it's raining mangoes

Right this second, I am looking at the biggest mango tree I have ever seen. There are hundreds of mangoes hanging from the branches; it's hard to walk in certain areas without stepping on the little underripe babies that fall too early. Kids throw rocks to get them to fall when they want a little snack.

We had Thanksgiving/Tony's birthday dinner last night at the Acropol Hotel here in Morogoro. It's owned by a Canadian woman who is really kind to the Peace Corps Volunteers here in Moro, and she cooked sweet potatoes, three bean salad and pumpkin cake for us, among other goodies. She also has a bunch of dogs, so we got a little dog-love, too.

Back to reality tomorrow, when we head home to Kibakwe. It's hard not to feel a little bummed out--Morogoro has tons of water and endless fruit & veggies, not to mention yogurt and other delicacies that we cannot get in Mpwapwa. I'm trying not to feel jealous of people who live here--I really like it here. The grass is always greener, isn't it?

greetings from morogoro

We arrived in Morogoro early this afternoon, to celebrate Tony's 37th birthday and Thanksgiving, which both happen to be tomorrow! It's about a 4 hour bus ride from Mpwapwa, but today it took us 5 1/2--as usual, bus broke down. No problem--we're here now. We visited Morogoro one other time and really loved it, so we decided to take a few days off from our lives in Kibakwe and come to the big city. One of our Peace Corps trainers describes Morogoro as the bread basket of Tanzania: green, lush, water year-round, with the potential to grow enough food to feed everyone in Tanzania. As we traveled here today, the landscape slowly became greener and greener; when we got off the bus, one of the first things I spotted for sale (EVERYTHING is for sale in the chaotic bus stands of Tanzania!) were big, fat bunches of carrots. Nope, not in Kibakwe any more. We immediately took a daladala (minibus-like public transport) to the center of town and started eating, because Morogoro is an awesome place to eat; within half an hour, I ate 2 kinds of bagia (deep-fried, savory little puffs--like hush puppies), caramel ice cream, vanilla yogurt and fresh passionfruit juice. Good start. Next stop: public market. Giant piles of pineapple, bananas, mangoes, avocados, passion fruit, fresh peas, papaya, coconuts, oranges, limes and carrots--and all the other usual goodies that we can get in Mpwapwa, like cabbages, tomatoes, onions, greens, and potatoes. DEFINITELY not in Kibakwe any more. We're here with our friend, James, a Peace Corps Volunteer who lives in a village near Mpwapwa (he's one of our Mpwapwa peeps), and are staying with our friend, Albert, another Peace Corps Volunteer who is a teacher right in Morogoro. After internet: Indian food. Then maybe brownies. Mmmmm. Plan for tomorrow is nothing more than to eat all day long. I love vacation. But strangely enough, I find myself thinking about our little house, wondering what our houseboys, who have become our trusted friends, are doing without us. This year in particular, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I feel especially thankful for so many, many things.

maybe this will entice you

It's official: we are living in the middle of a National Geographic photo spread. Last week we had four consecutive days of rain, and it's amazing how the landscape is changing in front of our very eyes. We took a short walk to visit the sweet old carpenter who built our water tank for us (it's finished! It holds water!), and we stopped dead in our tracks: all around us, in every single direction, are mountains, their trees coming to life with the first drinks of water of the season. The giant, lonely baobab trees have buds on their tips. At night in our town, because only a few of us have electricity and it's very dark, the sky becomes a blanket of stars. We were awake today at 4:30am (not fun, but necessary to catch our bus) and watched the sun come up as we traveled to Mpwapwa: pink and orange sky, sun emerging from behind mountains. Lovely. Right now, at the Mpwapwa market, are huge piles of mangoes, bananas, coconuts and oranges: summer is coming. Rain is life.

rather boring, sorry

We've gathered in Mpwapwa for a good-bye party for our friends, Lisa and Russ, who are finishing their two years of Peace Corps service. We making pizza tonight, and we even have cheese--a cheese run to Dodoma was made last week. It's hard to say goodbye--seems like that's all we've been doing. Other friends, Becky and Jason, left our Mpwapwa family after an unfortunate incident of violence in their village--a crazy guy attacked Becky, and luckily she's fine, but they moved to a different village far, far away. So tonight we say goodbye again.

