Part I: Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow

It's wintertime here in the Southern Highlands, which means morning and evening weather that merits wearing a hoodie to bed. I bet you didn't know winter existed in Tanzania, but that's probably just because they refer to it only as the "cold, dry season." My little Fromer's travel alarm clock (courtesy of my hellish publishing internship two summers ago) has a little digital thermometer on it, so I can keep careful track of the coldness of my bedroom. Upon waking up, the lowest temperature I've noticed so far (the coldest month will be June) has been 55 degrees Fahrenheit. Before you scoff at how I've softened since my wind-tunnel Bostonian years, consider two things: 1) No electricity/gas = No heat; and 2) Solid concrete walls and a tin roof = No insulation. Also, I'm 11 degrees of latitude off the equator, so my mental thermometer refuses to register any temperature below 80.

We even had our first frost this week. No, don't get excited. We're not defying physics by having frost at 55 degrees. In fact, I have spent six months plublicly doubting the possibility and causing riotous laughter among my teachers when I disbelieve their "frost" stories. Although I did, until this week, secretly fear that my site would get cold enough for frost when I heard the stories about winter near Njombe. But then I woke up one misty morning, put on my mandatory ankle-length skirt, a long-sleeved t-shirt, and my EMS shell, went to school, and was greeted by gleeful I-told-you-so voices funneling out from inside of ski jacket hoods. One teacher even scoffed, "I can't believe you didn't think there'd be frost." I looked around, eyeing the tin roofs and the broken glass windows of the school, but I didn't see any frost. Some condensation, maybe, from the excessive moisture, but no frost. So I said, "No, look at the windows. There's no frost." And the scoffy teacher said, "What are you talking about? You only have to look at the air." So I did. It was misty. And they thought that mist was frost.


Part II: Simba/Brod

My new cat has two names, Simba and Brod. She is just over a year and a half old, and when I got her, she was named Lion by an environmental volunteer who never actually used the name Lion but instead referred to her as "the cat" or "Cat." Still, I thought I might induce a sort of identity crisis by changing her name AND her residence all at the same time, so I just translated her old name Lion to its Swahili equivalent, Simba (which just so happens to also make her the namesake of the huggable runaway cublet-turned-valiant-jungle-king-of-the-Serengeti in a Disney animated feature I'm sure you've identified by now). I also gave her a brand new name, Brod, for one of the main characters in a favorite novel of mine (because the cat reminds me a little of the character - who is a human). So, I alternate using Simba and Brod, plus sometimes "Cat." Maybe she'll have an identity crisis after all.

Simba/Brod is an adventurer. She can't stand to be trapped indoors unless my lap is also indoors for her to sit on. My neighbor came over one day, poked her head around my open front door, and said, "How's today?" I said "Clean, how's your home?" She said, "Safe." And then she cut our greeting short by saying, "Your cat's at my house." I panicked, because Tanzanians don't like animals (that Simba/Brod sits on my lap is strange for them and makes me a little bit uglier in their collective eyes). Also, the Wabena (the tribe which occupies nearly all of my district) eats cats. So I apologized profusely as I ran to put on my shoes and save my new furry roommate from a terrible beating and/or death. As I passed my neighbor in the doorway, she grabbed my arm and broke into the large, white-teethed grin she had only ever shown me when killing spiders. "She killed a rat," she whispered, and did a little dance on my porch. "You have to send her over to my house more often!" And then my neighbor left.

Simba/Brod returned about an hour later. I always know when she's home because she comes meowing to either door (she can jump my courtyard wall to get to the back one). She whined for her dinner of tiny raw fish, and after she got it and ate it she curled up safely in my lap, uneaten and unharmed.

The First Time My Bus Got Stuck in the Mud

The first time my bus got stuck in the mud, I had no idea that on my next bus ride to town, just two weeks later, it would happen three times in one trip. Still, the first time was a thrill. Observe:

If you had been in the bus when it fell into this position, you would have been sure it was tipping over completely. And yes, that's the door out of which we had to step to get to dry land.

First instinct: Move forward at all costs, even if there is a giant sloshpit in front of you.

There is a rule that only men help to push the bus. It's the only time I've ever been happy to be considered weak. Although one day, when I'm not wearing a white skirt, I'm going to help them push just to prove I can.

And they actually succeeded in getting it a little further into the middle of the puddle.


So they dug the tire out and drained the puddle a little bit.


And went back the way we came.

If you look at the rear wheel, it doesn't look very promising.

