Kipilefti

I had a bath yesterday, so today I’m wearing my hair down, enjoying its cleanness while it lasts. A strong wind blows it around my face as I walk into town. There’s a storm coming in from over the mountains: I can tell by the wind, and the chill, and by the screen of grey obscuring the farthest peaks. The mountains look flat and matte in the sunlight, as though they were painted on to a chalkboard.

One of the two implements necessary to make coconut milk is a sort of aluminum sieve, maybe eight inches in diameter. Mine’s hanging on the window frame, and when the wind comes up it clangs dully against the window frame. The sound reminds me of the bells they put on buoys, distant and warning. I love to hear it, because it means there’s wind, and rain will probably follow.

Bret’s coming to visit for the weekend, biking down from Bulongwa. I hope he makes it in before the storm hits. Biking in this wind on those roads wouldn’t be fun, but doing it in the rain would be nearly impossible. Whenever he gets here we’re going to make hummus and guacamole and chapati, and then maybe pop some popcorn and watch a movie. Today was a hard day–I slept terribly last night, bugs in my ears keeping me up (I thought that in the mountains there wouldn’t be any mosquitoes, but I’ve seen a couple!)–but spending a few hours with music and a book in bed makes most things better.

So we finally had a staff meeting yesterday. Nine teachers, six or seven hundred students, ten subjects (I think: physics, chemistry, biology, math[s], geography, civics, history, English, Swahili, and mine, the extra one, computers. I may have forgotten one…). Thankfully all I had to do was sit there and listen, having firmly established that I will be teaching computers and only computers (despite several increasingly desperate requests to the contrary). A little background on how the classrooms are set up here: each form (aka grade, in the U.S.) is split up into a number of streams. If Form I is split into four streams they’ll be IA, IB, IC, and ID. Each stream has its own classroom and is taught separately, in eighty-minute-long double periods (when periods are counted they’re counted in units of forty minutes). When they started arranging the schedule there were three streams of Form IV, four each of Forms III and II, and five of Form I. There just weren’t enough teachers to go around and have everyone teaching a sane number of periods, so we wound up with three streams each of Forms IV, III, and II, and four of Form I. I’ll be teaching Forms I, II, and III computers, which comes to a total of twenty periods per week, or a little more than thirteen hours. I thought I’d begin today but the schedule still hasn’t been made, so maybe tomorrow. Teaching Form I will be hardest, I think, since this will be their first experience being taught in English (the elementary-school equivalent, Standards 1-7, is taught in Swahili). I wish I could just start teaching already, I’m kind of petrified about it but I know that once I start it’ll be fine.

So here are the steps necessary to get Internet access in my town:

1. Go to stationary store. Ask stationary mama if there’s a chance she’ll be able to let me use the Internet today.
2. Get put off, get stalled, eventually agree on tomorrow.
3. Return tomorrow. Follow stationary mama down the hill and a fair distance. Help her to unlock a room.
4. Look sadly on two fairly old computers with a surprisingly fast Internet connection.
5. Rejoice when a nice fellow offers you his laptop, which is quite new and very nice.
6. Use the Internet!
7. Pay an exorbitant amount of money, twice what I’ve paid anywhere else.

Yesterday I ventured to the post office, motivated by the fact that the Peace Corps had finally deposited our December and January living allowances, only a month late. As soon as I walked into the post office and said hello, the Posta Mama (who’s the sweetest woman!) said “Oh, Maria! You have many packages!” and I did: six! Two from my mother, one from Mary, one from Chris, one from Ron and Jan, and one from Aunt Cathleen! The postmark dates on the packages ranged from December 1 to December 17, so delivery time is quite variable! (Just now my headmaster handed me a packet of letters, including a package from PC/Dar containing two letters from Grandy and Aunt Col in November! Letter senders include Courtney, Emily, Grandy, Jan, and Beth Bartel. I’ll try to save them and ration them but I’ll probably end up opening them all at once like I did with the last batch!) I also signed up for my own post box, so now my number is 36 instead of 33. I have a key and an ID card and everything! Very exciting.

I got home and put the packages on my couch and then, with admirable willpower, went to the market to do some shopping. When I got home my willpower evaporated, though, and I opened them all! It’s impossible to say what made me happiest: the beautiful snowflake ornament that’s now hanging in my kitchen window; the watercolors and pens; the crossword books; the much-needed conditioner; the classy pepper grinder…I felt so loved. It was just like Christmas, a little late. To celebrate, I put on my new slipper-socks and broke my no-watching-movies-during-daylight-hours rule (The Spy Who Loved Me, which is unintentionally hilarious) and ate most of a bag of the Pirate’s Booty Ron and Jan sent. For dinner I made spaghetti and thought of home, then had a cookie for dessert. It was a wonderful afternoon.