Our water catchment tank is almost finished at our house, and we're really happy. The heavy rains haven't started yet, so we're on time. Next week: work continues on our fence, and we might start digging our garden. Tiny, sour mangoes appeared in our market!

Some info I learned yesterday from the big post office in Mpwapwa, where we had to go to collect some care packages from home: best to send things to us as a "packet," not a "parcel," in a padded envelope weighing under four pounds. If not, we pay big-time customs fees on our end. After a lengthy conversation, both in Kiswahili and English, it was concluded that you do not get that option when sending things from the US. Our postal woman didn't seem to want to understand. Bottom line: "packets" arrive with a small, green customs card from the US on the outside, and "parcels" arrive with a large, white piece of paper from US customs on the outside. Parcels are inspected and we pay to receive them; packets are not inspected and we get them for free. This is the best way I can explain it.

Our moods are pretty good and our health is fine. Nothing out of the ordinary--just the usual problems with our bowels. We're cooking and baking, working on ideas for projects. Best idea for our first project: writing a grant to try to get out town's huge, water catchment tank fixed. It's made of cement and has been cracked for over 15 years. If the tank could hold water, many, many people could use the water for growing vegetables, thus improving health through nutrition. We think it would only cost about $1000 US, which is a fortune here. We'll see what we can do.

Favorite recent conversation exchanges, in Kiswahili:
"Nyemo, you're riding a bicycle." "Yes, I am."
"Nyemo, you bought spinach." "Yes, I did."
Upon getting off the bus, carrying two eggs: "How were your travels? How much did you pay for those eggs?"
Upon giving our houseboys a jar of peanut butter: "Thank you very much! How much did you pay?"

Food items most fantasized about currently: spicey pad thai with tofu, with green papaya salad and a thai iced tea.

our short news

Ok, limited time today. Here's the Kibakwe scoop: bedroom is painted (three paint choices: white, cream, light blue. We chose light blue. Our ceiling is white. We like to think of our bedroom as a big blue box from Tiffany with a white bow on top.Ha ha.) Got our cabinets-- our clothes and dishes now have a proper home. Fence continues for our garden--garden will be big and hopefully awesome. WE'VE HAD RAIN! Light rain, but enough to soak our towels that were drying on the clothesline in our courtyard. Our roof doesn't leak. Our water storage tank will be started on Friday--we found an excellent fundi ("carpenter"), a gentle,wise old man who has an excellent reputation in our community. We have some ideas for projects. Baked a cake for a well-respected mama in the community; got big points for that one. More requests for cake-baking lessons from lots of other women; thinking about holding cake-baking seminars where we talk about health and "women's issues" (there are lots!) while the cake bakes. Our houseboys are doing a great job; we invited them to come with us to our first Peace Corps conference in Dodoma in December. We are each supposed to bring a "counterpart," someone that we plan to work on projects with, to this conference, and Tony and I both would like to work with the at-risk youth demographic that is HUGE in Kibakwe--these guys are part of that demographic, and are really interested in learning how to be peer educators. Good match. Tony and I still fight, but we laugh more. We have a lot to look forward to for the remainder of this year--feels good.

American food items most thought about today: veggie burger with cheese, soft bun, lettuce, tomato, fried onions, pickles, mayo, ketchup. Crispy french fries. Spicy bloody mary. Warm fudgy brownie (no nuts, please) with vanilla ice cream and caramel sauce. This menu will remain a fantasy.

so what exactly do we do all day?

