Kipilefti

This post will make Chris Segal very happy. So in America, I pretty much hated my cell phone. Sure, it was useful for coordinating things on the fly–in fact, I’m not sure how I would have done without it, we’d have had to plan things in advance or something–but I’ve never been particularly fond of […]

Reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Diet for a Small Planet, I have the strange sensation, probably very unusual for people reading such books, that I am already living by the principles espoused. The food I eat here is, almost without exception, extremely local (I could walk to the garden where it was farmed) and organic. […]

Yesterday I tried baking the Times no-knead bread again. It looked beautiful but, like the first time, wasn’t quite baked enough. My impromptu oven just can’t get up to the temperature you need for artisan-style bread. Still, it was good with the last of the chili I made a few days ago. When I finished […]

It’s been a week of Getting Things: I finally received a big package my parents sent to the Peace Corps address before we got site announcements (and now I have to send off a package of my own with gifts for my host family in it); I also got a box of miscellanea that my […]

So some background on the Tanzanian educational system, for context’s sake. To begin with, each year of students is split up into streams, sometimes by skill level but generally randomly (it’s random at my school). Each stream has its own classroom; the teachers enter, teach, and then leave. If there is no teacher teaching at […]

It was a beautiful sunny day; for once, it didn’t rain. Temperature maybe in the mid-seventies; sunny with beautiful, glowing, varied clouds; gentle breezes that whipped my still-cleanish hair around my face (when it gets greasy I keep it up, but when it’s clean I keep it down to enjoy).   I taught two Form […]

I woke up this morning in a fog, both literally and figuratively. I woke a few minutes before my phone alarm went off, aware enough to know that I really didn’t want to get out of bed but also to know that I had a class first thing. So after hitting snooze once I got […]

Sitting on the goat-skin stool in my kitchen, watching the flame from the kerosene I just poured on the coal in the jiko. The stale scent of my body (smell, odor, aroma, says my crossword-brain). The hesitant knocking of the rain on the roof. The screech of a crow’s talons as it comes in to […]

It’s been more than two weeks since school opened. “Maybe you’ll teach tomorrow,” the teachers tell me. They’re all relaxed about it, they’ve all taught before, they’re Tanzanian and they’re used to being perpetually behind schedule. I’m learning to be patient but I don’t like this ambiguity, this idea that I might start to teach […]

Bret biked up from Bulongwa for the weekend, departing Friday after school and arriving before dark. It was, as he said, like a vacation, even for me. Having him stay was enjoyable and completely, surprisingly comfortable, as though he were a family member I’d known all my life.   He brought a ton of apples […]