I'm still here!

So it’s been quite a long past few months. I think it best to just pick up here, halfway through month 19 (seven more to go).

Things at school are absolutely different from last year. Teaching English has been much more fun than I ever imagined. I think part of my problem last year was teaching something that I wasn’t so sure about – study skills is not a class really taught in the States. English is different – for one, I love love love grammar already, and two, I have some really great books to reference, (as well as the occasional google search), and a syllabus that takes me along an organized schedule. The other English teachers have been fun to work with too; to share ideas, resources. My teaching style is much different from theirs which has provided me more time for creating supplementary exercises and to move faster than the rest of them. I don’t know if this is a good or bad thing yet, but it has made it nice to share some of my ideas with the other teachers. They seem grateful for the extra help.

I teach two classrooms of Form I students (freshmen) English, and one classroom Religion/Ethics. I don’t know if these kids are just sweeter than our Form IIs that I taught last year, or maybe I am a little better at the whole classroom management thing, but I’m in love with them all. I’m really trying to push them into wanting to beat their own scores rather than beating each other. It is typical for schools in Tanzania to post the results of each student for every exam in a public place, complete with ranking them first to last. I know when I was in high school, that would have horrified me, so I’m doing things to avoid it. I don’t know if it’s working or not, but they seem to appreciate how silly and secretive I am about their grades.

As far as my teaching colleagues, I feel much more part of the team nowadays. I really enjoy sharing ideas with the other teachers. Though we’re still all getting used to each other, and we’re still figuring out how to work in a school in which we have to start everything from scratch, I feel a definite “team” mentality forming, which is wonderful.

Hmm.. we’re eating a lot of mamung’unya (a type of squash), karanga (fresh peanuts and similar nuts of a different variety), and different kind of maharagwe(beans). Also in season are lots of different kinds of green leafy vegetables, which are spinach like, but really not at all. One that’s really in season now is pumpkin leaves, which are delicious if prepared properly! (I say that because sometimes we try things out without really knowing how to properly cook them.) We just finished pear season, and I’m really missing them already! There aren’t many crunchy fruits like apples or pears here. Apples are actually quite expensive in Dodoma too because they are grown pretty far.

The cold season has also begun. Rains are now sporadic 5 minute sprinkles, and the mornings and evenings feel so cold! The cold season lasts until August. I’m going to have to pull out my “winter” clothes again! The very early mornings are especially freezing, which makes it really hard to get out of bed for a run.

Oh yeah, did I ever mention that Hannah and I run before school? Never in my life did I think I’d wake up at 5am in the dark to run before work, but we do it! Mon, Weds, and Fridays are usually our days for running a little less than 3 miles. We have to go at 5:15am, because we catch the bus now at around 6:50am. That means a half hour for running, 15 minutes for a luke warm bucket shower, and then the rest of the time for a cup of instant coffee, oatmeal with peanut butter (if I’m lucky), and a few minutes to properly wake myself up. If we have the time or aren’t feeling lazy on the weekends (that’s usually me, not Hannah), we’ll take a longer run around the big rock “mountain” that is a short walk from our house. There’s a beautiful trail around it that is just through trees and bush. We pass a few others who are also exercising, but a lot of the time we’re alone. It’s really beautiful, especially now while it’s still a green Dodoma.

Msiba

This year I've decided to recommit myself to choir – as in an absolute way. I think most of the reason choir was a little tough and kind of stressful for me was because I was going to about half of the practices, including the actual Mass, and therefore I was never catching up to everyone else. It's just a little exhausting going to practice almost every day! (We have practices Tues, Thurs, Fri, Saturday is usually wedding singing, and Sunday is the earliest Mass on earth.) But since I've been back this year, probably with a better attitude and definitely with more Kiswahili, things have been different. It's very intimidating to show up to a group of professionals singing in a different language and hope to just “fit in.” But even since my hiatus of last year, the people welcomed me back with “poles” for the work that kept me away, and smiling faces when I tried to communicate where I had been in broken Kiswahili. (Side note about my language: I'm actually very thankful for how much I can understand and communicate at this time. My vocabulary is still very limited, but it's amazing how much you can say using the same 20 verbs. Thank God for my patient friends who help me through it! I think my comprehension was a product of not having second years before me, because in the past language really never was my thing.)

After a night of convincing myself that I will never be good at choir unless I go to every single thing they all go to, I went to sing at my first Mass in months. I knew I wasn't going to know many of the songs, or many of the dance-moves (sometimes they have choreographed hand waves or clapping that I miss out on when I miss Saturday practice). I used to feel so so silly for not knowing everything. There's a new girl working at our school named Jacky (she'll be Rose's replacement when Rose gets her holiday), and she has been coming to choir too. So now it's nice to not be the only new one and the only one who is trying to figure out what is going on. I just stood next to her and my friend Mama Shayo so we could at least laugh when we weren't sure what was going on. And the Mass went fine. I always get compliments throughout the entire next week for singing in the choir and “knowing everything” even though clearly I'm a little lost at times. But I'll take the compliments – it reminds me that people only see that I'm up there and I'm trying.

