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Thursday, July 2, 2009

These last days. .

(before reading this please apprecite that it took me 45 minutes to log into my blog and copy and paste this from my thumbdrive. . )

Sunday, June 27th(?) 2009 1:55pm

I have been trying to figure out how to best cover the time that I have been here in Kilulu in my homestay, since there is so much to tell, and my mind is disjointed from being sleep deprived and on sensory overload for .. . 2 weeks or so.

I will take a few bits from my journal so you can get a better feeling of how I was experiencing everything in the moment. My recollection of the emotion is not as explicit as I felt it – I know when I read back over the entries for my first few days.

But first, let me introduce you to my village.

We are in the north near the mountains, outside my house everywhere you look there are beautiful lush green mountains in the distance.

The larger market town, is about 4 – 6 kilometers away from the village. From the market town you climb a red dirt road up through fields of maize and cassava, some sunflowers, all dotted with orange trees, coconut palms, papaya trees, mango trees, and many other things that I don’t know. Along the road is a primary school and secondary school, both made of brick – large open structures – I hope I will be able to post a photo or 2 of the secondary school when I post the blog.

There are a few shops that are hard to differentiate from the houses, made of either brick or of mud and straw. They are small, and people are walking along the road. Women wrapped in colorfully decorated kangas and dresses, men in loose bright button up shirts and shorts. The women are carrying baskets on their head, or have their head wrapped tightly in fabric.

As you approach my village, there is a long space of just brush and trees. You start seeing humble homes, made of cement or, for the most part, of mud bricks, or just of mud and straw. The doors are all open during the day and children are laughing and running through the streets (school is out for the summer) Women are sorting corn or rice on mats in front of their houses, doing wash, cooking, or cleaning. Men walk around, wave, on their way to work, or .. really . . I haven’t figured out what they do.

I don’t really have photos of the village – or of my home for that matter, because I don’t want to bring out the huge symbols of my wealth – especially not so early.

It is spring here and everything is green. All you see is green, accented by the red dirt of the road and courtyards that are swept daily in front of each house. There are crops everywhere. When you get to my house, depending on which road you approach it from, you will either see the red clay courtyard, the chair that my Baba (host father) sits in often, then some of the children playing, or a small covered porch accented by a red wall.

I am greeted by my host Kaka, Abdullah, who takes my bag from school and invites me into the home to rest.

In the afternoon (5pm), when I come home from school, I will try to tell the family what I have learned that day. My Dadas (host sisters) are sitting in the courtyard around a number of jichos (stoves) peeling vegetables, preparing food for dinner. I will usually start on the peeling of potatos to make ‘viazi’ (which just means potatos in Kiswahili)

I peel the potatoes with the very dull knives. My hands have not been washed, but neither had the potatoes (they are rinsed before they are cooked). I just peel and talk and point to each ingredient and other object around me to practice the Kiswahili word for it. My host kakas (brothers) will crowd around to watch, and sometimes make fun of how I do something or say something, we all laugh.

My family consists, as far as I can tell, of a Mama and Baba (mom and dad) who are older, perhaps around 65ish? There are 4 Dadas (sisters) my age, and 2 young girls maybe 4 and 6. Then I have 2 host Kakas who are about my age, one a bit younger, and 3(?) who are children, around 4 yrs.

The house is one of the nicer ones in the village. It is made of cement, with cement floors. It has wooden doors (as apposed to just a piece of cloth to separate rooms. It has 2 bedrooms as you walk in, a sitting room, and then my bedroom. My window looks out to the side of the house, to my Bibi (host grandmother)’s house.

Running around the courtyard are countless chickens and chicks. While we cook dinner they walk around and peck at the peelings and bits that we leave as we cook. I laugh at them but no one seems to be interested at all in them. They run around everywhere throughout the village. There are also dogs and cats (mbwas na pakas) running throughout the village. The dogs tend to stay near their families but the cats have no allegiance. I am told they are fed/let live because they keep the rodents away.

Next to my house we have a papaya tree, 2 orange trees, both still young, some cassava and some mchichi (greens that are cooked) Outside the back of the house (which is where the courtyard is and usually where I enter) there is the choo (toilet) and shower. They are the same structure with a wall separating that does not go all the way up, which sucks because when I shower, I always have to smell the choo.

We get water from one of 2 ‘wells’ in town. I have only been to one. It is the most beautiful walk, I would approximate about ¾ of a mile. Through fields of corn and cassava and others that are dotted generously will all sorts of trees and palms and oranges and such, down a mountain and then down a steep hill. What they call a well I would assume is a natural spring. It is muddy. You can’t see an inch through the water, like a river after a heavy rain. I carried a ¾ full bucket on my head the whole way back to my home. Women laughed at me as I struggled up the steep hill, but really the bucket of water on my head wasn’t the problem.