But, by draining the puddle a little more, and pushing a little harder, they rolled the bus back out of the mud!


And we're off! So load the hoe-shovel back into the bus.

Another post to come later this week, since I will be in town with internet for six whole days!

Before I left America in September, I was gung-ho for a moneyless African adventure - roughing it for two years on the world's second-least developed continent. I packed so lightly that I had extra room in my suitcase for a smushy bead-pillow, selected specifically to fill the space because Peace Corps instructed me to bring "an item which can comfort me and/or make me feel at home." I said my goodbyes, collected snail-mail addresses, and jumped feet-first out of my comfortable American home and into a world I could previously only imagine. I arrived with precisely zero expectations, having no idea how hard the language would be, what town I'd be near, or which Western comforts I'd have access to regularly, seldomly, or never.

Now, six months after arriving in Tanzania, I've gotten used to what I can and can't find; I know where I can get cheap candles, the best rice&beans or a plate of so-called "pepper steak," which shops in town will charge my phone for free. I know that unless I take a 5-hour bus ride, it's impossible to get ice cream or a salad, buy computer supplies, or cross an intersection of two paved roads. I've increased my limit for staying in the bush without a break: so far, I've made it three weeks. But there are some things I've begun to expect when I come to town, like a hot shower, a movie on the tiny hotel TV, a chance to read/send emails, a full PO Box. Last weekend, I came all the way to Njombe and got none of those. The water wasn't running, the electrical outlet in my hotel room was broken, the entire town's internet was down, and my PO Box was rusted shut. If I had not had any of those things from the moment I set foot in Africa, I might not have been quite so woeful. When I arrived in Tanzania, I didn't expect anything; I had braced myself for an emotional impact the size of the volcano collapse that created Ngorongoro Crater. I was ready. But now, after four months in my new house, I was devastated not to have these little American luxuries. Although it's become normal not to have electricity at home and to bathe using a bucket and a pitcher, I also expect to have internet access and a hot shower once every few weeks. These are my new standards, my new bare minimums of survival...even though not one of the other teachers at my school has ever used the internet, and most have never seen a full-length movie.

I'm an intruder in someone else's world. These familiar luxuries I enjoy in town are those that remind me home and are available. Other aspects of my American culture, though, are just plain laughable to Tanzanians. I'm like Fez in That 70s Show. I'm weird. The following is a brief list of things I do or have done that, to Tanzanians, is the equivalent of a foreigner in America sweeping the grass of her front lawn with a branch of a pine tree or walking down the street with a hoe slung over his shoulder and a stick to hit the two goats in front of him:

• Carried a water bottle around and claimed it was good for my health to drink a lot of water.


• Taken a special trip to town to buy myself toilet paper when the village shop ran out.


• Allowed my Peace Corps friend and neighbor Nicole to sleep on the couch when she visited instead of insisting that she share my tiny bed with me.


• Used wine and soda bottles as candle holders.


• Refused rice&beans.


• Worn a bike helmet.


• Run for exercise.


• Been upset when everyone in the teachers' room agreed that I had gotten "very fat."


• Done school work at home.


• Made a huge burlap bag of charcoal last four months (because I don't sleep with the stove in the room next to me to keep me warm and intoxicated with carbon monoxide).


• Read novels.


• Baked cookies.


• Claimed I could be just friends with men without having any other interest in them.


• Claimed that it was possible, but extremely difficult to contract HIV/AIDS from sharing toothbrushes.


• Explained skydiving.


• Used a world map to locate not one, not two, but all twelve countries featured on my new travel calendar.


• Packed a backpack to go on a weekend trip.


• Been upset when school didn't start on time.


• Eaten porridge as a grown-up.


• Allowed my friends to come into the kitchen and cook with me when they've visited instead of leaving them alone in my living room while I cooked for them and served them.

• Disliked my current president.

I could probably keep adding to this list until the moment I board the plane back to the US. Let me know what else you want to read about; I'm running out of ideas fast. I'm not a very exciting person.

Laika, Tanzanian Wondergirl

I dedicate this entry to my paternal grandmother Nana, who, each time I leave the good old East Coast USA, expresses her deepest concern that someone in a faraway land will sweep me off my feet and keep me so enamoured by foeign charm that I will never again return home to my dear family. Now, Nana, I must apologize, because after all of my reassurances that this is a total, utter impossibility, I have gone and fallen in love with a Tanzanian.