After Mass Mama Shayo invited me to her house. It might seem funny, but even after living here a year I still need to mentally prepare myself to be gentle and patient with myself during visits to my friends. In the States, you could come and go as you please when visiting a friend, but here it is almost insulting to rush off after four or five hours. I knew I'd be there all day, but I was excited about it. Mama Shayo and her husband both sing in my choir. I've visited her home before, and it was great to go back. She has two wonderful boys in Class Three and Form I (high school).

Almost as soon as we arrived, Mama Shayo served chai. She made a delicious homemade bread that we drank with some special tea she made from a plant outside her house. I promised to teach her how to bake a cake if she would teach me how to make that bread! She cooks it on her charcoal stove, too, which I think is just incredible. How do you even do that!

Most of the day usually revolves around eating. So after chai we went to the market to pick up the supplies for pilau (spiced rice). We stopped at her shop where she sews and embroiders pillow and blankets. And this was the second time I've gone to this market with her. This market is one in the middle of her neighborhood, so it's off the path from where any other white people would ever frequent. It's funny to still get stares and surprised looks after a year of living here, but many of these people spend their entire lives in that one spot in the market. It feels great to be able to greet them all and communicate, and get their jokes and “white-people” jabs and respond in ways that can bridge a gap that may take years to close. Mama Shayo introduces me as her younger sister, or sometimes her daughter. It's silly, but it felt special when a few people said we looked alike.

I really like Mama Shayo, and her husband. They don't make a fuss about me being different, unless it's to say something about how much I've become “mtanzania” (a Tanzanian). Their sons call me “Mama mdogo” which literally translates as “little mama” but means that I'm the young sister of their mother. Instead of aunt or uncle, Tanzanians call the older siblings of their parents mama/baba mkubwa (big or older mom/dad) and their parents' younger siblings are called mama/baba mdogo (little or young mom/dad). That really transforms how you think of your aunts and uncles when you consider them another mother or father. I wonder if my aunts and uncles would be okay with me calling them “big mama” or “little dad” when I get home? (Haha sounds a little funny translated to English!).

We started the cooking when we got home, but soon Mama Shayo's friend came over to tell her that there was an “msiba” happening at their neighbor's home. “Msiba” is literally (and appropriately) translated to “mourning.” This is a funeral of sorts where women gather in the home of a woman who has had someone pass away, and sit with her as she and others cry. There is usually much singing and praying. Mama Shayo's neighbor just had a grandchild pass away, and so we went to visit her. Traditionally women wrap themselves in khangas when going to a msiba. You can spot a msiba when you see groups of women all wrapped up walking in the same direction.

This was the first msiba I've ever experienced. We walked into the home and the grandmother was sitting on the floor on a mat surrounded by other women. We knelt in front of her, held her hand, and told her we were sorry. For a while, I just sat as the women talked about what happened, and shared stories of other children who have passed. This woman's grandson was hit by a lorry – unfortunately a very common way to pass in Tanzania. The family and grandson live up north in Arusha, so the grandmother would be traveling there the next day. It's moments like this when I try to be as invisible as possible because I know my being a white person draws attention. Mama Shayo eventually introduced me and told a little of my story (what I am doing in Tanzania) and the usual conversations followed.

Being an outsider is still an interesting experience, especially when in my heart I have to navigate between feeling like an outsider and feeling very much a part of the community around me. There's always a different role expected of you, in each room you walk into and with each interaction. And it's almost always a guessing game of filling the role expected or needed of you. This funeral was one of those moments when I was allowing myself to be one of the others, blend in to all the women around me and not stick out, partially because that made me comfortable but also to keep attention on the woman in mourning, but later I realized that my presence as a guest was a wanted distraction.

Sometimes moments like that make me sad that I will never truly be able to experience life in Tanzania as a Tanzanian, but it's a blessing in many ways, too. First, I'm completely humbled to realize, even after an entire year (which really isn't that long), that it is impossible to ever truly experience the life of another person. Could I really be so naïve and insensitive to think that magically in one year I could figure out the culture and life of an entire population of people? As deeply as I wish to feel Tanzania as authentically as possible, it is a good realization to recognize the complexity of culture, and to see that it is more than simply a puzzle to sort out. The shoes of my friends here aren't easy to slip into. There are times that they might let me borrow their sandals for an hour or two, but to truly wear this life won't happen. It takes a great deal of humble respect to maintain this perspective, when my heart wants to put on the shoes, dresses, and weave my hair of this life.

