A life of what ifs....

I've been struggling to feel some sense of closure on the whole mugging issue. Though I wasn't hurt very bad, it certainly got me thinking about the "what if" situation. That then cascaded into a whole introspective quagmire of "what ifs".

What if I had taken my first peace corps country assignment? How would I be feeling right now if I was in Turkmenistan? Who would my friends be? What would my life be like? I don't feel un-happy with Tanzania, but the thought has crossed my mind, even more so after I met a couple who had just COS's from PC-Swaziland.

Then hanging out with new volunteers who just swore in, it made me think back to when I was still a newbie. Then I thought what would it be like if I was in that group, or what it would have been like if I was in the group that came before me.

I still think that I'm pretty happy where I'm at right now, but my mind is wandering. Now it's movie time. So no more posty-action today.

Getting jacked

Got mugged by a taxi driver and some hooligans in Dar. Made it out OK. Sometimes life's a b.

Hopefully they'll get a visit from Dar es Salaam's fairy god-mother, the "Kerosene and Tyre Fairy"

I am ALL that is Man!

I got stuck in Mikindani for a couple of extra days after M&R, and one of the EdUKaid teachers was having an engagement party, which in Tanzania means large quantities of animals get slaughtered.

Since I'm a guy and I was around, my participation in the goat-a-cide was pretty much assumed. Because I'm not a Muslim, I couldn't kill the goat or the meat wouldn't be halal (like a "Kosher" equivalent for Muslims but somehow less detailed)

So I helped to skin and gut the goat, then season it up for cooking (Garlic and Ginger stuffed inside the meat. It was darn tasty!) I did get to take the head off with a machete, which was the moment I uttered the above phrase. I'll try to dig up a picture.

Scuba and M&R

Well, I've been in Mtwara for the last week. It's ungodly hot, but there is internet and ocean. On the topic of oceans, I'm done with my confined water dives and the theory portion of my PADI Open Water course at ECO2. I highly recommend it. They are not just a dive resort, they are actively involved in marine research and conservation and are committed to community development

M&R was less painful than I'd expected, it was about as good as you can make a conference on filling out forms. I only nodded off once or twice...

an hour. But the Peace Corps HQ rep was very cool, and understanding. After this week of playing in the dirt at permaculture, I'll finish up my open water dives and then head up to Dar for Thanksgiving. Life is good.

TFAB

You know you'’re in Africa when you'’re praying that the electricity will come on, and when it does, you shout "“YES!" and do a little dance. Then it goes back out. TFAB. This is especially bad when you are still trying to write exams the night before you have to submit them and then leave for two weeks...

It’s a small, small world.

When my brother and I were in Dar for the 4th of July, we tracked down the Bangladeshi consulate to see if my brother could speak to some Bangladeshis and we could have some crazy Bangla-Swahili discussions. The Honorary Consular Officer was not Bangladeshi, but he directed us to a few of the 6 or 7 Bangladeshis in Dar, one of whom was just around the corner from our hotel. This Bangladeshi then took us to meet a few others who were scattered close by. We ended up in a little bites shop, and a nice gentleman there bought us some cokes and talked to my brother in Bangla for a while (If you’ve seen how some people in Dar are surprised when an mzungu starts speaking Swahili, you can imagine the jaw-drop when one starts going off like an Mhindi). He handed us a nice business card on expensive paper, and said we should stay in touch.

Fast forward to today, and I’m cleaning up the house, and come across a newspaper from a couple of days ago. The lead story was about the scandal erupting around the $170+ million contract for emergency power generators. Weeks past the deadline, the generators have still not been delivered, and the winning-company apparently only just now officially registered with the relative authorities in Tanzania, and is not registered in it’s US headquarters in Texas. The name of the company stuck in my head, and I just couldn’t shake it. Later, I was cleaning out my travel wallet before I left for Mtwara. I pulled out a business card and did a double take: It was from the company that won the contract for the generators, the man who bought us those Cokes is the manager of the company.

Details of the deal and what went wrong are still unknown, and the generators could show up at any moment, so I don’t want to judge, but it feels a little like I had drinks with Ken Lay of Enron.

Africa Wins Again!

Back home I woke up Monday morning feeling like death warmed over, and turned on BBC radio. A man was announcing in Swahili that today was most certainly Eid al-fitr, for all of East Africa, and that anyone who said otherwise was wrong. He was the leader of some large Muslim organization in Kenya, so I figured that was good enough for me, and I went back to sleep. I was too sick to get up anyhow.