Her name is Laika. She is 15-years-old and lives with a married couple of my teacher-colleagues. She does not go to school now, but she finished the primary education that is compulsory for all Tanzanian children.

What is so appealing about Laika, you must be asking, since if you know me at all, you have already used your no-doubt superior and refined deductive reasoning skills to surmise that I have no romantic interest in her.

Well, she cleans my house.
And my clothes.
And my dishes.

Laika is my new housegirl, who visits each Tuesday and Saturday morning. She is the live-in housegirl of the teachers who live on the exact opposite end of my row of houses, and full-time nanny to these teachers' (incredibly) beautiful almost-one-year-old daughter Nancy. Mere hours after Laika and I finalized our arrangement (twice weekly visits at 2,000 Tanzanian shillings a pop), I found out that in exchange for her (maybe) six hours per week (so, let's say 24 hours and 16,000 Tanzanian shillings per month), I am paying her double the salary of her full-time job up the road. Probably, I should go into some sort of money-handling business when I'm done lining the pockets of out-of-school Tanzanian teenagers.

Really, though, she is worth every penny. I have clean clothes for the first time since arriving in Tanzania (it's not that I didn't try to bucket-wash my clothes by hand, just that I was bungling and inept at it). I don't have to rudely instruct all of my well-intentioned guests to remove their shoes upon entering my house because cleaning my floor with a handle-less rag instead of a Swiffer is a foreign and intimidating concept to which I cannot adjust. And, the dishes...I really don't have an excuse for that. In fact, I didn't even ask her to wash them - she just does.

Laika the Tanzanian Wondergirl usually comes while I am at school. She is like a phantom that glides unnoticed through my house, leaving everything scrubbed to a shine. I come home and everywhere I had left a mess is astonishingly clean; all of my once-dirty clothes are hung systematically on the line. If I happen to be home when she comes on a Saturday, she is a pleasure; if I am home on a Tuesday when she comes, I get to sit on the floor and play with Nancy while Laika does my chores.

Like I said, she is worth every penny. And every little piece of my heart.

FINALLY! Pictures of my house. Unfortunately, I haven't taken any photos outside of my house yet, since I've been reluctant to let people in my village know that I have fancy things like an iPod and a camera. But I'm getting to know everyone well, and soon I'll be able to whip out my camera at school events. For now, though, you'll have to make do with only my house. And only parts of my house, since the internet is way too slow to load photos of every room. Here's the outside:

And this is my floorplan. I was surprised after I drew this to see that it was surprisingly accurate and to scale. The doors even open in the right directions.

Karibuni ndani!

A better view of my living room:

When I first arrived:

Now:

That's Simone's old license plate on the door.
Stalk her.

Bedroom:

What my bedroom used to look like:

What it looks like now:

On one wall I hung all of your beautiful pictures and decorative contributions. The empty rectangle to the right of the desk is for a vertical mirror I haven't bought yet.

This is my most illegal wall decoration (I have cropped the rest of the note to protect the author):

And this I had to post just in case a PBS talent scout is looking for emerging child artists. I think Catherine would be an awesome candidate...if she weren't 22 years old.


I am so proud of myself for making this hanging basket shelf. If you ever send me a letter, it will go in here until I write a response. It's very official...like an inbox/outbox.

Coming out of my bedroom, a before and after:

To the courtyard!

One end, on the left...with my toilet and bathroom doors, plus the door that leads to my water tap and beyond that, the outside world. The other end, on the right, has my kitchen door, clotheslines, and accidental garden. Really, who needs to hoe when stuff just sprouts in your backyard?


Ok, I have come to the internet many times just to post these few photos and arrange this aesthetic-less presentation of them. I'm almost out of computer time now, and I'm going back to the village for awhile...probably two weeks. So that's all for now. Any other photo interests?

School Days, School Days

School opened. Which means neither of the two things you're probably thinking it means. No, not all of the students have arrived, and no, not a single teacher has started teaching (except me). But it does mean that I am one happy Peace Corps volunteer, because the school is alive and noisy with activity, and for three hours a night, I can walk 70 meters to school and sit under an electric lightbulb run by a generator.

