him up. The older village kids stare at me as I walk by and shout "Mzungu! Mzungu! Mzungu!" It translates as "European" but it really just means 'white person'. If I don't respond they get together in a group and chant this at me...which can get surreal.

When we were in training I was walking with my friend Sarah. When some kids chanted "Mzungu!" at us she turned around and haughtily corrected them, saying we were "Wazungu," which means more than one white person instead of just a single white person. She is pretty much famous in my host family for this.

Tanzanian children are, as far as I can tell, the cutest kids in the world. Maybe it's because kids back home didn't pay much attention to me, but I find that I am much more interested in kids here than I ever was in the US. I smile at them; I ask them questions until they run away; I see how close I can get to them without them bursting into tears; and I coo at them in Kiswahili. Kids in the US don't stare and don't point, don't ask rude questions or shout "how are you teacher?" so quickly it sounds like one word or scream in joy and fear when you look at them.

I'm never going to like American kids after this...I've gotten used to being the most exciting things children have seen all day. I'm spoiled rotten.

Also, it should be mentioned: kids here are allowed to ride the motorcycles when they're old enough to hold on (like three years old) and I have to wear a helmet when I ride a bike. All I'm saying is that anyone who tells you that there are rules in Tanzania is lying.

Photos Galore!

(Almost) the whole gang at the Ambassador's House looking at these photos.

This is my whole host family at the going-away party. Aren't we cute? Tanzanian ceremonies are super formal and super awkward for Americans but I was glad to be with them/awkwardly feed them cake and stumble through a thank-you in Kiswahili.

Mike is asking himself the question "how much vegetable oil went into this food?" I know better. Ignorance Mike...it's bliss.

Sarah's host sister and I share a giggle.

This is my house! Just kidding...it's the ambassadors. Mine is slightly modest.

Don't we look respectable? This was the day right before I moved into a house with no electricity and running water.

Thanksgiving dinner at the Ambassador's house. After two months of rice and beans we were way more excited about the food than anything else (swearing in and meeting the US Ambassador included). Whatever...there was pumkin pie and unlimited apples.

This place is real. And they serve pumkinpie and turkey.

Swearing in! I'm a real volunteer now!

The dream team at the Embassy after swearing in. This was the group I went through training with. Sarah (on the far right) is my closest neighbor and pretty much a goddamn riot. From left to right they are Lisa, Carly, Mike, Kondo, me and Sarah.

This is my headmaster! His name is Bonus Ndimbo and he's straight up the best.

Site so Far

So I'm at site finally (a school called Sekondari ya Sadani or Sadani Secondary School) and it's lovely so far. My village is a little outside of Mafinga (and by that I mean an hours harrowing charge down a dirt road on a rickety bus) and it's charming. The list of things you can and cannot buy in my village is a little surprising. Fruit is rarity, pombe (the local beer that they brew from bananas) is a ubiquity, but salt, sugar, tea and flip-flop shoes you can almost always find in the tiny little shops that are scattered down the main road.
My house is enormous (two bedrooms and a private courtyard) but has no electricity and until the rainy season I have to carry water up from the river which is kind of a hike. I never make it up the hill with a bucket of water though...someone always comes to help me carry it part of the way. I am trying to learn to carry water on my head with no hands (for now because it's much easier and maybe the local women will stop laughing at me and for when I return to the United States because it will be an excellent party trick).
My other enormous comedy success (the struggling-to-carry-water routine is a smash hit that could basically debut in Madison Square Garden as far as the Tanzanian villagers are concerned) is the fact that I'm scared of rats and bugs. Everyday in Tanzania is a new opportunity to ask myself the question "is that the scariest bug I've ever seen?" and the answer is always "yes... until tomorrow." Yesterday I saw the biggest cockroach of my life outside the staff office during chai break. When I pointed it out to the other teachers and ran away the biology teacher picked it up and started showing me that it had all the characteristics of an insect, which was totally just an excuse to get it close enough to me so I would squirm away and the other teachers could laugh at me more...wherever my brother was at the time I'm sure he was smiling.
Since I'm teaching A-level physics(advanced level is sort of between an AP level high school physics class and the first year of a bachelor's degree: no calculus involved but some fairly advanced applications) I've already taught some classes. The students are all men, all my age or older and they all wear uniforms. They are intimidating and their English is good but not great.
I was lying to you by the way when I said I would be teaching in Kiswahili: all classes in Tanzania past primary school (when the kids are about 12) are taught in the official language of the country, English. That does not necessarily mean that the kids speak English...at least not English as you would recognize it. Here we call it "special English" and when you try to explain something like the Young's Modulus or Stress-Strain curves in it things rapidly tend towards the utterly ridiculous.
What else do you want to know about site? I love it. I'm safe. I'm happy. I'm eating a lot of rice and ugali.