But at the same time, my foreignness here is also a unique gift. Sometimes I get to be the distraction when people are mourning the loss of a child. Simply my presence, nothing that I say or do, but my being in the same room ignites smiles, curiosity, and laughter – it really has nothing to do with 'Laura', but with the existence of an open-hearted foreigner. That grandmother won't remember my name, or even my face, but there's a chance she might remember the white woman who once shared in her mourning and offered her “sorry.”

I wish I could write more about this, but my thoughts aren't all sorted out. It's funny how you tend to learn in retrospect. I wonder if my real learning and changing will actually happen after I return home in a few years (hehe – just kidding Mom, Aunt Jean, Aunt Jan, and Aunt Helen! I heard about your text messages!).

We eventually left the msiba, went back to finish and eat a delicious lunch of pilau and katumbali, and Mama Shayo and I took a little rest in the only finished room in her house – a room actually separate from her home, but has a tiled floor and a tv, but no furniture. She shared a bottle of wine with me that she got from the local vineyard in Dodoma and promised to take me there someday when her friend is working. I told her about my family that was coming to visit and she got so excited. She asked if I would bring them to her home, which secretly I had been hoping to do, and told her I'd love to. We both rejoiced in the excitement of that interaction, her because she loves hosting people, and me because I can't wait to share her and her life with my family.

Before leaving her home, we stopped back at the grandmother's home one last time. This time, there were a few men there praying and reading from the Bible, and everyone was singing beautiful and touching songs about Jesus and his love for us. The whole thing was incredible to witness, to feel the simultaneous pain and hope of the room.

Form I

Our week back in Dodoma after New Years was a little bit of running around doing errands like buying things we still needed, a few trips to town to buy fabric and go to the tailor with Cristina and Hannah to get some clothes made (so they could look “smart” for their first day of work!) and finally nesting into our rooms. Thankfully my room was pretty clean before I left (number one rule of travel – never leave your bedroom messy!) but I decided to put away a lot of things I wasn't really using, like clothes and other things that, well, I didn't want to have out and around every day. Pictures and other things finally are up on my walls and my floor is no longer messy with things that had no place. The only furniture in my bedroom is my bed, which is actually quite refreshing. It is forcing me to keep things clean and simple – a desk is really just a place to keep crap. But the window in my room is actually the perfect place for keeping jewelry. Hopefully pictures will follow soon (though I am on a pause on picture taking because unfortunately my camera was fallen on in the Tanga caves by a friend who was borrowing it. I'm going to try to find someone to fix it so we'll see).

Our first day back to school was a faculty meeting on Friday with all new and old teachers. It was so exciting to see a room full of teachers, instead of the small staff we had last year. The meeting was to last all day, but unfortunately our new house has been posing lots of problems for us, so I ended up going home early. (On Thursday, a faucet in our bathroom burst somehow and flooded half of our house. We tied it up and thought it was okay, but Friday morning it burst again. Thankfully Hannah was around, but I headed home to help call a fundi – a repairman for plumbing – and to clean up all the water). You know, the flooding was quite surprising and disappointing, but at the end of the day we are very lucky. The mess was manageable. Plus, we have running water – that in itself is a blessing.

Anyways, Saturday was move-in day for our new Form I students, so the four of us boarded the bus around 9:30am, after a 15 minutes walk through the rain. The whole day it rained and was really, really cold, but things went smoothly. Last year we had the parents and students come through the classroom block, but this year everything happened in our multi-purpose hall. I was on duka duty – Hannah and I helped Happy, the girl in charge of the school shop, with the buckets, sheets, and other things the students needed to buy for the year. Sean and Cristina were on uniform duty. It was a long day; we left around 7:30pm, but Hannah and Sean picked up chips mayai (french fry omelets) for dinner and we ate them, all sitting on my bed (still haven't obtained couches), and watched True Blood Season 2 (we found seasons 2 and 3 in town!). Thankfully Sunday we were off, so we went to the second Mass, bought some veggies and things from the market, picked up some packages from the Jesuit Residence and did other things at home.

Monday was Day 1 of orientation. Marty asked Sean, Cristina, Roland and I to run the thing, so we had a little bit of planning to do – mostly icebreakers. The week went significantly better than last year – we were more organized, had a better plan, and didn't have as much construction difficulties, and so far, I'm pretty impressed with our Form I students. They seem excited, engaged, and respectful, for now. We had a few Form II students come and help out with the week and it was really neat to see them take on that leadership position.