Later that day, of course, I find out that in Tanzania, or at least in Newala, today was NOT Eid, and it will be tomorrow, which means the day after (Wednesday) is also a holiday. Thus, basically my whole week is shot. I was told this discrepancy stems from the fact that there is no agreement between Shia and Sunni or even between Kenyan and Tanzanian Muslims on when it is officially Eid. I think it’s just a clever way to stretch a two day holiday into a 3-day event, but I didn‘t complain, I needed the rest. Africa wins again.

Africa is Kicking my Ass

This week marks the 45th Anniversary of Peace Corps. Tanzania, at that time still Tanganyika, was one of the first two Peace Corps countries, Ghana being the other one. Jen went to Dar for the celebrations, where PC bosses and some of those first volunteers gathered. Jen has been in touch with some of the very first PCVs: engineers and surveyors who built the road system, but I’m not sure if anyone she has talked with is going. Since she is in Dar I’ve been watching Imani, the moster-dog, and this is where it gets interesting.

Imani had some sort of weird eye infection, and had to have a minor procedure by Dr. Don, the Vet in town. I was charged with putting the antibiotic and prednisone drops in 4x a day. While the dog is a generally a spaz, this was not much problem… until I came down with the worst sore throat of my LIFE! It hurt so bad I couldn’t even swallow the saliva in my mouth. All this took place while the dog got more and more unruly. The first night she was OK- didn’t pee or whine or anything. The next night she decided that play-time should start at 2am. This was not cool, so I locked her in the guest bedroom. She whined a bit but soon settled down and went to sleep. Problem seemingly solved.

The next night she decided to go nuts again at around 2am, so back in the guest room she went. This time she upped it a notch, and started scratching at the door. Since my doors don’t hang level or close properly she was able to open it, and thus I had to jury-rig webbing to keep the door closed. The next morning I found the dog had destroyed the bed and torn up the pillow. Out of options, the next two nights I locked her in the shower. By Saturday morning I was feeling a bit better, so I went to Masasi for Josh’s birthday and to say good by to him and Tony, both of whom are COSing. Unfortunately, by Saturday afternoon, my voice was gone. The throat had stopped hurting but now I just felt like ass everywhere else.

Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting

So I'm at the internet for the first time in months, adding a bunch of back-dated posts here, and I get a random email from my Uncle to check out www.kylekingsbury.com (my cousin). So I do. Turns out he's now a pro mixed martial arts fighter (MMA). He's always been huge and strong, and he played football for Arizona State, but this is another level entirely. He's currently 4-0 so he's off to a good start. I'll hope to hang out with him at Christmas if I end up going back for vacation. I like this picture of him, since he looks so f'n mean, but in reality he's such a nice, laughable guy, I imagine he was busting up while trying to hold that post for the photographer.

September Fest King and Queen

Most of my September Fest pictures are questionable for Internet posting, but this is a relatively tame one of Tait and Jason, who were elected king and queen of September Fest, complete with royal gowns and a royal dance.


If you look carefully, you might notice that the man in the red cap, (atayebaki bila jina), is wearing a pink prom dress.

On the front porch:

Badger Badger, Badger Badger, Badger Badger, Badger Badger, Mushroom, Mushroom!

SNAKE!!

Nearly stepped on a Boomslang snake on my porch today. Startled me pissless. He was sunning himself on the edge of my porch as I came around the corner of my house. They are pretty shy snakes, so I don't think I would have been bitten. It ran and hid under my miwanzi as soon as it saw me. I took a picture and then the neighbor got it. They don't like snakes much.

My ear:

Jess van Gogh here, admiring her handywork with a "safety" razor. This is not just a mere cut, but a visible chunk of my ear that has been removed, and not much longer after this picture was taken, she cut the other one too.

Crazy prep for Septemberfest:

Today was full of crazy-ness. I’m up super late typing emails and trying to pack for September Fest. Spent the day hanging out with Jess and Steve. Got Steve’s bike fixed, barely. Tanzanian bike fundis don’t always (ever) admit to not being able to do something, and often substitute force for the right tool and patience. The hammer is quite literally used in almost every job. So we’re trying to get Steve’s cranks off, since the pedals stripped out. The fundi has a tool (amazingly enough, the correct one) and starts to thread it on. It starts to stick so, of course, out comes the hammer.
He reefs on this poor crank and pops out of the threads twice before I take a closer look at his tool and the crank threads: his tool is completely stripped, threads rounded over completely; the crank threads are now shot as well. I ask him if he knows his tool is completely and utterly broken, and he seems to think he just wasn’t using enough force. So with Don’s help, we convince him to use a new tool, which we naturally have to buy. 8,000 isn’t too bad, so we get the tool, and he gets going again but quickly drops it in the sand. He picks it up with sand coating the threads and starts to put it back on the bike. I’m stop him and ask him if he knows that the sand will strip out the threads and ruin the tool - he is oblivious. I as if he has a toothbrush to clean the tool off, nope, so 300 shillings later, we have bought a toothbrush to clean his new tool. It goes back on, and as soon as it’s tight, he wants to get out the hammer again and wail on it. I stop him and tell him it’s tight enough. Sure enough, the crank popped right off. It even worked on the stripped side, but we were basically re-cutting the threads.
All in all, about an hour later Steve had new cranks and pedals on his bike, and in the mean time, I bought a new panga and jembe for my garden and had them sharpened.