School’s started too–at some point I’ll write a long post about the Tanzanian school system and how it’s screwed up–but in the meantime suffice it to say that I’m at an O-Level school, which teaches Forms 1-4. It’s like middle school and the beginning of high school. The Form 4 students started this past Monday; Forms 2 and 3 will start next Monday, and Form 1 will start the Monday after. I won’t be teaching Form 4 because they need to focus on passing the big national exams they’ll take in the fall, so even though the other teachers are teaching I’m just kind of fooling around in the computer lab, feeling unmotivated. I don’t know what forms I *will* be teaching, because we haven’t been able to have a staff meeting yet because today is the first time I’ve seen my headmaster since he brought me to site. He’s been away since then, barring a brief return during Christmas when I apparently missed him as well. So more on that to come. Right now I’m making a list of things to look up when (if) I finally get to the Internet cafe that’s allegedly opened somewhere in town. First on the list is figuring out how to clone computers so they can all start fresh when I begin teaching. But I’ve mostly been lollygagging, still, waiting for a functional version of XP SP2, waiting for someone to take me to the Internet cafe, waiting for motivation to actually write lesson plans (which I’ve promised myself I’ll do today). I want to go back to December, when I could do nothing with a clear conscience!

I woke, slightly disconcerted, to a grey sky. Almost every other day I can remember, the morning sky has been bright and sunny and the greyness has rolled in over the mountains in the afternoon. But soon after I got up the rain started, a long, soaking rain unlike the brief thunderstorms that we get most afternoons. I tried to convince myself to go place my buckets under the eaves to catch the rainwater, so much cleaner than the tapwater, but I couldn’t bring myself to leave my warm bed and brave the cold, wet outdoors. So I sat in my bed and looked out the window at the grey valley below. “I know where that road goes now,” I thought. Today I had considered doing more exploring, but the early rain will make roads muddy and the last thing I want to do is have to walk home covered in dirt after slipping on the clay, so I’ll do errands in town instead.

Pretty much since the Christmas festivities ended, I’ve been leading an exceptionally quiet life and barely leaving my house. For two days straight I didn’t go outside at all (the second day I was going to, but then the rain came) and on the first day I didn’t even change out of my pyjamas. It’s very strange: in America, I would go stir-crazy if I didn’t leave the house, but here it’s relaxing and pleasant to stay in my house and drink tea and read books and do crosswords and practice the mandolin all day, then watch a movie on my computer before I go to sleep. It’s not quite that I got nothing done, either: I did some little things around the house, and finally got around to washing clothes. The backs of my fingers are still sore from the latter task…I think that the American amenity I miss most is the washing machine.

Yesterday I promised myself that today I’d get out of the house and go for a walk in the mountains I can see from my back windows and my porch. So around eleven I left the house and, not five minutes out of the school grounds, said hello to a middle-aged guy who then wanted to take me, his new friend, home to meet his mother. In America this would be really weird and I’d run the other way, but in Tanzania it’s pretty standard so I went to his house and met his mother and made conversation and drank a soda. They had a cat with kittens, and I think but I’m not sure that she said I could have one, so I’m going to go back to visit in a couple days and ask about them (I didn’t feel quite comfortable asking right away). So that was a pleasant interlude, and then I walked on, down into the valley.

And Stephanie called me! She had done Jirushe, a cell phone provider deal whereby you pay around $1.50 and can talk to anyone on that provider for as long as you want from 5 A.M. to 6 P.M. Usually phone calls here are crazy expensive–we all use texts–but Jirushe makes them reasonable. So we had a nice long conversation, and that was wonderful. Eventually we said goodbye, just as I was approaching a village. I said hi to everyone and one older woman grabbed my hand and took me to her little shop, where I was given another soda to drink as well as some very salty, distressing-looking meat soup (the meat was, I think, pig skin with the bristles still on). I had a couple spoonfuls of broth and pronounced it delicious but that I was very full from the soda, and that seemed to be okay. I eventually made my escape by pleading the impending rain and my desire to be home before it hit. It was a good strategy, and when I go back I’ll have to time it so that I can use that excuse again. Otherwise it can be nearly impossible to get out of conversations here.

Tanzanians in general delight in the idea of teaching wazungu (white people) Swahili, but here once they realize I know Swahili moderately well, they want to teach me the local tribal language, Kikinga, and to them it’s basically the funniest thing ever. Tally pointed out to me something I hadn’t noticed, which is that Tanzanians laugh when they’re happy, not when something funny happens, but it’s sometimes hard to remember that! But anyway, one of the women taught me the tribal greetings (I already knew the main one) and then I was encouraged to use them as we walked down the road so I could be shown the path back to Makete. Everyone was tickled pink.

