I finally figured out how to post pictures. I put them up on Snapfish because they loaded the fasted on that site. You might have to sign up for it, but it doesn't cost you anything. Pole sana (very sorry). Here's the link:
http://www1.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=264656179/a=138243337_138243337/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish
I'll be adding to it periodically, but snapfish was acting up so I couldn't show you the pictures of my pit toilet.
Anyway,
This is our last official week of Intensive Swahili Training! Though I am nowhere near proficient, I can now ask people how their home, work, chickens, goats, etc. are doing. That's pretty much half of all conversation here anyway. I mentioned before that Kiswahili is a swahili word - they put a "ki" before every language, i.e. Kiingareza (English) and Kifaransa, (French). It is an interesting language because everything is spelled phonetically and every letter is pronounced. Obviously it was spoken before it was written down.
Kiswahili is derived from three different sources: Bantu, which is an ancient African language, Arabic, because of the proximity to the Middle East, and new words which are borrowed from other languages, (mostly English and European languages). It is funny to see the spelling of many of these words, especially if they come from English, because when you sound it out it just sounds like you're saying the English word with a Tanzanian accent. For example:
Bia - beer!
baisikeli - bicycle (also, they add an "i" to the end of many words. Not sure why).
dolla - doller
Karoti - carrot
skirti - skirt
gauni - dress, (sounds like gowney)
pilipilihoho - green pepper (I just threw that it cuz it's funny sounding)
After Swahili training we will move into a training center where we will be living with our Tanzanian counterparts, (who we have yet to meet). They are young people from all around Tanzania who were picked to teach with us. After three weeks of teacher-training we will split into pairs, (one Tanzanian volunteer and one international volunteer) and we'll be sent to our respective villages.
In other news:
We don't get to let loose to often. Actually, we never get to let loose. Also, we've been advised not to go out at night because we glow in the dark. But on Saturday night we threw caution to the wind and went out in celebration of Bella's 18th birthday. 18 is pretty big in Australia because that's when they get to (officially) start drinking. Pretty cool because the only thing us Americans can do at 18 is go to Iraq.
We went to this place called "Shooters," which is the only bar in Iringa. There are only two types of alcohol in Tanzania: Beer and Konyagi. Konyagi is some kind of unidentifiable liquor made from fermented ugali or something. It is sold in pouches!
There are three types of beer, Kilimanjaro, Safari and Castle Lager. Do we have Castle Lager at home? I don't know, but it sounds familiar. At Shooters they played one Rihanna song over and over. It was kind of like home! But not really.
Then we went to a disco called Twisters, which was a surprisingly attractive venue. I'm not much of a disco person because I don't like to dance, (who does?) but it was fun to hang out with everyone in a laid back environment.
This weekend we are going on Safari! We'll be travelling to Ruaha National Park, (about a 3 hour trip from Iringa) which has the largest elephant population in Tanzania. My host father said he went there a few weeks ago and saw a pack of lions eating a giraffe carcass. Gross! But awesome! We'll be camping there overnight. Hopefully I won't get eaten or anything.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Back in Iringa...
I've arrived safely back in Iringa town. The daladala ride back was not quite as hectic as the one to Njombe and was inexplicably two hours shorter.
The last day in Njombe was a little strange. Houseboy Faki asked if he could keep my ipod. Apparently people here always ask you if they can have your things.
That same day, mama invited some random dude with a camera over to the house and we proceeded to have a two-hour photoshoot complete with props and wardrobe changes. They took photos of me doing everything from turning the TV on and off to squatting by a rock, (where an entire colony of fire ants crawled up my legs - which only caused a minor blip in the photoshoot schedule) then balancing on a treestump with Faki, then pretending to drive the truck with Mama, then pointing to the bumper sticker that said, "This car is protected by the blood of Christ." Afterwards the photographer asked if he could take a few pictures of just him and me. He gave the camera to Faki and held both my hands as Faki snapped away. He then thanked me, told me he would frame the pictures, and left. I'm sure that by next week all of Njombe will believe that I'm his new white wife.
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I realized that I haven't told you all much about the other volunteers. They have been a big part of the experience and I've neglected to include them in my stories! We spend most of our time relaying wacky stories about our host families and talking about our favorite pasta dishes. So without further ado, here's the cast of characters:
Krista, 18, from Kansas: The other American girl. She's funny and outspoken...typical American! Unfortunately she got sick with ameobic dysentary which was immediately followed by a terrible ear infection. We thought she was going to die for a while but now she's ok.
Kyler, 21, from Maryland: A recent graduate from Emerson College in Boston and the only boy on the trip. He worked for Obama hardcore before coming to Tanz...but even he hasn't bought the Obama fabric because it's too ugly.
He got to kill a chicken in Njombe and one of the other volunteers videotaped it. We're all pretty jealous.
Laura, 24, from Adelaide, Australia: Very sweet primary school teacher from down undah. She's also really funny and both of us get into trouble in school because we chat too much and laugh at all the Swahili words that sound like dirty English words.
