progress report

Once again I find myself in the computer lab in Mpwapwa, where we arrived this morning after an uneventful bus ride. I guess it was mostly uneventful--bus is supposed to accommodate about 60 people, but we estimate that our bus had about 100 people on board. Tony had elbows and asses in his face (we actually had seats--lucky us), chickens at his feet, and some woman kept stroking my hair as she was trying to hold on to the back of my seat. Our bus driver--it's always the same guy--is this extremely cool, distinguished man in his late 40s, and he keeps his eye on us to make sure we're ok. It's getting hot--we're coming up on summer here in Tanzania--and the expression commonly used here is jua kali ("fierce sun.") No kidding--fierce is an excellent adjective. Yesterday I left our house at 8am to walk into town to buy eggs; I thought I was being very clever for leaving so early, but I was wrong in two ways: first of all, the sun was already brutally hot and strong, without a cloud in the sky, and secondly, all the people who were drinking pombe (home-brewed alcohol) the night before were just making their way home, so I got surrounded by drunk men who thought it was hysterical that I couldn't speak Kigogo (local tribal language.) Extremely entertaining. I returned home a sweaty, frustrated mess. My temper has been short; many people are so patient and encouraging and welcoming, and that makes this whole transition easier, but when the jerks antagonize me and act ignorant about how difficult it is to live in a radically different place, I get angry. As my Kiswahili improves, I can tell them that they're being jerks, but right now all I can say is "I'm a guest here in Kibakwe, and I'm trying to speak and understand Kiswahili. Please speak slowly." Of course I can say this very well in Kiswahili, because I say it every day.

Anyway, here's what's new: we painted our bathroom with bright, shiny white paint, and installed a shelf for our toiletries. Unbelievable difference. Tony installed bright, shiny white tiles on the bathroom floor yesterday--I helped by handing them to him--and even though we're not finished and it's kind of crooked and some are broken, I can tell it's going to be great. Our houseboys built a fence around our little flower garden, and Tony will build a gate for it next week. We started using our hotplate, and I thought this would be the answer to all my prayers, but I was very wrong: the electricity is not grounded in our house (in Tanzania? I don't know), and I learned this by touching it without wearing shoes--got shocked across the room. After much crying and swearing, I figured out what happened. Shoes are now mandatory during any electric cooking. I forgot once, and got shocked again. Ok, now I won't forget to wear shoes. Stirring with wooden spoons: good idea. Stirring with metal spoons: bad idea. Another shock. Holding the pan with a dry towel while stirring: good idea. Holding the pan with a damp towel while stirring: bad idea. Shocked again. As if I can remember this while I'm trying to cram my brain with Kiswahili. I don't mean I got little baby shocks; I got monster shocks that I could feel all the way from my affected hand down to my toes. Baked four times last week: banana cake, brownies, chocolate fudge cake, and toffee cookies. (Great idea for your next care package to us: oats and chocolate chips!!) When one of our houseboys ate a piece of the chocolate fudge cake, he declared "This is the first time since I was born that I ate chocolate cake." He's 23. They also tasted peanut butter for the first time, and are enthralled. [Peanuts grow extremely well in Kibakwe, and I'm hoping that we can introduce a peanut butter project (making peanut butter and selling it--in the Peace Corps world this is called an Income Generating Activity.) There are plenty of people and plenty of peanuts in Kibakwe--this could be an excellent source of income for some people who desperately need it, not to mention the nutritional benefits of eating peanut butter. Please send any tips about making it.] We managed to seal some of the wall/ceiling gaps to keep the rat crap out, and Tony built a 10 foot ladder that weighs about 150 pounds. I also learned and applied a few new words. We've been busy.

Plans for next week: finish tiling bathroom. Paint living room. Pray that fundi ("carpenter") finished our cabinets so our clothes can be moved out of our suitcases. Plot out space for garden and start fence. Visit Italian nuns--hopefully while they're cooking lunch--and try to get invited to eat with them. Figure out best time of day to walk to town so drunk people don't mob me. Meet up with the Mpwapwa crew of Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) to talk and laugh. Figure out best time of day to walk to town so drunk people don't mob me. Did I say that already??