So the older woman and I walked hand-in-hand down to the path back to Makete. Here in Tanzania woman-woman and man-man physical contact is totally normal here, such that seeing two middleaged men walking down the street hand-in-hand is something no Tanzanian would ever look twice at: homosexuality is illegal and also, according to Tanzanians, doesn’t exist here, so of course there’s no problem. The path was down through the less-inhabited part of the valley, where they grow trees for timber and plant gardens. My walk over had been on the road, past houses and people, but now I felt alone, as though no one was watching. I walked through a pine forest, through meadows with beautiful wildflowers, past children working in a garden. A few other people were on the path; I greeted them and walked on.

I went to the market to buy some vegetables and then headed home. I was boiling water for a bucket-bath (they become less frequent as I get used to being greasy) when a crazy pastor I’d run into at the market a couple times knocked on the door and I had to let him in to be polite. So he sat in my living room and gave me his entire life story, in decent English, including how his wife died five years ago and God told him not to marry again because God would provide a wife when it was time. I decided to tell him that I have a fiance in America if he asked, but he didn’t. Probably I should have mentioned it anyway. Then he told me about how Jesus made him high (his English was okay but not the best!) and asked me what I knew about the Holy Spirit. Eventually I thanked him and stood and he asked me to sit down again so he could pray and then he would leave, so he prayed for me (in tongues…) and then, mercifully, left. So I was finally able to bathe, the sunburn I’d acquired during my walk despite judicious sunburn application stinging in the hot water. I had a quick dinner of chapati and jam (I am the healthiest! No wonder women in the Peace Corps tend to gain weight!) and now I’m clean and in my pyjamas again and back in bed with my book and my computer and my tea and all is well. It’s a good way to end any day, whether all I did was sit inside or whether I went for a nice walk and met pleasant people.

Whenever I spend time with PCVs I don’t get enough sleep. Yesterday, exhausted, I didn’t leave the house but did take a four-hour nap. I had grand ambitions as to what I was going to do but accomplished few of them–did do some (but not most) of my laundry, re-boil the too-sticky peanut brittle into something that cooled to the right texture, unpack purchases and reassemble my house. I’m now a third of the way through The Brothers Karamazov. Incidentally, if there’s a book you want me to read, there will never be a time I’m more likely to read it than now!
In the evening a teacher came by and delivered to me twelve letters and cards (mostly from my mother, but also from Mary, Helen, Aunt Col, Chris, and Dixcy, and I’d received a card from Grandy the week before!), but no package slips. I need to go check at the post office to see if any have arrived for me, but I’m almost unwilling to do so: as long as I put it off, I can convince myself that they’re there, waiting for me to pick them up, but as soon as I go the quantum state of the packages will collapse and I may be bitterly disappointed! Also, the longer I put it off, the more likely there are to be packages for me…
It’s noon, and the power just came back. When the teacher delivered my mail last night he told me that the bill had been paid and that it should be back soon. I must say, I’m relieved to have it back, and relishing these few hours of silence before the neighbors realize it’s back and turn on their music. I’m listening to some Explosions in the Sky I grabbed from Bret and it’s perfect music to go with the midday rainstorm rustling on the tin roof. Out my bedroom window, the valley looks distant, the rain tinting everything grey. So tempting to stay in the house today, too, and with my computer to keep me company and the ability to charge my phone, maybe I will…
Tomorrow I’m going up to Bret’s to celebrate New Year’s. Weather permitting, he and his German and I are going to hike up to the waterfall where the generator that powers his town is located. It should be a nice, low-key New Year’s.
And then school starts on the 5th, I’m told by my headmaster. PCVs assure me confidently that that means classes will start two weeks after that. So we’ll see. My headmaster was here briefly but I didn’t get a chance to talk to him before he headed out again. Hopefully he’ll return before classes are supposed to start. I want to talk to him about how to set up my classes so every student is able to use a computer, which would mean staggering the groups (one class is 40-60 kids, and there are 13 computers for them to use).
But things are good. I really honestly enjoy sitting in my house alone, reading and drinking tea and practicing my mandolin and doing crosswords. And when I venture out, I enjoy that too, although it’s sometimes tiring. The hardest thing for me to do every day is change out of my pyjamas; some days (like yesterday, and today…) I don’t even manage it. And I’m coming to realize that, really, that’s okay. It’s okay if I don’t get everything done when I plan to do it, because I have time, almost infinite time. Two years of time. During training, all the PCVs we talked to would tell us that, when we got to site, we would have more time than we knew what to do with, but I didn’t fully understand that until recently, until I realized that even if I don’t get something done today or tomorrow or this week, there’s always next week. It’s freeing and scary, because I know myself and know that I may put things off indefinitely. But that’s okay too, because the things I’m putting off are things I’m doing for myself, not for other people, and I can wait.