About two-thirds of our students have come back to campus; the others will be more than a week late, probably because they have not finished all of the farmwork that needs to be done. (Nearly all of my students, despite studying at one of the best secondary schools in the country and despite the fact that they will probably finish secondary school at all - a rarity and a huge accomplishment - will not continue on to post-secondary education of any kind. Instead, they will return to the farm.) Teachers have not started teaching mostly out of laziness, I think. Two classrooms are not yet completely constructed, so we are left with two fewer classrooms than actual classes. (Here, the students remain in one room all day while we teachers come and go.) That makes classes even larger than usual (90+ students in one classroom instead of the normal 50-60 students), and therefore more difficult to teach. Plus, the teachers don't want to reteach the material to latecomers as they arrive at school. I don't really want to reteach material several times, either, but I don't think I would manage to finish the nationally-regulated syllabus by the end of the school year unless I started more or less on time. And the school's opening was already delayed one week due to the (still unfinished) construction.

On the homefront, I am the laughing stock of my row of teachers' houses on account of my gardening laziness. I have hoed two beds while each of them has at least 200 plus a farm. I have yet to plant seeds because I am afraid they will get washed away by the nightly monsoons, and I haven't bought or collected manure to mix in with the clay soil (which is incredibly hard and heavy to hoe and apparently lacking nutrients). I guess my thumbs just aren't so green. I think I'll get some students to help me, because I have no idea what I'm doing. I do know, though, that thanks to a thoughtful aunt as well as the US and Tanzanian postal services, I now have in my possession 1.5 pounds of Miracle Grow. My Tanzanian neighbors are going to be blown away by my miracle vegetables.

I've realized in writing this that I've displayed a propensity to include many parenthetical comments...not sure why. Maybe writing about this culture lends itself to many explanatory and/or amused asides. That's all for now. Hope everyone is doing well in their respective countries!

A Real Conversation (with a Tanzanian Woman Carrying a Baby) on the Road, While Waiting for My Bus to Town (Rough Literal Translation)

Tanzanian Woman: Hello!
Me: Hello.
Tanzanian Woman: How is the morning?
Me: Good. How is yours?
Tanzanian Woman: Peaceful. How is work?
Me: Good. Is your baby healthy?
Tanzanian Woman: Yes, she is completely healthy. How is your home?
Me: Completely clean.
Tanzanian Woman: Where are you going now?
Me: Only to town.
Tanzanian Woman: Why are you carrying water? Is it for drinking?
Me: Yes, it is for drinking.
Tanzanian Woman: So are you going on a long journey?
Me: No, only to town.
Tanzanian Woman: So why are you carrying water?
Me: It is good for your health to drink water.
Tanzanian Woman: (laughs hysterically at my funny joke) No, you are going all the way back to Europe.
Me: No, I am going only to town. And I am not from Europe.
Tanzanian Woman: Oh, where are you from?
Me: America.
Tanzanian Woman: (puzzled look) Can I go back to Europe with you?
Me: I am going only town. And I am not from Europe.
Tanzanian Woman: (more puzzled look) Oh, well I'm afraid of airplanes anyway.
Me: Oh, sorry.
Tanzanian Woman: Aren't you afraid to go in airplanes? They fly!
Me: No.
Tanzanian Woman: You aren't?
Me: No.
Tanzanian Woman: Why not?
Me: They are completely safe.
Tanzanian Woman: You are afraid.
Me: I am not afraid.
Tanzanian Woman: They can crash.
Me: Where I come from, in America, there are so many cars on the roads that it is actually safer to fly in a plane than to drive a car.
Tanzanian Woman: Really?
Me: Really.
Tanzanian Woman: You must be afraid to fly. Planes go so high.
Me: I am not afraid. In fact, one time I jumped out of an airplane.
Tanzanian Woman: While it was on the ground.
Me: No, when it was very high.
Tanzanian Woman: You what?
Me: I jumped out of the airplane. I was inside, but I went outside.
Tanzanian Woman: But the airplane was on the ground.
Me: No, it was very high. It was in the sky.
Tanzanian Woman: (gasps) And you arrived safely on the ground?
Me: Yes.
Tanzanian Woman: It's not possible.
Me: I had a parachute. (Here, my translation may have been wrong. My dictionary says that the Kiswahili word for "parachute" is "parachuti," but that might be an author's joke that he made to trick dumb Americans who don't know that there is no real Kiswahili word for "parachute," so who really knows?)
Tanzanian Woman: (blank look)
Me: Do you know what a parachute is?
Tanzanian Woman: (shakes head no)
Me: It's like an umbrella...only bigger.
Tanzanian Woman: They have those in Europe?
Me: Yes, they do. But I used it in America, where I'm from.

(Bus comes to take me into town, where many people have seen parachutes on TV and some have even flown in airplanes.)