Kipilefti

So the ICT folks have learned that our placement options are Mbeya, here in Morogoro, or Njombe. Knock yourselves out with Wikipedia.

One of the first things mama said to me when I arrived at my homestay was “you must learn to bend”. I looked at her, confused. “To bend?” “Like this,” she said, doubling over so her legs were straight but both hands touched the floor. “I’ll try,” I told her. She does everything in that […]

Part of our training to be teachers here in Tanzania is working with local teachers to observe and then teach some classes. Us ICT folks (for those of you just tuning in, that’s Information and Communcations Technology) have only one teacher between the three of us. Unlike everyone else, our teacher is not located at […]

The Swahili word for “no” is “hapana”; for “yes” it’s “ndiyo”. I mention these not only for your edification but to point out that the Swahili words are both three times as long as their counterparts in English. This could be an insignificant detail or a profound statement about the culture here. Given my experiences […]

Every day we arrive at Swahili school at 8 and leave around 4 (although we’re technically supposed to leave at 5). With 40 hours of school during the week, you’d think we’d get a whole weekend off, but we have half- or whole-days on Saturday as well (Sunday is off). Today we went until lunch, […]

Eastern-style toilets. I will have much stronger leg muscles when I leave Tanzania than when I arrived. The fact that it’s rude not to greet someone if you walk by one another. Actually enjoying learning for the first time in a long time. Swahili is really fun, like a puzzle. Wearing a skirt all the […]

The days of easy Internet access are at a halt (subiri in Kiswahili), at least for now. Once I reach my posting in late November the Net will once again be freely available. For now, I am in my host family’s home (nyumbani) and learning Kiswahili slowly and incompetently. I do well in the classroom […]

I woke up at 1.30 this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep, my punishment for oversleeping yesterday. Wandering around my room, later around the compound, lying under the mosquito net with the fan on full blast. The flourescent light in my room reveals me as glowingly pale, grey-eyed, with hair an unreal color that’s […]

Not dead! Landed in Dar at 10 last night and (aside from a power outage that made things hard to see) got through customs really smoothly. Today was the beginning of our pre-service training (PST). I overslept (the alarm didn’t work! Hopefully a new battery will make it fine…) and was awoken by one of the current Peace […]

Staging finished, I walk the now-familiar path to my hotel room in a haze. One of the women running the staging said the words “when you arrive in Tanzania on Wednesday” and suddenly my stomach was full of butterflies. This is something I’ve been looking forward to for a while, but not quite something I […]