Whenever I spend time with PCVs I don’t get enough sleep. Yesterday, exhausted, I didn’t leave the house but did take a four-hour nap. I had grand ambitions as to what I was going to do but accomplished few of them–did do some (but not most) of my laundry, re-boil the too-sticky peanut brittle into something that cooled to the right texture, unpack purchases and reassemble my house. I’m now a third of the way through The Brothers Karamazov. Incidentally, if there’s a book you want me to read, there will never be a time I’m more likely to read it than now!
In the evening a teacher came by and delivered to me twelve letters and cards (mostly from my mother, but also from Mary, Helen, Aunt Col, Chris, and Dixcy, and I’d received a card from Grandy the week before!), but no package slips. I need to go check at the post office to see if any have arrived for me, but I’m almost unwilling to do so: as long as I put it off, I can convince myself that they’re there, waiting for me to pick them up, but as soon as I go the quantum state of the packages will collapse and I may be bitterly disappointed! Also, the longer I put it off, the more likely there are to be packages for me…
It’s noon, and the power just came back. When the teacher delivered my mail last night he told me that the bill had been paid and that it should be back soon. I must say, I’m relieved to have it back, and relishing these few hours of silence before the neighbors realize it’s back and turn on their music. I’m listening to some Explosions in the Sky I grabbed from Bret and it’s perfect music to go with the midday rainstorm rustling on the tin roof. Out my bedroom window, the valley looks distant, the rain tinting everything grey. So tempting to stay in the house today, too, and with my computer to keep me company and the ability to charge my phone, maybe I will…
Tomorrow I’m going up to Bret’s to celebrate New Year’s. Weather permitting, he and his German and I are going to hike up to the waterfall where the generator that powers his town is located. It should be a nice, low-key New Year’s.
And then school starts on the 5th, I’m told by my headmaster. PCVs assure me confidently that that means classes will start two weeks after that. So we’ll see. My headmaster was here briefly but I didn’t get a chance to talk to him before he headed out again. Hopefully he’ll return before classes are supposed to start. I want to talk to him about how to set up my classes so every student is able to use a computer, which would mean staggering the groups (one class is 40-60 kids, and there are 13 computers for them to use).
But things are good. I really honestly enjoy sitting in my house alone, reading and drinking tea and practicing my mandolin and doing crosswords. And when I venture out, I enjoy that too, although it’s sometimes tiring. The hardest thing for me to do every day is change out of my pyjamas; some days (like yesterday, and today…) I don’t even manage it. And I’m coming to realize that, really, that’s okay. It’s okay if I don’t get everything done when I plan to do it, because I have time, almost infinite time. Two years of time. During training, all the PCVs we talked to would tell us that, when we got to site, we would have more time than we knew what to do with, but I didn’t fully understand that until recently, until I realized that even if I don’t get something done today or tomorrow or this week, there’s always next week. It’s freeing and scary, because I know myself and know that I may put things off indefinitely. But that’s okay too, because the things I’m putting off are things I’m doing for myself, not for other people, and I can wait.

So, things that have happened recently…

• I read, like, ten books and drank innumerable cups of tea while lying in bed until late in the morning every day
• The power at my school remained out
• I fainted in the choo after being ill for a day. I cannot think of a less pleasant place to faint
• The Peace Corps finally deposited the rest of our settling-in allowance, but still hasn’t deposited our living allowance. I am Not Happy about this.
• I spent twelve hours traveling in one day, during which our bus got stuck in the mud twice and we had to hike up muddy mountains while it was unstuck
• I was nibbled by a drunk monkey (who was hilarious beyond my powers of expression)
• I saw half my remaining training class
• I sang Christmas carols with orphans
• I did the Bunny Hop down a Tanzanian street at ten P.M.

It was a really good Christmas, but very different from what I was used to…

(P.S. Enjoy pictures of my house, up now on Flickr! MARVEL at the ugly concrete and the great view! THRILL to a photograph of my fruits and vegetables!)

Doing better, needed some time to settle in. Using an NGO computer (I helped the guy to photograph-instead-of-scan a document yesterday after he randomly called me from a stationary store, so I figure it’s reasonable to use his Internet). Going to visit another PCV for Christmas, which I’m really looking forward to, almost as much as I’m looking forward to the several hours I’ll spend in the Internet cafe on the way home. I’ve had no power at my house for several days, apparently because the school didn’t bother to pay its electricity bill for the past two months. Needless to say, I am not impressed! It’s not all bad, though: no power means the neighbors can’t blast music at all hours, which means I can sleep in!

So that’s that. Merry Christmas, everyone, or happy whatever other holiday you celebrate.