Women wear a piece of fabric called a kanga over their clothes. So I wear a skirt and a short sleeved shirt, then over the bottom I wrap a long piece of fabric that goes to my ankles and over my top I drape the same. Walking up the hill the kanga over my skirt really restricted my movement, and kept falling off. Still, it was one of my favourite memories here yet, carrying the water up the hill along the beautiful path to my village at sunset. Perhaps because my host kaka (brother) who was with me did not expect me to speak Kiswahili to him for a moment, I had the peace of completeing my task.

The muddy water from the ‘well’ is used for everything. It is the water poured in a pot to boil for rice, to make ugali, to wash your hands, to wash your body, to drink. I have gotten used to it. I have not gotten sick. It is disconcerting, but it has no flavour. I have bought drinking water and I horded it from our training center as much as I could but I end up dehydrated because Tanzanians (as I was warned) just don’t drink much. They drink chai (which is just black tea but has no caffeine, as far as I can tell) but not much else. They eat a lot of oranges. I try to do the same. I try to eat as many vegetables as I can. I have no vitamins as it seems that the PC usually does not provide them until after training (why – I don’t know) but they are also backordered. .

After cooking, water is warmed for my ‘bath’. I wrap my clothes, instead of in kangas, in my backpacking towel, and I head to the ‘stall’ with my shampoo and soap. The heated muddy water (sometimes with sticks and small leaves in it) is in a bucket with a plastic cup in it. I get myself wet – soap up – and rinse – by pouring water from the cup. It actually isn’t that difficult at all. As long as they give me enough water, which is an unpredictable thing. At night I only wash my body, the sweat and dirt of the day. In the morning I wash again, and wash my hair too. Some PCTs (PC trainees) only shower once, or every other day, but some of my family showers 2xs, and I think you would too if you were so wrapped in kangas and hot all the time, sweaty, covered in dust, and had NO other time to wash any other part of you during the day, your hands before or after eating – which you do with your hands (other than the more ceremonial than useful pouring of water on hands before you eat) or after using the choo (which is a hole in the ground leading to a tank) not even before cooking, or after cleaning.

While I am showering the family gets things ready for dinner, sometimes they are already eating when I finish. The small kids are all bathed before dinner as well (which is good since all the eating is done with hands out of shared dishes of food) The men sit at a table in chairs in the sitting room and I eat with the women and children, on a mat on the floor in the corner. The first night, when I arrived and was shellshocked and overwhelmed and was sitting in a chair and then as food was brought out, asked to move to the floor, it REALLY upset me. With all the other stuff going on I have grown not to care.

After dinner I usually try to go to my room, because I am exhausted. It’s about 9 by the end of dinner, usually, but my older host kakas and host baba want to talk to me. I entertain them with as much Kiswahili as I can bring to mind, and they teach me as much as I have patience for (usually they try for much more) before I can pull myself away to sleep.

I wake up usually around 3am. I have finally come to the conclusion that my Mama does dishes at that time in the room outside my door. It is loud as hell, whatever it is. Sometimes I can tune it out and go back to sleep. There are other intermittent noises after that, as the house slowly wakes up. Usually, the house is bustling by 5:30am, and I resign myself to waking around then and drag myself out of bed.

When I wake I try to find my Baba and Mama and greet them with the respectful morning greeting given to elders (shikamoo) Then I help my Dadas (sisters) sweep out the house, and then scrub the cement floor with an old kanga. You’d be amazed how much dirt is tracked in that house everyday.

After cleaning, I shower (bucket bath) and eat. Then my host kaka Siafu walks me the 10 minute walk to class. Sometimes the 10ish year old kaka (brother) Le Ju Manne walks with us and wants to carry my bag.

I get to school at 8am. There are 4 other PCTs in my village. Jayce and Shani, who are about my age, and Wes and Heather - a young (24 year old) married couple who are very shy and keep to themselves. I am very sad to say that I have come to heads after some time with Jayce and Shani who I personally can’t even understand why they are in PC or what they are doing here. They are catty and are annoyed by my exuberance and excitement in things (which is so strange to me) (I came in one morning after helping to cook chapati – a small pancake type thing – and was excitedly telling everyone how it was done, and Shani said she’d had just about enough of my getting excited about things.) It’s hard to explain, but I am sad to say that I cannot find comfort in the group of other volunteers I am posted in village with. I took a walk with Wes and Heather at lunch one day, and they are very kind, they seem fine, but they keep to themselves.

All day, we learn Kiswahili. We have lunch made for us by a local mama and then get back to work, until around 5pm. Then I return home to my homestay.



I have to say, it is completely overwhelming. There is nothing here that is familiar to me. Except maybe the fruits. The language, the customs, the homes, the people, my surroundings, how I am expected to dress and act, everything is unfamiliar. It is overwhelming. It is even weird to go from class, which is more casual in that it’s taught by a Peace Corps Kiswahili teacher who cusses and is funny and laid back, and with my English speaking fellow PCTs – to return home to my homestay family where I am expected to act a certain way and everything is spoken in a language I don’t understand, and still, what is expected of me is confusing.

Slowly I am learning. Pole pole (slowly slowly – pronounced poe-lay poe-lay)