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.