My First Attempt at a Blog Entry...And Typing with a Broken Finger

"There is a Lonely Planet guide to my country. How remote could it be?"

- Me, July 2007



So here I sit, at an internet cafe in Njombe, Tanzania, the one-paved-road mountain community that Peace Corps calls my "banking town." There are, in fact, two banks, two gas stations, a post office, and two parallel roads (one of which is the paved one) flanked with small, over-the-counter shops, each selling more or less the same items at more or less the same negotiable prices. There is even one Western-style hotel, where you can get a hot shower straight from the tap if you stay up late enough or wake up early enough. So here I sit, at an internet cafe in Njombe, Tanzania, the most bustling bit of civilization I will see for at least the next six months.



I came here today in a vehicle Tanzanians call a "basi," or, for those not particularly linguistically inclined, a bus. It is not a bus. It is an extended VW van, as square as a school girl in penny loafers, with a roof rack on which the luggage conductor straps everyone's belongings and then sits himself. This vehicle, which comes by my school on the way to town once a day at 7:30am and leaves town to come back toward my village at 1:30pm, should not be confused with a daladala (from the Kiswahili word "dala," meaning "dollar," which was the fare when the vehicles were first introduced in Kenya), which is Tanzania's most common, regularly-running system of transportation. The daladala is a stretch minivan, curvier than the "basi," and usually with an elevated roof to allow passengers to stand. More on the daladala experience another day, as I want to describe my current residential situation.



I live in a row of ten teachers' houses, set back from the main (unpaved) road, on the other side of which is my school, a well-known, co-ed boarding secondary school that I cannot name due to Peace Corps regulations. My house is at the end of the row, about two plots away from my nearest neighbor, because my headmaster once heard that Americans value their privacy. There is one woman, a teacher's wife, who has clearly never heard this fact, because she has invited herself over every evening for the next week to teach me how to cook. Although I will not enjoy dumping a liter of oil into each of my dinners for the next week, I will very much appreciate lessons on cooking over a charcoal stove. Because Tanzanians insist on cooking inside, though, I might also come back to America brain damaged from carbon monoxide poisoning...and I've also been inhaling a lot of bug poison, because it's the only way to teach the little imps the difference between my space inside my house and the Great Outdoors.



Speaking of my house, it's the nicest one outside of town, I think. I have a walled-in courtyard (which I have to cross to get to my toilet - a ceramic basin in a concrete floor, my bathing room - a sizable cement room with a drain in the floor, and two other outdoor rooms for which I haven't yet chosen uses). I have an extremely large living room, and one or two guest bedrooms, depending on how I decide to use the space. I hung curtains in my bedroom the other day, and in doing so tumbled off of the wobbly chair I was standing on and broke my left middle finger. I splinted it myself, using a stick, and am hoping it heals straight. My nearest shop is about one kilometer away, which is pretty close. But I cannot buy any sort of food there, so I'm going to have to learn to garden vegetables, and then become a vegetarian.



This is, without question, the most beautiful landscape I have ever lived in, or seen, for that matter. In front of my house, there is emptiness for miles and miles until the emptiness commingles with the horizon, beyond which a claustrophobic, end-of-the-flat-earth sensation in my gut tells me there is only more emptiness. I never knew a person could feel claustrophobic from too much of nothing. But seriously, it's gorgeous. Behind my house, rolling hilltops of farmland end not with a horizon of nirvana, but with majestic mountain peaks. Pretty breathtaking for an American city girl.



So, I'm almost out of internet time, but until school starts on January 14th, I'll probably be in town fairly often, checking email and buying things for my large, empty house. Let me know what you all want to hear about next time; I am here only to please. Until next time, signing off...