Later in the early afternoon, Jess came into town, and we had lunch with her, then when shopping, Her phone was broken again, so we swapped it out at Aziz’s, no problem, and he ordered a new one for her right then and there. Those guys rock. On the way back at my house Jess attempted to get a handlebar lifti on my bike. Shocks and loose sand made it pretty difficult, and it didn’t help that we were laughing so hard that we could barely stand. I launched her off 3 or 4 times. It was a spectacle for the Tanzanians for sure. We hung out for a while at my house, then I decided I wanted to have my hair cut before September Fest. Seeing as I have a tradition of stupid hair and beard to hold up, I decided to go with a Mohawk and chinstrap-fu man chu beard combo. Jess got to work and started to shave my head, but she got a bit carried away and Ms Van Goh took off a piece of my ear. Not just a cut. A visible chunk is missing. She attempted to balance out the other ear, but I stopped her and assured her it was ok. We went back over to Jens for dinner, and Steve and I cooked peanut sauce again. It was good. Jess is not to be allowed to touch sharp objects around me for the immediate future.

A sad day in remeberance:

I didn’t even realize today was the anniversary untill a few hours into the morning. It was pretty under the radar here, but CNN sometimes is available and they were re-airing some of the live footage from the day. Pretty traumatic even after this long. I was able to watch some CNN by way of injury: That afternoon I was busy trying to fix my stupid kerosene stove, since it was not burning clean. I had trimmed and adjusted the wicks, and then let it burn super high for a few minutes to burn down the wicks and clear the soot. I took it apart with my hot pads and set about preparing breakfast.
Normally the metal bits of the stove cool off fairly quickly, unfortunately, as mine had been heated super hot, the outer baffle was still quite hot as I grabbed it bare handed to put the stove back together. As I yelp and run to dunk my hand under the coolest water I have, my house girl shows up at the door. I let here in and with pain interfering with my Swahili skills, I try to explain that I need to go get some ice. So I hop on my bike and ride, one handed, to Don and Monica’s since they have a freezer. On the way, my phone, which is in my pocket on the burned-hand side, rings. I slow down and reach my left hand into my right pocket and pull out my phone to talk while riding gimpy-handed: It was Steve. He had taken off in the morning, but didn’t get too far as his bike broke just out side of town. So we hung out and tried to be as cheerful as can be.
An added bit of poignance is that the Embassy in Dar was the target of terrorist bombing not to long ago, so it is definately on the minds of ex-pats here.

Spring Break has begun!

I have a new phone again. Aziz’s duka is amazing like that. It only took 3 days for it to arrive, and the price was very good. Steve the Makondeko transfer came up for the weekend to do some business, pimp out his bike with mud guards, a bell, rack and kickstand, helped me start a compost pile and garden and for a health club debate / soccer tournament between Newala Day (My school) and Mahuta (Marissa’s school) after, Jen Steve Marissa and I all cooked awesome veggie stir fry in peanut sauce. I never thought that I'd be eating this good in Africa. Seriously, good stuff. Now a week to relax and get ready for Septemberfest!