Pictures from Mikumi National Park

So the weekend before last we went on safari in Mikumi National Park. This is a small selection of what I saw. My friend Mike took all these photos (fifteen minutes in it started to feel a little stupid taking photos when Mike was just leaning over my shoulder taking much better ones). I might photobucket the other photos later because Mike took a lot of great photos...

The guide said we weren't allowed off the bus to see if he wanted some friends in the watering hole. Maybe that had to do with the lions though.



The classic no-hand water carrying.



Dinner at Mikumi.

This isn't even the coolest twiga we saw...I'm just saying.

Mike says I should start a blog called 'Things I do in my Obama T-shirt.' It really was the only clean thing I had though.

Uhg this is not the photo I wanted gosh darn it. Oh well...slightly out of focus.

This place is a total snooze fest.

Cow Foot and Banana Stew

I'm always sweaty by the time I get home in the evenings. It's about a forty minute walk up Mt. Uruguru to my host family's house and (as my host father says), I walk like a solider. Anyway when I get home I put water on to warm up for my bucket bath and then I go hang out in the living room and chat with my host dad for a little bit. When I went back into the kitchen last night to get the water to shower, Josephina, my host sister, had apparently switched the water around on me. So I pull the lid off the pot I thought was my bathwater and inside are these long, white stumpy bones in a boiling mass of brown water.

Host mama, over my shoulder, goes, "do you know what that is?"

One possible answer to that question would be "something I never want to put in my mouth" and another would be "what we ate for dinner" but the most specific answer is probably a stew they make here by boiling cow hooves for five to seven hours and then adding peas and bananas. I was not happy about that but I was an adult about the situation: at dinner I pulled the hoof part off and then cut it into bites that were small enough to swallow without chewing. Still, it was bad...psychologically. It tasted like nothing so much as beef glue and I was supremely aware of the hoof nature of the whole experience.

But I wanted to start the blog with this story because really...that's it. That's like the worst thing that's happened to me so far. I had to eat a little bit of cow hoof and I wasn't happy about it. But, I mean, I liked the rest of the stew a lot. They have a way of cooking unripe bananas that make them taste like the best boiled potatoes ever and I had two of those and some awesome coconut milk and peas. And I'm really liking it here. I'm learning Kiswahili as fast as I can (nowhere near fast enough) and having a really good time.

Anyway...here are some photos to catch you up on what happened between the United States and the cow foot stew.



Jordan and Mike coming to class at the Training Site here at Morogoro where we stayed before our host families.

Photos!

Photo from the bus coming into Morogoro. Tanzania is incredibly beautiful.

My host sister Josephina cooking in the kitchen.

Mama has taught me four Swahili words because of my host brother Alvin. They translate to (1) spoiled (2) trouble-maker and (3) noise. But he isn't he just the cutest when he tries be in the photo so bad?

My host sister Margret helps a kid from the neighborhood with math at the dinning room table.

What your walk home doesn't look like this? I'm only about halfway home at this point.