The week was a little long, each day was 7-5pm, but it went pretty well. Thursday was our last official day of only Form Is, and we planted trees almost all afternoon. The whole ordeal, trying to get around 200 students organized to plant a couple hundred trees, took much longer and was a little more difficult than I think anticipated, but at the end of the day, we planted new trees almost entirely across the campus, which was quite impressive! I just hope they make it, because they were neglected to be watered. But it's rainy season now, so maybe they will revive! I'm excited to see more life on our campus. When it gets dry the place really gets brown!

Friday morning we took the students through a mock-school-day in the morning and in the afternoon the Form IIs arrived. It was fun seeing everyone come back, watching them greet each other and help each other get settled. I'm excited for a fuller school this year!

Classes commenced on Monday the 16^th of January. This year will be a lot different from my last year at SPCHS. Marty and I decided that the ethics class that I created last year is now going to be used as the Form I's year-long religion class. Our Form Is are six streams this year (six classrooms) and it wasn't really possible for me to teach the whole grade, so Roland, Sean, and Cristina and I will be teaching separate classes, but using the same outline. I'm actually really excited about it, because teaching that class was a real challenge for me last year, in terms of my own personal reflection and growth, so now I'm excited to share it with them and try to dig even deeper. I think at the end working together will ultimately help our students so much more, too. I'm also teaching two classes of Form I English, which I am ecstatic about! I really like English, and grammar, and writing, and I'm looking forward to having a little more structure to a class. English has a syllabus and books to follow – that ethics class was basically created from one resource: desperate searching on Google.

I was hoping to structure the class to go back to the basics of grammar to really reinforce the rules to help the students, but after one week of classes, I'm realizing how much more advanced this grade is compared to the students of last year. Their speaking English is incredible and I really think they comprehend much more than I expected. So now I'm scrapping all my lesson plans and I'm starting over. It's overwhelming to do so, but in the end, I think this will be even better – hopefully because they already know so much, we can really do a lot more in terms of better writing and more critical thinking. Who knows, we'll see! Back to google, though! I need lots of ideas of digging deeper with topics like “giving directions” and “talking about occupations.”

So, at the end of week one, I'm excited for the next. I'm feeling much more confident and comfortable in front of the classroom and already have better interactions with my students – thank God, because I really had a hard time with that last year.   

A week in Dodoma

We had a week off to stay in Dodoma before we traveled to retreat. We took the girls to their first Mass which I think they really enjoyed – my favorite liturgical dancers were there – and Monday night they went to their first community night at the Ihumwa residence. Monday night community nights are absolutely one of my favorite times of the week. Around 6:30pm on a Monday, we gather with the Jesuits and sometimes the Sisters and have Mass, dinner, and play games like Uno or Scrabble. The Jesuits have recently incorporated a rotating schedule of 'homilists' which includes us volunteers. I like it a lot, because it gives all of us a chance to share our faith and reflections. Sossy loves Scrabble (and is incredibly good at it) and so I'm excited to introduce him to “Banana Grams” which is essentially a fast paced version of Scrabble.

The rest of the week was more house cleaning and obtaining necessities, but also a lot of exploring town and visiting friends. One day we took the girls to visit our friends in Ihumwa, the village just beyond our school. We traveled there in the afternoon and as soon as we arrived, our friends Charley and his wife Mama Tula treated us to a delicious lunch of beans, fish from Hombolo (a lake about 100 km away from Dodoma – Charley rode his bike there to buy the fish for us), and ugali. The meal was absolutely delicious, and the memory of sitting under their mango tree on a mat surrounded by children also eating, and joking with our friends makes me smile. It was so great sharing that with Cristina and Hannah, too. Mama Tula was complaining that she didn't want to eat, and I joke that she had worms (though I knew from Sean that she was pregnant) and she replied, yes one very big worm! I forget when exactly she's due, but it will be exciting to be around with another new born! People are always having babies around here, it seems. Tanzanians consider children such a blessing. Sometimes I get a little jealous that I myself don't have a beautiful little dark-skinned child to tie around my back. Maybe Mama Tula will let me borrow hers ;) !!

After lunch, and after playing with the mob of children that gathered to see us, we all walked to the market that opens every Friday evening in their village. There are tons of people there, many who are completely not used to seeing white faces, especially not in their market. I love being there and surprising the people with the very little Kigogo I know (the tribal language of Ihumwa). Though, I tried to smile and greet a very small boy who was being held by his mother and he was absolutely spooked and started crying. That was a total ego-crusher, but we all couldn't help but laugh, including the mother and her friends. I can't imagine what it would be like to see a person with different skin for the first time as a young child!