Extremely weird tidbit: as we were walking to catch our bus this morning at 5:15am (still completely dark--sun rises at 6:30), we heard really loud music in town. As we got closer, we could see where it was coming from: one house with electricity had its lights on, and there was some kind of dance party going on. The music was BLASTING from giant speakers, about 10 people (in their 20s) were dancing with great intensity in the front yard, and a bibi ("grandmother") appeared to be chaperoning. Did it start this morning? Was it going on all night? What was the reason? We'll never know. Imagine witnessing this as you're walking with sleep in your eyes to jump on the smelly bus.

i almost forgot...

Check Tony's blog, too, for interesting anecdotes and photos: www.antnystoney.blogspot.com

making progress

Hello from beautiful Mpwapwa! We arrived in town this morning to do the usual: use the internet and shop for supplies. First things first--if you would like to send anything to us, please make one small change to the address:
Carla Stanke or Tony Stonehouse
SLP 36
Kibakwe-Mpwapwa
Tanzania
Sorry for the confusion--this is a good example of the miscommunication that is part of every minute of every day when you're a foreigner here. So what have we been doing for the last week and a half? Well, it looks like we are winning the battle with the cockroaches, which is good news. We are not winning the battle with the rats, however--we're at a standstill. The rats really like living in between our ceiling and our tin roof, and they especially like pooping where the ceiling tiles don't quite meet the walls. This means that we sweep up rat crap every day, which has actually stopped bothering me--yeah right. So right now we are trying to figure out how to completely seal our ceiling with the limited supplies that are available in Mpwapwa. We don't have a Home Depot here yet. Ha ha. We can buy rat poison everywhere, but I don't especially want them to die right above my ceiling--I just want them to stay away from my living spaces. Stay tuned for more news.
Here's some good news to help you forget about our rats: we had a concrete patio installed in our tiny courtyard, which I plan to fill with pots of flowers that do well with extreme sun and extreme drought. Feel free to send seeds our way if you know of any plants or flowers that would thrive with our weather conditions. We also had concrete stairs installed in front of our house, so we don't have to jump a pile of rocks anymore to get in. Small victories are big victories here.
More good news: we got electricity last week! We no longer knock around in the dark after sunset, and we've stopped going to bed at 7:30pm. I can charge my phone any time, so feel free to call or send text messages--use this number: 011-255-782-033-350.
Plans for next week: figure out how to keep rats from crapping in our house; tile our gross bathroom floor with shiny white tiles that we bought today (I'm super-excited about this project!!); paint gross bathroom with shiny white paint that we bought today; paint our living room/kitchen; maybe build a fence around our future garden (must build fence first to keep cows, goats, chickens, guinea fowl and children out); cook something other than beans/cabbage/tomatoes/onions; learn and apply 10 new Kiswahili words--last week I only mastered one new phrase, which was "as usual" ("kama kawaida"--for those of you interested in Kiswahili--useful phrase to know when you're learning to wait AGES for anything to get accomplished--kama kawaida in Tanzania!); begin work on our water tank, which will be nothing more than a concrete basin--like a hot tub, for those of you in the developed word--to collect rainwater from our roof to use in our garden. It sounds like a busy week, doesn't it? Our houseboys have been an excellent help to us, and are eager to please us and are thrilled to have such an unusual job as working for the "wazungu" ("foreigners," if you forgot.) One of our "boys," as we like to call them, has especially touched my heart. He's 22 years old, married to an 18 year old, has a 5 year old daughter, and both of his parents are dead. He's taking care of his family, plus his two younger siblings--this is unbelievably difficult, because there is literally no work to do in Kibakwe-- almost no way to earn an income, other than by running a small shop or fetching water for people or doing odd jobs. He is a hard worker and we trust him completely; he's a great kid, and he needs a chance to get ahead. I wish we could do more for him; we pay each of our boys about $1 per day for 4 hours of work, which is a great salary here. Whew--I'm sure there are lots of people who need a chance to get ahead in Kibakwe, but this particular guy is in my life for a now-unknown reason.

