we're home!

Yep, it's true--we finished two years of service with Peace Corps Tanzania and we got back to America on June 8th. There were many, many tearful goodbyes, and endless hours spent packing, purging and preparing to move from one continent to another. 7 checked oversize bags, 4 carry-on bags and a crate full of cats--we did not travel light. Everyone is happy and healthy and Tony and I are trying to readjust to life in America, which is not as easy as it sounds. Living in Tanzania was the experience of my lifetime, and I am grateful for every moment I had there--I wouldn't change a thing. Thanks for reading my blog.

gathering up the loose ends

Wow, so much to say! First of all, Pipi had two kittens on April 4: the first kitten is named Bonge, which means chubby or chunky, and the second kitten is called Soksi, which means Socks. We are, obviously, madly in love with them, and are planning to bring them all home with us. Should be a very interesting plane ride.

Tony and I were approved to finish our Peace Corps service on 5 June!! We are in a mad rush to the finish line, packing and finishing final projects and saying our goodbyes. Living in Tanzania has been the most enriching experience of my life so far, and despite the hard times, I am grateful for every minute I've spent here. We will bore you to tears with photos and stories. Our village is planning a goodbye party for us next weekend, and I think it will be very sad and emotional. Tanzanians don't like to see people cry, and I'm worried that I will give a lot of them anxiety with my inevitable tears.

We just finished our final Peace Corps conference; actually, it was more of a retreat, as we spent it at a lodge inside of Arusha National Park. All the people from our group--the people that we came to Tanzania with--were together for the last time to reflect upon the last two years of our lives and say goodbye. It was a really nice way to end, and this morning, on our way out of the park, we saw over 30 giraffes together, along with warthogs, zebras, buffalo and baboons. On the morning of my birthday, around 10 giraffes wandered up the driveway to the lodge, and I could see Mt. Kilimanjaro behind them. Unbelievable and unforgettable.

See you all very, very, very soon!!

random tidbits

1. The thing I am most looking forward to upon my return to the US is getting my hair cut. More than anything else: more than getting a massage, more than sitting down to poo, more than drinking tap water, more than drinking a soy chai latte--a haircut.

2. My sweet cat is about to have kittens. I have never seen kittens being born before. When we bring her home with us, I want to have her in the cabin of the plane with us but Tony thinks she will meow the entire 20 hour trip home; I think that would be really funny.

3. It is going to be very, very hard for me to say goodbye to my closest Tanzanian friends when we're finished with our service. There are no words to describe how their kindness has made me feel welcome and safe. Many of these friends have AIDS, which makes saying goodbye even more difficult.

4. I don't think I can happily live my life without all the tropical fruit I've been eating for the last 21 months (plus two extra months in Asia before we came to Tanzania).

5. I had no idea how hard this would be, for all sorts of reasons I never anticipated.

6. Traveling in Tanzania on public transportation (our only kind) sucks. There is no other way to say it. It is the worst part of living here.

7. Every single day, everywhere I go, everything I do: I am watched. When I walk down the road people stop and stare at me. When I hang clothes on the line to dry, people stop and stare at me. When I speak to someone at the market, other people stop to listen to me. When I sit in my courtyard, people try to see me through my fence. People yell at me to get my attention. I crave anonymity and I can't wait to be ignored again.

8. I worry that Tony and I will be really annoying when we come home: "When we lived in Tanzania, we..." Be patient with us as we work it all out. We will be different people when we come home than we were before we left.

9. I am really happy to be here.

10. Some of the things we've seen we will not be able to talk about; we have witnessed some awful things that would be extremely upsetting to talk about and hear about. So we won't tell you the whole story.

11. I wish everyone could live in a developing country for a while. It brings amazing perspective.

12. My favorite Swahili sentence: Karibu tule. It means "Welcome, let's eat." If a Tanzanian is eating something and you walk past, you will be invited to share. No matter how poor the person is, you will always be asked to join in. This is not special treatment because I'm a foreigner--everyone is always invited to join in. I love this about Tanzania.

13. Have I mentioned the fruit??

bananas and coconuts and mangoes, oh my!

As usual, it’s been a long time since my last update. Quite honestly, I have lost interest (a little) in updating my blog; I feel like most of the things I have to say might be boring to read or difficult to understand. For example, I can write every single time about how important rain is to the people in our village, but until you actually set foot in Kibakwe, you cannot possibly understand what I mean. Life is so totally, completely different in rural Tanzania than anything you can imagine, despite how many movies you’ve seen or books you’ve read about Africa. So, having said that, I’ll do my best to paint a little picture of what’s been going on.

Speaking of rain—we just got the heaviest rain of the year so far. It rained a little yesterday—enough to put some buckets outside to collect it—but then it started pouring at midnight and continued for about 10 hours. Everyone went to their farms today to check things out; we stayed warm and dry inside, reading and cooking. These rains are desperately needed; crops have started dying. Dead crops mean potential starvation. Thank goodness for rain!!

Another thing to be thankful for: zambarau (plum) season is over. Approximately 4 million children came to our house to ask to collect plums—only a slight exaggeration—and trampled our garden beds and broke through our fence to sneak in when we weren’t looking. Grrrr. Tony has massive work ahead of him, re-building the beds and re-planting.

Here’s a random tidbit, to help put the Tanzanian travel situation in perspective: we live approximately 25 miles away from Mpwapwa, our banking and shopping town. It takes 2-2 ½ hours to get there by bus. It is faster to go from Milwaukee to Chicago than for us to ride into town to buy toilet paper. I’m not sure I will ever allow myself to complain again about traveling in the United States.

We are winding down our time in Tanzania, as our Peace Corps service is coming to an end in the next handful of months. We are focusing our sights on more hiv-related projects: vegetable gardens with our Persons Living with HIV/AIDS group; small hiv resource libraries at the hospital, women’s clinic and secondary school; creating Memory Books with our Persons Living with HIV/AIDS group; condom demonstrations at the secondary school. I’m sure we’ll come up with other things, but this is what we’re thinking of right now.

We took a little vacation when our wonderful friends, Brooke and Mike, came to visit us in late December. We did the triple threat: time in our village, safari at Mikumi National Park (we saw male lions!) and Zanzibar. We had an amazing time together; Brooke baked a chocolate cake over our charcoal stove, and Mike helped fill buckets with water when our faucet came on—quintessential Peace Corps Tanzania experiences. They met our friends, saw our village, said hi to some wild animals, swam in the Indian Ocean and shopped for treasures in Stone Town (Zanzibar). It was a perfect vacation, and they were troopers (sorry again about the cockroaches, Brooke).

What else? It’s fruit season in Tanzania, and the eating is GOOD. The freshest, juiciest, most delicious pineapples you can dream of; papayas that will convince you that you love papayas; mangoes that drip down your chin and make you say “am I really eating something that tastes this good?”; bananas that taste more banana-y than you ever thought possible. One of my favorite ways to enjoy the fruits of the season: make coconut rice (with fresh coconut milk made from grated fresh coconut), sprinkle on some raw sugar (the only kind we can get), top with chopped tropical fruit. Close your eyes and marvel that you were born in a human body that can enjoy such wonders. Truly one of my favorite parts of living in Tanzania.

Pipi hajambo. Anawasalimia sana. (“Pipi’s fine. She greets you all a lot.”)