At the market we bought a little pork and went back to Charley's house. I tried to help Charley cook, but his little kitchen filled with smoke and I wasn't strong enough to stay there long. Charley set up a mat right outside and the four of us tried to sort rice as he prepared the pork. Cooking on a charcoal stove takes a really long time because you first have to wait for it to get hot enough, and then you cook every dish one by one. We had a great time sitting outside waiting for the meal, though. The stars are incredible in the village, with no electricity they absolutely shine. We played around with Tula a bit making shadow puppets on the wall of their house from the fire of their stove. There is great peace in being there, with their family, at that time of the day, waiting for a meal. It's quite indescribable really, but those are the moments I know for certain change me, and will stay with me.

When it was time to eat, they set up a mat on their living room floor where we sat and were served giant portions of rice, beans, and pork. Charley's food is always so delicious, but Tanzanians are friends to oil, so I eat quickly and get filled quickly as well. After dinner, Charley said a night prayer, thanking God for his guests and for our meal and for the blessings life gives us. Sitting in candlelight, listening to him pray in Kiswahili is another moment I'm finding the words hard to find to describe.

Hannah, Cristina, and I shared a room with Tula (she's about 10), and Sean had his own mattress in another room. Charley's house is quite nice – four rooms and a living room space – but he's only renting it until his new home is completed – a simple two-room mud house. Nights in the village are perfectly quiet, but people in the village wake very early, so it wasn't long before we started hearing the neighbor kids chatting with Sean outside our window. In the morning, Mama Tula insisted we all shower before we leave, so I took my second village shower, in a tiny brick structure, from a bucket of water that is neither hot nor cold, in the morning under the blue sky. I think all showering experiences should be like that – it's just you and the heavens looking down on you.

We watched Charley make us chipati and soon we were enjoying chai and chipati. They sent us off with a basket full of mchicha (a spinach like leafy green) and a few onions and walked us to our dala stop. Leaving there always makes me wonder how different my experience would be if we lived in the village. I can't say village life is better or worse that life in town – it would quite simply be absolutely different.

The weekend before retreat we had been planning on taking Cristina and Hannah to a wedding for our friend J4 (Jumanne, which translates the 4^th day, or Tuesday) in Morogoro, but unfortunately his father died and they postponed the wedding. The rest of Saturday was packing and getting ready for our trip the next day.   

New Community

Here is is – the official start of year two and all the wonderful changes that come with the second year of this experience. Our new JVs have finally arrived – Cristina and Hannah!! - and we're officially in our new home. Cristina arrived in Dar on Monday morning, Hannah on Tuesday morning, and the Dar folks put them on a bus to Dodoma on Wednesday – poor girls! But they arrived in good spirits! After school on Wednesday, Marty, Sean, and I drove into town to pick them up and make our final move to the new house. We packed up Marty's Pajero with our bedsheets and final things, drove to the new place to drop everything off, and got a call from the girls that they should be arriving within the hour. Maybe it was a little foolish to try to officially move into that house the day they arrived, considering nothing was set up, nothing was really cleaned, and we only had mattresses, but at the same time I think Sean and I wanted to get this new community started with Cristina and Hannah as soon as possible, and what a better way of doing that than a little bonding in an empty house that will eventually become our home!

But even though we were all entering this dirty, empty house together, I was channeling my inner “Nance” (it's a quality I'm glad I inherited, Mom!) and decided to stay home and at least give the living room a good sweeping and moping before we slept on our mattresses on that floor. I think it was a little therapeutic for me to be alone in that house and mentally prepare for what I could absolutely not mentally prepare for – a completely, radically different year than the one that came before.

Marty and Sean finally arrived with two smiling (and shiny) faces (those bus rides are rough!), and it was a little surreal to help them move their things into the house. We've had many white-faced visitors come through Dodoma, but none that stayed longer than two weeks. Marty treated us to a nice dinner at the Pizzeria that is conveniently now walking distance from our house, and we chatted and laughed about life in the States, preparations before coming, funny fears of our friends, Washington D.C. (Cristina lived there for a few months), and San Francisco (where Hannah is from). It was a really nice evening.

When we got back to the house Cristina, Hannah, and I set up our mattresses with a few sheets under the fan in our living room. I remembered how hard it was for me to sleep the first few weeks of living in this country because of all the foreign noises outside (roosters in the morning, dogs at night, cows mooing, people talking in an unknown language, loud Bongo music), that I figured a nice “impromptu” sleepover would be fun for the first few days. Unfortunately it was impossible to set up mosquito nets, which I hadn't even thought of – one year malaria free! - but fortunately the house has pretty good screens so we weren't really bothered. Cristina, however, is experiencing much of the biting that I had when I first arrived, but she came prepared with a mosquito-tent-thing (which we are still laughing about) but it really helped her.

We were all so tired that I think we slept through the whole night, besides the early morning when we heard this ridiculous bird chirping almost inside of our house. It wasn't until a few days later, and a few more times of hearing this bird that we realized the bird is actually our doorbell which is connected to the gate!