So--here's a short list of things that I have come to LOVE about Tanzania:
1. Everyone loves to eat. There are no hang-ups about body shape/size. People eat with great enthusiasm, and don't even think about getting fat. Being fat here is considered to be really good--that you're living a good life. I have lost a little weight since I've been here, and last week I was sitting in the living room of a bibi ("grandmother") who has taken a liking to us. She looked at me, shook her head, and said "why are you so thin?" First time in my life I've been asked this question. Being a crazy American, I was flattered, and said something about the fact that Americans like to be thin. She just shook her head again. People--especially women-- work very hard here just to live: fetching water, cooking over a charcoal stove, carrying babies on their backs, washing clothes by hand, working in the fields during the rainy season. Food is pivotal.
2. People hold hands when they're walking together and talking. Children, adolescents, adults--everyone. Men hold hands with men and women hold hands with women. Men and women don't EVER hold hands with each other--same sex only. It's very dear.
3. When a Tanzanian disapproves of something, they make a pronounced "tsk" sound. If somebody makes this sound, they are very unhappy. Nobody has made this sound at me yet--thankfully. I hear it every day when I talk to people, and I have become very good at it. Powerful.
4. When you travel by bus and the bus stops somewhere like a big bus stand and you're not yet at your destination, you can buy absolutely anything out of the bus window: vouchers for you cell phone, cashews, bananas, belts, fried potatoes, hard boiled eggs, woven baskets, loaves of bread, cookies, watches, soda, oranges, sugar cane. Incredibly fun.

We have lots of ideas for Peace Corps projects that we'd like to try in Kibakwe, and we're going to start language lessons with a tutor (a Tanzanian friend who lives in Mpwapwa who is friends with all the wazungu here and speaks excellent English!) in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for news of our developing house and our developing lives. Today is a good day.

is it true? another post so soon??

Yes, it's true--two posts in two days. I'm taking full advantage of being in Mpwapwa, our shopping/banking/computer town. We'll go home tomorrow or the next day--still need to gets lots of stuff for our house.
So what's a typical day like in the town on Kibakwe? Glad you asked--here goes: wake up before sunrise because of crowing roosters and horns from buses and people talking outside our house as they wait to fill buckets of water from the nearby pump. Start fire in our jiko (charcoal grill), boil water for tea/coffee/drinking later in the day. Wash faces in plastic basin and brush teeth with boiled water; eat fruit and bread baked the day before on jiko. House helpers come over at 10am (two young men in their 20s--everyone has house help in Tanzania) to wash clothes, sweep/mop floors, run errands, dig gardens, practice speaking Kiswahili/English together. After they leave, usually between 2 and 3 in the afternoon, Tony and I read, study, write and talk for a while, have a snack (bread or fruit), take a walk into town and visit people, then maybe make bread and start preparing the evening meal. This means soaking beans, washing rice and chopping veggies. We can usually only buy tomatoes and onions in Kibakwe, but sometimes cabbage and okra and peppers, and I bought 5 carrots a few days ago. I also can usually buy bananas and papaya every day, but more veggies will come later in the year when the rains start, which is usually November--that's why we come to Mpwapwa to shop, because you can get a LOT more here: carrots, eggplant, potatoes, pineapple, oranges, mangoes, spinach, coconut, lentils, different beans, garlic, spices, honey. Coming to Mpwapwa to buy food feels like shopping at Whole Foods now--wow! Cooking takes a couple hours, and we try to eat before dark because we don't have electricity yet. The sun sets at 7pm every day, and this is usually the time we're eating; we light our kerosene lamps and candles, eat, then wash dishes in our plastic basins. Then we heat a kettle of water for our shower, which Tony constructed out of a plastic bucket and some rope, suspended from a rafter in our bafu ("bathing room"); we take a shower (most Tanzanians take bucket baths, which means bathing with a bucket of water and cup to pour it over your body--but we prefer showers), lock up our house (four rooms arranged around a tiny courtyard), climb into bed under our mosquito net, read for a while with flashlights, then go to sleep around 9pm. That's a typical day for right now--after we start doing projects and we're much busier, we will be out of our house much more, and might hire someone to cook lunch for us--this kind of house helper is called a "House Mama." Cooking takes forever, and we really like to do it, but I'm guessing that when we're actually working, we won't have as much time. Once we have electricity, we will buy a hot plate, and that will make the cooking process faster, too, but baking bread and cake will always be done on our charcoal grill. Too bad we love bread and cake so much!!
So how are we feeling? Honestly, it's up and down. Some days are good and some aren't; for that matter, some moments are good and some aren't. We have made some excellent friends, both in the Peace Corps Volunteer community and within our town (obviously, the town friends are new friends); there are 12 of us volunteers total in the district of Mpwapwa, and we are separated by bad roads and many kilometers, but we love and support each other--these people are our built-in families here, and we get together as often as possible. Our closest Peace Corps friend is Ben, a 23 year old writer from Kentucky, and he lives 11 kilometers away from our house, so we see each other at least once a week. We all have cell phones and text each other every day. We are healthy and safe, and are eager to see how our projects develop. We might get a dog, and will plant flowers. Will we stay here for the whole two years?? Don't know yet--we take it one day at a time.
What do we long for? Magazines, salty snacks from the US, really good skin lotion (we live in the desert, and it's drought time right now!), proper cleaning products, dark chocolate ALWAYS, scented candles, hair accessories for my growing hair. Simple things that bring so much comfort. As someone in Peace Corps once said: we can usually buy what we need but never what we want.
It feels like a struggle trying to balance living as my neighbors do but having comforts of a developed world (electricity, for example, and flowers just for the sake of beauty in a land of terrible drought.) Our closest neighbors have satellite dishes and tv, but we won't. We work very hard every day to find our path here.