It's hard to believe that we've been living independently in Kibakwe for two months now. We have worked really, really hard to make our house as comfortable and inviting and lovely as possible, and this is primarily what we've been doing for the last two months. And we're not done yet. I think that I am much more productive when my living situation is calm and pleasing; this is why we're spending so much time on our house. The bathroom is almost completely tiled; many are broken, unfortunately, but the hardware store ran out of tile, so we had to use the broken ones anyway. We're considering it a mosaic design. Tony and our houseboys dug out the perimeter of our garden, and our boys have started gathering wood to use for our fence. Last week I taught 7 neighbor kids how to bake banana bread; this was a huge hit. Some of them knocked on our door two days ago and asked to be taught how to make chocolate cake--we're doing that next week. When I walked into town a few days ago to buy tomatoes and onions, my favorite veggie vendor said she heard that I bake cakes and that she would like to learn, too. Word is traveling fast. Whoever would have thought that my cake-baking obsession would link me with my new Tanzanian friends? So that's the scoop--we're setting up our house, hanging out with good kids, cooking and baking. Next week we're painting our bedroom, and hopefully our water storage tank (for collecting rain water off our roof--the rains will start next month, and we want to collect them for our garden) will be started. Still no place for our clothes--we continue to wait for the carpenter to finish our kabati ("cabinet for clothes.") We won't actually plant our garden until the rains start--there's just not enough water right now to get it started. In case I haven't mentioned it, scarcity of water is one of the biggest problems in the region where we live. Sometimes our water pump shoots water out (maji mengi="much water"), sometimes it trickles water (maji machache="few water"), and sometimes no water at all (hamna="none.") Last month our entire town of Kibakwe didn't get a drop of water in ANY of the pumps for 4 entire days. Major problem. Tony and I have several large plastic buckets that we try to keep completely full of water; this is what we used for cooking, drinking, bathing and cleaning for those 4 scary days. By the time the water returned, we were down to our last bucket. We can't figure out where exactly the water starts or who is in charge of it or why its dispersion is such a problem. No one seems to understand, actually.

One tidbit we learned this morning from our Peace Corps friends who are just finishing their two years of service here: packages are more likely to arrive here (without thievery or us paying customs fees) if they are sent in padded, bubble envelopes and weigh under 4 pounds. Obviously, this isn't always possible, but it's worth mentioning, just in case you're thinking of sending any treasures to us...

So how are we REALLY doing? It's hard to say. Without question, this has been the most challenging and frustrating experience of my life. Our lives here are still taking shape, and we still haven't figured out our place in Kibakwe or how we can help. We are still learning our way around our town, trying to remember people's names, trying to observe the rhythms of life here, trying to master this language. Some days we can't bear to leave our house; sometimes it just feels overwhelming to walk into town and have stunted conversations with people when all we really want to do is buy our eggs and rush back home. Some days we have a bunch of kids in our courtyard, looking at our maps and reading our English/Kiswahili dictionary, and everything feels good. Some days we get under each other's skin and fight; other days we just laugh and laugh and laugh at ourselves. We're here for a reason, and we remind ourselves of that every day. One thing is certain: we are more committed to each other than ever, and we daydream about the day we'll settle down (where? Excellent question!) and have a big old house filled with dogs and maybe kids and a big garden and a kitchen full of friends & family and warm chocolate chip cookies and vases of flowers and soft cotton sheets on our big bed and maybe, just maybe, a fire crackling in the fireplace. Indoor plumbing would be nice, too.

my name is...nyemo

I have a new name, simply because the name Carla is almost impossible for Tanzanians to pronounce. They say 'r' and 'l' almost the same way, and cannot pronounce the two letters side by side, so if they try to say my name, it sounds like "Cala." Our houseboys, Zawadi and Gilbert, chose a new name for me: Nyemo. Nyemo means "happiness" in Kigogo--it's not a Kiswahili word. I simply introduce myself as Nyemo to new people, and they find it very funny that the mzungu ("white person") has a name like Nyemo.

So I'm going to show off a little and write a paragraph in Kiswahili so you have proof that I can almost speak this language. Don't worry--I'll translate. Remember--I'm not using a dictionary or a textbook. Prepare to be impressed.

Jina langu ni Carla au Nyemo. Nyemo ni rahisi kusema; Carla ni ngumu kusema. Mume wangu anaitwa Tony. Mimi ni mwalimu wa afya, na mume wangu ni mwalimu wa mazingira. Tulifika Tanzania tarehe kumi na mbili, mwezi wa sita, mwaka elfu mbili na saba. Sasa tunaishi Kibakwe, karibu na hospitali. Tutakaa Kibakwe kwa miaka miwili. Tunaweza kusema na kuelewa Kiswahili kidogo, lakini tunajaribu kila siku. Tafadhali, sema pole pole. Asante sana.

Now, the translation:
My name is Carla or Nyemo. Nyemo is easy to say; Carla is difficult to say. My husband is called Tony. I am a health teacher, and my husband is an environment teacher. We arrived in Tanzania June 12, 2007. Now we live in Kibakwe, near the hospital. We will stay in Kibakwe for two years. We are able to speak and understand Kiswahili a little, but we try every day. Please, speak slowly. Thank you very much.

Are you impressed??
More juicy details about our lives later--it's lunchtime.