Thursday morning Sean and I had to go to school for the last day of exams in the morning, and the girls got a ride in the afternoon to the school to be around for our faculty meeting and end-of-year staff get-together. Now as I'm thinking back at that staff meeting, I'm incredibly surprised at how far we've come as a staff, and how differently our colleagueship looks and I'm very happy about that. I think a lot of my own actions, assumptions, and ego had a real affect on how others interacted with me, and even though I thought I was always being “culturally sensitive and aware,” it is quite impossible for that to be your entire reality. I often got tripped up in the justice of my own existence here, the respect I deserved, when the reality of living in someone else's culture means you give up that privilege in order to respect them first. I wonder how this translates to my future work-life back in the States.

After the meeting where we recapped the year, the goods and the bads, we headed to the Jesuit residence with the rest of the staff for “snacks,” which ended up being close to a full meal (pork, 'chips,' salad, ground nuts, fried sweet bananas), and drinks, and music. I love how music and dancing is such a part of celebrating here. Turn it on and someone will stand up and start moving. I remember the first months of being here how uncomfortable that was for me, but now it feels so natural. So what you're the only person dancing! It's so normal. Life is meant to be enjoyed – so stand up and enjoy it!

Friday was house cleaning day for basically the entire day. We did extreme sweeping, mopping, washing walls, and dusting things that probably were never dusted. We had a blast! We just pumped the jams, told silly stories and enjoyed creating our new home. The cleaning actually lasted the entire next week, but at the end of that day we successfully pealed the layers of someone else's house off and could see the glimmer of our home coming through.

Our house has two showers, one with a faucet at our waist and the other with a tall shower head in the bathroom in Hannah's room. So bucket showers have finally become part of my daily life here in Tanzania – a very welcomed change. It's incredible how little water you truly need to take a decent shower. Anyways, Sean and I thought it would be a fun treat for our new community mates to go to the "Cathedral" (Club 84) for their first introduction to Bongo-flava and the dance culture of Tanzania. I absolutely won't go to this club unless our friend David comes along - he just makes the whole experience 100% more enjoyable for me - and thankfully he was totally on board. After our bucket showers, we all settled for a dinner on our floor sitting on the mats made by David's grandmother in Uganda (still waiting for a dinner table and all other furniture).  Though the club is now even closer than it was to our other house, it started to rain and so we took a taxi down the road.  The night was fun, though, and we all came back exhausted.

We slept in on Saturday and took a daladala in the afternoon to Mnadani, the meat market about 20 minutes outside of the city.  We treated the girls to their first plate of goat meat.  That was the perfect ending to our first few days together.

New House

These past few weeks have been a whirlwind. Really only two or three weeks ago, Sean and I had basically given up hope on a search for a new home. It just seemed like our ideas of a JV house and all others' ideas were not matching up so giving up and letting go seemed to make the most sense. Sean and I started having some really difficult conversations with the two German girls we were living with in order to resolve someone of the unnecessary tension by creating better schedules, etc. Unfortunately, the night after this conversation, the JVC office called us informing us that we had only two options about the house – move into a home suggested by the Jesuits that is absolutely the opposite of anything Sean and I had imagined for Jesuit Volunteers in Dodoma (it's huge, far away from other people, and in a nicer neighborhood than desired), or stay in our current living situation. They also sprang on us another volunteer – originally JVC had decided to only send one, but because of issues in Moshi they have decided to close down that site next year and consequently the new volunteer heading there is now being sent to us. To be honest, I was absolutely ecstatic about a fourth volunteer for Dodoma, but all this news was a lot to take in. Sean and I thought about it a lot and eventually decided it would be most helpful to us, and most appropriate to our new community to move into our own space. And that brings us up to this week...

We had been told months ago that the previous owners were considering leaving furniture if we were to take the place, but I guess too much time went by that they decided to move everything. And consequently, the house is entirely empty. I can't imagine setting up a new place in the States – but in Dodoma, Tanzania, with no car of our own, no idea of where to buy things or prices? Chaos. Thankfully Fr. Sossy has been an incredible support and help throughout the whole process, and has kindly lent us a few of his workers to assist in this process.

Saturday, Mzee January (Mzee is a honorable name for an old person – January is a driver/worker for the parish) and Angel (the parish bursar) took us to town to shop for the home basics, like kitchen and bathroom stuff. Even though we had a list of things we needed and there weren't very many selections, it was incredibly stressful picking out so many things for this house at one time. I'm sure we could have spread it out a little, but I knew it would be so much better to get as much done as possible, especially if we had a pickup to throw everything into! Otherwise Sean and I would be taking the crowded tiny public buses home with all our new purchases – not exactly the most fun thing. We drove the stuff right to the house and hid it in a closet.