Feeling bummed, but bouncing back stong

I was bummed out this week from my school pretty much sucking all around. Here’s a long winded explanation as to why:
Lately it’s been seeming like I don’t even exist at the school. I show up to teach, but in between my classes I am almost always the only one in the teacher’s lounge. I know for a fact that the other teachers are somewhere other than the classrooms for a good portion of the day, but I don’t know where. On the rare occasions when another teacher is in the lounge with me (other than at chai break, when everyone suddenly appears), hardly ever does a conversation ensue. I used to have one good buddy who would sit in the lounge and talk to me about anything, help me with Swahili, and who showed some interest in doing a secondary project. He left last month because he got into university. The only other teacher that has made conversation is also leaving after midterm break to go to university.
To throw a little salt in that wound, somehow even though I’m in the teacher’s lounge all the time, I’m never told anything about what‘s going on at the school, for example: I usually find out about meetings after they have started. Or I’ll learn my classes are cancelled on my way to teach them. On top of the feeling isolated during work, in 8 months I have yet to be invited over by anyone at the school for a meal, chai, a celebration or just to hang out after work. I have been making efforts to reach out to the other teachers, but I just don’t feel like a part of the school community. I feel like if I just snuck into my classes to teach and then hit out the rest of the week, no one at the school would miss me.
The last straw was after I proposed some great ideas for secondary projects for my school, and the enthusiasm level of everyone else was just above zero. I just don’t know what else I can do to try to integrate at the school.
Now after school I go eat and usually go into town, where the difference is like night and day. In town I have many friends who are engaging and receptive. They start conversations, they ask me questions. They ask where I have been if I haven’t been by in a couple of days. I have a few friends in town who probably know as much about my work as the rest of the teachers do combined. I often get invited to tea and meals with friends in town. People in the town are interested in doing secondary projects with me, even if they don’t always relate to PC goals. Most of all, I feel welcomed and appreciated in town, and I feel like the people are glad to have me here. That isn’t something I feel at the school.
So I spent this week at Jen’s house, for her Birthday on the 30th, and partying. On top of it all, my phone just up and died on Thursday for no reason. But I vented to my friends and hung out with the new PCVs, which was good. I’ve come to the conclusion that even though teaching is my primary assignment, my sense of achievement, accomplishment and appreciation are going to come out of side projects, and that’s OK.

Friday we went to the disco and danced up a storm, then Saturday we took a car down to the Ruvuma river and saw hippos and Mozambique. It was amazing. By Monday, I was feeling recharged and more enthusiastic about teaching. Incidentally, none of the other teachers noticed that I hadn’t been around.

Killer Bees: An observation

I went into my choo today and found that it was infested with a large number of swarming bees. The thought came into my mind that the so-called “killer bees” of America are a hybrid cross of domestic bees and African bees. So, I thought to myself, if 50%-African bees are “killer” how bad are the purebred, 100% ones? So, I shut the door and held it until they dispersed.

Holy poop! I was in town just running errands today, and lo-and-behold I see 2 more white people! I started to wonder if maybe the new volunteers had somehow gotten down here early, but nope! Now I was already excited having seen one new mzungu, two more in the same week was darn near astounding. They were doing some survey work for an NGO that is planning on donating a large number (100,000+) of books to Tanzanian schools. We ended up going back to Country Lodge (where they were staying) to chat a bit. They talked about what they’d seen and been told by MoE officials, and wanted to know what my views were as an actual teacher on the front lines. They didn’t go to my school to observe, but I got the contact information, so hopefully when the books get sent, a few will make it to my school. I told them to look up the PCVs in the next few regions they were going to visit, so keep you eyes out for them.

Went out to Country Lodge for drinks and dinner after the end of a seminar for a Mama's group put on by some of my fellow volunteers. They had done some good work, and wanted to cellebrate. We wanted to invite the local JICA volunteers, but it turns out they were already having dinner there to welcome the new nurse at the hospital! And on that note, hurrah for having a new nurse from JICA. It makes me feel a bit more secure in case of serious illness

Oh boy, so many updates:

Had an interesting few days in the week before heading up to the Internet Café. Some Highlights:

Friday August 18, 2006
I met a tourist today. The first one in my 7 months here, as well as the first one any of the other wazungu can remember coming to town. He’s Dutch, speaks good English but little Swahili and is travelling by himself. All in all I consider him to be pretty badass considering he’s going WAY off the beaten path. Newala only gets couple of sentences in the guidebook (none of which would help you if you ended up here) and it’s the district capital. He wanted to bike down to the Ruvuma River and see Mozambique. I was down, but my bike had a flat, and Saturday I ended up observing my site-mate’s seminar for her Mamas group. It was pretty cool, so I’m glad I went. It’s good to get a different perspective and atmosphere from my usual, which is high school students. Unfortunately, I never saw him again.

Thomas, wherever you are, Safari Njema.

Picture

My new Journal

OK, so I gave into peer pressure and started a website for people to read. That's right "WEBSITE", I refuse to call this a "blog" as that word is an abomination. How could "Web-log" be too long of a word? I blame "the MTV" with their hippity-hop music and abbreviations [/crotchety old man voice]

Since my time is now up at the internet cafe, I'm going to cut it short with this "Hello World" post. Next time I'm at the internet (in a few weeks) I'll have more to add.