home sweet home...

We've successfully been installed into our new home in Kibakwe! For those of you interested in geography, we are living in the region of Dodoma, district of Mpwapwa, town of Kibakwe--the very middle of Tanzania, land of drought, also called the "red desert". We are the first Peace Corps Volunteers EVER in Kibakwe, and the town officials really seem happy that we're here. About our house:it's a fixer-upper, for sure, but that's by American standards; by Tanzanian standards, we are living like royalty. We live in the "subdivision" of Kibakwe, next to the town's doctors, nurses, and police; our house is made of concrete, we have a tin roof, and it's already wired for electricity (but it's not connected yet--maybe next week. For now we use kerosene lanterns and candles at night.) Almost everyone else in the village lives in mud-brick houses with no electricity. We cook on a charcoal stove (called a "jiko"--like a grill, but it sits on the ground), and we collect water in buckets from a pump and use it for drinking, cooking, cleaning and bathing. Tony even built a shower out of a bucket and some rope!! Here's our address if you feel inspired to write:

Carla Stanke or Tony Stonehouse
SLP 36
Kibakwe
Tanzania

We have some problems that we're dealing with, but nothing unusual for life in rural Tanzania: cockroaches, rats, questionable locks/doors. Every day we make some progress, but things work VERY slowly here; this is a huge challenge for a controlling person like me. The key to living successfully in such a different place is setting up structure and organizing your life effectively; just as important is meeting people and making friends, because the more people know me, the more they watch over me, which is critical for my safety here. This is NOT an unsafe place, to be sure, but because I am the only American woman in Kibakwe, it definitely pays to have people looking out for me. There are also two Italian nuns who live in Kibakwe, and we met them last week; that means there are 4 wazungu ("foreigners") total in our town. Our Kiswahili is improving every day, but now we also need to learn to speak some Kigogo, too, because the tribe of people who live in Kibakwe are called the Wagogo people. Right now I am writing this from the computer lab in the safi ("cool") town of Mpwapwa, and the president of Tanzania, President Kikwete, will be here tomorrow, so there's excitement in the air. It's a two-hour bus ride here from Kibakwe, and this is our closest town for major shopping and computer use; I'm thinking that we'll come here two times per month to check email, so don't despair if I'm slow to respond to your messages. That's all for now--I'll try to post photos within the next few weeks so you can see my new life!!