Sunday after Mass and lunch with Fr. Kitui – a really great Jesuit who is only around until January unfortunately – I spent some time in my room packing things up. I have really accumulated a lot of crap over the year here. A lot of it is books and papers from being a teacher, letters and other things sent from home, and new clothes and materials that I've bought while I've been here. I'm excited to get rid of a lot of it when I set up my new room, but for now, it's going in the bag!

Oh, Saturday was also the start of final examinations at the school, so Monday Sean and I only had our “Pre-Form I” session because we don't sit exams until Wednesday. That was a great relief because Cristina is scheduled to arrive in TZA on Monday, Hannah on Tuesday, and we're hoping they get to Dodoma by Wednesday. We want to have some of the major moving done by then. So Monday afternoon we went back to town to pick up mattresses for our beds and a gas stove and cylinder. I always think foreign currency is so strange because, for example, we paid 240,000 Tanzanian shillings for four mattresses. That sounds insane, doesn't it? (240,000/= is about $185). There's a man at the parish (who I actually sing in the choir with!) named Veda who is a carpenter. He's making our beds and dining room table. The beds probably won't be done until the end of the week, so if we decide to move in when the girls get here on Wednesday, we may be sleeping on our mattresses on the floor for a few days! Better than cold floor, though! We're also going to try to pick out a couch and mini fridge in Dar es Salaam when we're there over Christmas – another insane thing in my mind, having to buy these things and get them moved to Dodoma. Sossy says its cheaper and better quality if we look in Dar.

Tuesday we had our last pre-form session with out students (we played the “I'm going on a picnic” game and wrote stories) and then finished up the rest of my packing. Mzee came back to our house and we loaded up pretty much everything that we own, including a small table from the storage space behind our house here (it belongs to the Jesuits). Our first piece of furniture! My things added up to close to 6 small bags and one giant one, but I packed up most of our community stuff, so I'm allowed to have more bags than Sean, right? For example, I used my entire small suitcase for our community's books. So there! My room is pretty bare now, besides my bedclothes, a few things for showering and my clothes for tomorrow. We've decided to stay one more night here – it would probably be really overwhelming to stay in that empty house tonight. And I'd feel the need to unpack, etc. I'm excited though; these past two weeks Sean and I have been watching the first season of “True Blood” together almost every night and we've saved the last episode for tonight. We usually watch it while we eat, which isn't so great for the community building, but I think it's done us good actually. We spend so much time together that it is hard not to always talk about the hard stuff. It's fun to forget about that and escape into another world every so often. Especially if that world involves Vampires! (Just kidding, kind of). (PS have you ever seen this show? Mom and Dad – don't do it! It's ridiculous. Sean and I had a little bit of culture shock watching it for the first time. I mean, I know vampires aren't really living in the States, but the humans in that show definitely exist. Yikes).

So tomorrow (Weds) morning, Sean and I are heading to Veyula (a village 18 km away) to see Sr. Immaculata take her final vows. Sr. Imma was our school nurse for most of the year until she went on a month retreat in preparation for her final vows. It will be great to see her again and celebrate with her and the other Sisters. Three of the Ivrea Sisters will be joining us as students next year at SPCHS and have been attending our pre-form sessions, so it will be great to know so many of them! I'm really looking forward to it. The day starts with Mass at 9:30am and a celebration lunch after. Sean and I will have to leave around noon, however, because we're sitting for the last exam at school at 2:45pm. (The students have 2 or 3 exams per day, each is 2 hours).  

Packages and the Parliament

Sunday I was incredibly tired – like, the kind of tired where you're not sure you're still alive when you first wake up in the morning because your body doesn't want to move. I slept in and hung around the house pretty much all day. My only goal for that day was to finish up the gifts I wanted to send home to the USA. I have to say, there may not be anything too special in those packages but they were incredibly fun to put together! I am praying they make it in time for Christmas. (Please please please!!!).

Monday as usual, we had our morning pre-form session. I don't have class at school until 3:20pm (9^th period Advise), so I headed straight to the post to mail away these packages. It's getting too close to Christmas now, so I wanted to do it ASAP. I met the lady who works in the post store (selling envelopes, tape, stamps, etc.) who has become my friend over the months. I bought stronger tape on my way to the Post to seal them all up and she insisted on helping me tape. Consequently, after about 20 minutes and almost half a roll of tape (she went crazy – no one's getting in those boxes!) I excitedly brought my packages up to the other Mama to see how much it would cost (this Mama is nice if you butter her up with a lot of Kiswahili, otherwise she can be a little grumpy). She was kind enough to inform me that I needed to check customs for a package this size – you know, customs, as in they have to see what is INSIDE my package BEFORE I tape it up with a half a roll of tape and a waste of 20 minutes. I think I almost cried, which was very uncalled for, but I just didn't know when I would be able to get back to the Post, and at that moment it felt that any second longer I wanted was a guarantee these dumb boxes wouldn't get there in time. They both were really sorry, handing out the “pole”s left and right (pole, “sorry”). Not sure why lady #1 didn't mention this before all our work, but it's my fault not theres. Anyway – I rushed to school and made it right on time, but really tired and dehydrated from my lengthy excursion. It's really hot now!

