Many things have happened since the last blog post, but I’ve been busy and/or not thinking about the blog, and haven’t gotten a chance to write about anything. I’ll try to do that soon.
For now, I’ve made a video tour of my new house, and uploaded it to YouTube. You can find it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=facLDqKXLyU
(You’ll have to copy-paste that URL into your browser’s navigation bar; my internet connection is not currently fast-enough to use the blog feature for creating links.)
House
I have moved into my house now! It is very large and fancy, one of the largest/fanciest in town. I’ve got TWO guest bedrooms, electricity, ceiling fans, metal-framed windows in sliding frames, and I will have running water, but it’s not finished yet (the house/grounds are still under construction).
On the negative side, my house is surrounded by chain-link fence with barbed wire on top, and will have a formidable metal gate where there is currently a gap in the fence. My little block of housing is also a little bit removed from our neighbors. The best way to keep your stuff safe in Tanzania is to befriend your neighbors and have a good reputation so that people will not want to steal from you and instead will want to help take care of you. The fence etc is also somewhat isolating, and declares that this house is one that has stuff worth stealing in it. Oh well. I’ll survive somehow, I’m sure.
I’ve since been conducting a major project of cleaning the place up and getting it set up with all of the essentials – buckets, nails to hang a lantern on*, a clothesline, reinforcing my sink so it doesn’t fall off the wall, etc.
*The electricity for the entire town has been cutting out a lot.
Town
I like my town. It’s got pretty much everything I could want in terms of household items and food, including fancy things like spaghetti noodles and soy sauce. The only things missing are popcorn and a bank that I have an account with. I’ve stocked up on popcorn in Mtwara town (got 5 kilos of kernels now) and will look into opening an account with the local bank.
At the same time, my house is sort of on the outskirts of town, in a very quiet area with little traffic etc, and has most of the peace of a village. The area here is very lush and green by Karatu standards, and is a nice place to live.
From my house, it’s about a half-hour walk to the local Ministry of Education office, where I work, and another half-hour walk from there to “downtown”, where most of the shops are. The walk from my house to the office goes through some very nice neighborhoods (beautiful scenery, friendly people), and I like it.
My town is a few hours from Mtwara town, and the travel time greatly varies by means of transport etc. Land Cruisers belonging to the TZ21 project do it in about two hours. I came in by bus yesterday and it took about four.
Other
When I first got settled in, there was a gathering of PCVs at another nearby town, so I went and met many of the people here, who were all very nice, so that was good. After that, I spent about a week settling in and attempting to be productive after my laptop’s charger died, the electricity kept cutting out, and the office’s only available computer was a desktop that A) had no electricity much of the time and B) its mouse had been “borrowed” and nobody knew where it was or how to get it.
(Related note: if anyone knows how to select a user account to log in with in Windows 7/8 using just the keyboard, I’d be very interested to hear it! Either I didn’t guess the right method, or that computer’s kebyboard doesn’t work.)
I have gotten a new charger for my laptop, so no worries there.
After about a week, I was called in to Mtwara town to do some work there, and ended up staying about a week at the same beach house I’d been at before.
Two missionary families ended up staying there for two nights, and they were very nice and I enjoyed meeting them. They also gave me and Lisa free food! Outside of the religious aspect, I feel like missionaries are the next-closest thing to volunteers out here, and there are some advantages to the way they work. They’re much more organized than we are in terms of working together and supporting each other, and some of them end up staying for their entire lives and getting to know the languages and culture and environment much better than we ever do.
In theory, I will move into my house on Friday. Or perhaps on Monday. Or perhaps later. In the meantime I’m still in Mtwara town, at the beach house.
The TZ21 project has an office here in Mtwara, and I’ve been coming in every weekday to do whatever sort of work I can find. The big thing I’ve been working on is data entry – folks are going out and inspecting all of the schools to see if they’re ready to receive the equipment that’s been delayed, and those folks are filling out these big inspection forms, and the forms then need to be typed into a giant spreadsheet. There are over a thousand schools involved, so I’ve been doing a lot of that. Making good progress, and planning what to do next.
The place I’m staying continues to be beautiful. I’ve met a few really nice other volunteers who are stationed down here (two English volunteers with VSO and one Japanese volunteer with JICA), and a couple of nice European doctors who have settled here permanently in order toa help people.
Aside from that, I’ve been reading good books, exploring the area, enjoying the beach, and making grad school plans.
I put up another video while still in the US and didn’t link to it here. For those interested, here’s a very brief tour of some shops near my school.
US Break
Had a great one-month leave in the US. Got to see lots of friends and family, see snow, indulge in foods and cinemas and holidays, check out teaching career options, etc. Based on the sheer pervasive volume of technology and man-made creations in American cities, I’ve concluded that America is science fiction. So if you like science fiction and you’re living in America, congratulations.
Coming Back
My trip back to Tanzania was uneventful. One flight from Portland to Amsterdam and a second from Amsterdam to Dar Es Salaam, stopping at Kilimanjaro International Airport on the way. Saw a really fun movie on the Amsterdam->Dar flight. (The movie was “Brave”, about medieval Scottish people doing awesome medieval Scottish things.)
Dar Es Salaam
When I got back to Tanzania, I checked into the PCV-preferred hotel in Dar and set to work making arrangements for traveling to my new site and starting my new work. I ended up staying there and making those arrangements for about a week. The hotel I was staying at is in a really cool part of Dar, with a lot of folks of Indian descent and as a result several Hindu temples and many wonderful Indian restaurants that are affordable on a PCV’s per-diem, so I greatly enjoyed that.
Mtwara
I’ve now gotten down to Mtwara town, which is not where I’ll be living, but it is the capital city of the region that my new town is in. My house is not ready for me (I’ve been told it should be ready by the end of this week, but I won’t be surprised if it isn’t), and the installation of computers at the schools has been delayed, which means the teacher training has been delayed. So for now I’m living out of a hotel in Mtwara and looking for something productive to do. Very typical Peace Corps third-year extension stuff!
It’s very tropical here, very warm, very sunny, lots of coconut trees. The hotel I’m at is a nice little church-run guest house that is right on the Indian Ocean. You walk out the door and take 50 steps and your feet are wet. It is beautiful and peaceful and I’m really enjoying it. There’s an even more beautiful spot just up the beach with a tourist hotel & restaurant whose food I can’t afford, but I can just chill there with a soda, which is what I’m doing as I write this. I’m about 20 steps from wet feet right now, writing this, enjoying the ambiance, watching a ship sailing out to sea. Peace Corps is really tough sometimes.
Got a few more videos up now. Links:
A tour around the vicinity of my school.
Students singing really well during their free time.
A really cool local plant.
Two really cool local bugs: a dung beetle and a millipede.
That’s all for now!
Hi everyone. I’ve arrived in Portland! Expect phone calls and the like very soon.
I’ve already uploaded three more videos. Links are below. Several more videos, and a bunch of pictures, are forthcoming (although seeing people etc is going to take higher priority than getting these things up, so they may or may not be up quickly).
Leaving The Village – Showing our local road conditions and traffic.
School Tour (Higher Resolution) – Full-resolution version of that “school tour” video. Everything is much clearer/more visible.
House Tour (Higher Resolution) – Full-resolution version of that “house tour” video. Everything is much clearer/more visible.
