6/29/10
It is hard to explain the pure beauty that I live in right now! I am currently in the Tanga region where I will be until I finish training which will be in August!.. I live in Lusanga C village with a wonderful family. My house is awesome with a great porch and 3 rooms and a living/sitting area then in the back there is a courtyard with 2 smaller houses/rooms where my sister and her 2 kids live in one and the other has 4 other boys that are somehow related but I haven’t quite figured it out yet. In the main house there is my room and then my mama and baba’s room then another room that I am not quite sure what it is used for. I usually get up around 5 which is when the huge rooster goes crazy outside of my window! But I dont actually get out of bed until around 6:30 which is when I take my shower then I get dressed for the day and brush my teeth, by that time I make some chai (tea) and my baba and I eat breakfast which is usually an egg and some type of bread and maybe some fruit. I then just sit and chill until about 7:30 which is when I get my things ready and go off to school. On the way to school I see everything from mountains to palm trees to chickens to lizzards!! I mean this place is awesome!!! On the way to school I stop to talk to ATLEAST 10 people, greetings in Tz are huge! If it is an older person you must address them which either takes 20seconds or can take enough time for you to ask them about their morning, their sleep, their house, and just about anything else you can think of lol but after about 2 minutes my language knowledge stops and I can no longer talk to them and they tell me to have a good school day and I go off. At school we (4 of us) learn language from 8-10 then we take a break for chai and a snack which is usually fruit and some type of finger food but at 10:30 we go back at it with language until lunch at 12:30 -1:30 and once again we learn until at least 2:30. When we are "done" we go out and try to use what we learned at the little market down the street and stop and have a pop and just talk for a little before going home. When I get home I put on a khanga and either help with dinner or watch my mama make dinner, all awhile doing flashcards and just trying to talk to her with my super broken kiswahili. I usually eat dinner around 7 or 7:30 which means its super dark so we all eat by lantern in the courtyard. I then rest for about 10 minutes with ATLEAST 6 kids around me before taking a shower then going into my room to do lastminute homework and journaling and I fall asleep around 9. I never thought it would be so easy to fall asleep at 9 everynight but man if I could I would go to bed at 8! It is just weird without electricty because you realize how much you need light lol, I am so go go go to try to get everything done b4 the sun goes down that when the sun is down I am super ready for bed! ........On saturday it is considered Mati day where all the Peace Corps trainees PCTs come together and train in health and environment which leaves sunday to try to get all the laundry done and also it is my day to learn new ways to cook different things bc I will need to do everything by myself soon enough!
Some random things: Then Kiswahili clock is not the same as then English time, they start their day at 6 bc of sun rise so at 6am it is really 1 so you need to add 6 to the time if anyone wants to know what time it is, confusing and weird.... also roosters are a lot of peoples clocks lol, they go off every hour starting at 4 am so you always know what time it is if you hear the first alarm, also if a rooster is off it is considered a city rooster lol.....
Everyone here is so nice and I cant wait until I can have real conversations with them so I am going to keep training and soon enough all will be okay!
I love and miss you all!!
Ps..... a prayer request is for my little niece Jazmine that lives with me, she has malaria and is sick so make sure you put her name up in some good prayers!
7-2-10
Today I saw the largest spider of my life!! I is in the bathroom (choo) and it is seriously HUGE… but I learned a good lesson which is don’t look around when you are showering! Not only did I see the tarantula but I saw a cockroach/beetle/bat see im not sure which one it was because it was big enough to be a bat but I think it had wings but it looked shiny, either way I kept my eye on it because I was not about to die by bat attack!! … But anywho today Maren Justin Tyler and I all went one by one to eachothers houses to talk to our parents and ask where we could find a TV for the Brazil Netherlands soccer game and our talks went pretty well .. I mean by no means are we fluent in Kiswahili but we can semi hold our own if the people that we are talking to talks slow and about simple things… In the end Tyler’s kaka (brother) told us that we can go to their babu’s (grandpa) house and so we watched it there which was amazing!! Mind you Maren and I were the only girls with a room of about 30 men and boys but hey we got to watch so who cares! After the game Justin walked me home because we live so close and I am pretty sure my family loves him more than me lol but on the way I once again saw something bigger than I have ever seen before but this time it was a snail yes a seriously 4 pound snail!!! It was sooooo cool!! I took it and moved it to the side because I don’t want a bike or kid to hit it and I think it liked its new atmosphere… But my mama was happy that I was home and we talked about me getting more Tanzanian and we are going to buy some material soon which will be cool… I then ate dinner which was bananas that were cooked by boiling them in water and coconut water which may sound good but don’t be mistaken! I ate as much as I could and drank plenty of water then told her I was full which led her to ask what was wrong and if I liked it ….. I lied to her I mean I didn’t want her to feel bad but I said I liked it and so she said why did you eat so little, I seriously couldn’t eat anymore so I said I at oranges at Maren’s, which is true, but she then said how many so I had to make up a larger number and said 3 I then said I ate cookies and chai there too, also true, and she asked how many so I once again made up a large number …. All in all I think she was sad/mad that I ate already and she made all the bananas and I didn’t eat them but seriously I couldn’t eat them and my kakas got a treat!! O yea when I was waiting for my dinner to be done I are what looked like meatballs but I have no idea what they were, I don’t even know if meat was in them… I asked my mama what they were and she told me but that was no help…. Tomorrow is Mati day for my CBT so we are going to Mati to learn how to permagarden which is making a garden that helps the soil that also has large yields which will be hard work but it will feel good to be out of the skirt for a day! Also I need to start running but I need a partner so I am convincing Justin bc he is the closest so he is the one who will be screwed but who cares we are up at 5 anyway bc of the roosters! But my outfit to run includes a looses tee shirt pants and a khanga over my butt/hips area which will be annoying slash hot but that is why I am going at 5ish ….. But this is already too long but I love y’all and I hope to get to the internet atleast once every 2 or 3 weeks but who knows!!
PS my phone number is 078-879-7629 just incase you feel like texting or calling sometime!!
Amy