I woke up with a dreadful headache on Tuesday – it's the rainy season, which means every other week it might rain once, but I think that's what brought on the headache. It was the kind too that makes my stomach hurt so bad that I think I might throw-up, so I talked with Sean and decided to stay home from our morning class. He actually had been feeling pretty bad too the past few days (I really hope not from our Thanksgiving dinner!) and didn't go to class on Monday, so he instead took my computer and a movie that Maura sent - “Despicable Me” (excellent movie, seriously watched it 4 times already) and we called it an English lesson. I went back to bed, but decided around 9am to try the Post again. There was no way I'd be able to teach for a few hours without being a complete B*%#^ (from the headache, doi) but I needed to move around. I decided to take a risk and not reopen my packages until the Customs person told me to because I wasn't about to wrap these bad boys all over again.

Unfortunately, the Customs man is probably the most terrifying person in this country – we have to go to him when we pick up packages from the States that are above a certain weight/price. He hates smiling and kind words. I think he's allergic to me. Anyways, when I saw him I thought for sure he'd make me open them but when I explained what ridiculous things were inside (can't go into detail here but basically things that mean a lot to me but have really no value here), he rolled his eyes and made me write it all down and sign the customs slip. After slamming the stamp onto both sheets and handing them too me, I gingerly got up not sure if we were through and quite frankly, terrified to ask it we were through when he gave me the go with a short “nenda” (go) I got the heck out of there. The Mama was excited to see me again when I had the slips attached and gave me like 100 stamps (not kidding) to paste all over these boxes. You'd think 10,000 tsh stamps existed, but apparently not because I got 67,500 tsh stamps in 2,000s, 1,000s, and 500s. Ridiculous. Basically it took me about 10 full minutes to puzzle piece these stamps all over the fronts of these packages – actually, Dad and Maura: you should probably take pictures of those boxes. It's humorous really. The most exciting moment was finally handing the freshly stamped boxes and walking out the door. I met Sean at home and we both spent the day in bed, basically with stomach issues that kept us close to the choo (toilet). Verdict came back that at least two other friends were also sick from after Thanksgiving, so it had to be something we ate. The others keep blaming it on the turkey fat (but who ate turkey FAT? ew) but who knows! I'm just glad they're not pointing fingers at me!

This week was actually a really unfortunate week to get sick because my students were giving ethics presentations in which Teacher Roland, Teacher Sean and I were voting for the best group in each class and we (especially me, their teacher) needed to be there. But Roland is great and he really took interest in the whole project. Thank God for him!

The past few weeks in my ethics class we've been discussing the value of “justice.” We started out talking about wants vs needs, then talked about rights especially the UN's list of children's rights, and later talked about justice, how both knowledge and action are necessary. At the end of it, I brought up five serious issues in Tanzania (and almost every other country really, but we used real cases from Tanzania so it was more relevant) regarding children. The goal was to create presentations as if we were part of the Bunge (parliament) of Tanzania and we wanted to address and solve the issue. I assigned five groups in each stream, about 6-7 students per group. Each “committee” was assigned an issue: 1. low number of people having birth certificates, 2. low numbers of children attending secondary school, 3. low numbers of girls attending primary school, 4. trafficking of children, 5. street children. Each committee was supposed to give a presentation which included an explanation of the issue, which rights are being violated because of it's existence, and short and long term plans for fixing the problem for good.

The presentations ended up being so-so. I know I asked a lot and didn't give them much time to prepare, and I was impressed with what they did come up with. Actually, the most impressive part of the whole experience was how their classmates asked challenging and relevant questions after each presentation. I can tell some of them are really thinking these things through, which is excellent! After seeing all presentations, Roland, Sean, and I chose the best group for each topic and announced a Bunge session for the following Friday. The students did pretty well – they still need a lot of work in terms of public speaking, but they tried their hardest. Some groups ended up talking much longer than expected, and consequently we ran out of time for questions which was the part I was really looking forward to. But this was a first time! We're planning on using my lesson plans for ethics class next year and we'll be able to spend more time with this whole thing. I'm looking forward to that! At the end of our Parliament session, we treated the committees to soda and karanga (peanuts). It was a success! And that pretty much wrapped up my classes for the year!