Annabelle, (Bella) 17, from Australia: Very mature and smart for her age. Much more mature than me. Probably smarter, too. She lives on a farm in Australia and has her own horse! She also showed us pictures of this activity where they castrate bulls and throw the amputated apendages at each other. Fun!
Jolene, 27, New Zealand: A bike courier who is originally from South Africa, so she has a silly accent. She is also the first of us to get malaria. She says funny things like, "I must go have a sleep."
Claire, 21, from Birmingham, (England, not Alabama!): Also very funny. Neither of her host families owned mirrors, so she hasn't seen herself in four weeks.
Keisha, 21, from London: Also hilarious, (it's a good group!) she has the thickest british accent I've ever heard and I couldn't understand her for the first two weeks.
Ali, 23, from London: Ali is a pro at Africa. She's been in Ghana for the past four months so she's a lot more chilled out than the rest of us. Last week she got a marraige proposal from one of her Tanzanian neighbors.
Doratea, 27, Birmingham: An art teacher who is originally from Sudan, so she brings some african flava to our mzungu group.
Gwen, 25, Belgium: Gwen already speaks like 45 languages and is much better than the rest of us at Swahili. Oh, Europeans...
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On a more sobering note...HIV/AIDS in Tanzania:
While in Njombe we visited an HIV testing site to get information about the HIV/AIDS rate in our specific region. We have been placed in the Iringa region because of its alarmingly high HIV infection rate, (up to 20% in some places). This is due to a number of reasons:
Iringa is located on a main bus and truck route. People pass through the region to go to Dar es Salaam, Lake Victoria, Kenya, Rwanda and Burundi in the North and Malawi and Mozambique in the South. Iringa is also a large university town so there are many young people milling around. And you know what young people do...
It has been proven that it is much easier for uncircumcised men to catch and spread HIV. Southern Tanzania is much more Christian than the heavily Muslim North, and most Muslim men are circumcised.
Gender roles and cultural beliefs add an extra element. The HIV infection rate is highest among people aged 24-50, (In the US the highest infection rate is 13-24). This is interesting because most women start to get married around age 24, so many of the people getting infected are married. Typically, women become pregnant within two years and many Tanzanians believe that it is uncouth to have sex when a woman is pregnant or breastfeeding. Since Tanzanian families have an average of five kids, it could be a decade before the husband and wife can be intimate on a regular basis. This leads, predictably, to infidelity. Men are almost expected to have affairs and some even take multiple wives! A don't ask, don't tell policy leads to infection within the marriage.
55% of Tanzanian infections are in women. It is much easier for a woman to get HIV than a man because the virus can very easily penetrate the vaginal wall. On top of all this, divorce is frowned upon and men often abuse their wives.
The last day in Njombe was a little strange. Houseboy Faki asked if he could keep my ipod. Apparently people here always ask you if they can have your things.
That same day, mama invited some random dude with a camera over to the house and we proceeded to have a two-hour photoshoot complete with props and wardrobe changes. They took photos of me doing everything from turning the TV on and off to squatting by a rock, (where an entire colony of fire ants crawled up my legs - which only caused a minor blip in the photoshoot schedule) then balancing on a treestump with Faki, then pretending to drive the truck with Mama, then pointing to the bumper sticker that said, "This car is protected by the blood of Christ." Afterwards the photographer asked if he could take a few pictures of just him and me. He gave the camera to Faki and held both my hands as Faki snapped away. He then thanked me, told me he would frame the pictures, and left. I'm sure that by next week all of Njombe will believe that I'm his new white wife.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I realized that I haven't told you all much about the other volunteers. They have been a big part of the experience and I've neglected to include them in my stories! We spend most of our time relaying wacky stories about our host families and talking about our favorite pasta dishes. So without further ado, here's the cast of characters:
Krista, 18, from Kansas: The other American girl. She's funny and outspoken...typical American! Unfortunately she got sick with ameobic dysentary which was immediately followed by a terrible ear infection. We thought she was going to die for a while but now she's ok.
Kyler, 21, from Maryland: A recent graduate from Emerson College in Boston and the only boy on the trip. He worked for Obama hardcore before coming to Tanz...but even he hasn't bought the Obama fabric because it's too ugly.
He got to kill a chicken in Njombe and one of the other volunteers videotaped it. We're all pretty jealous.
Laura, 24, from Adelaide, Australia: Very sweet primary school teacher from down undah. She's also really funny and both of us get into trouble in school because we chat too much and laugh at all the Swahili words that sound like dirty English words.
Annabelle, (Bella) 17, from Australia: Very mature and smart for her age. Much more mature than me. Probably smarter, too. She lives on a farm in Australia and has her own horse! She also showed us pictures of this activity where they castrate bulls and throw the amputated apendages at each other. Fun!
Jolene, 27, New Zealand: A bike courier who is originally from South Africa, so she has a silly accent. She is also the first of us to get malaria. She says funny things like, "I must go have a sleep."
Claire, 21, from Birmingham, (England, not Alabama!): Also very funny. Neither of her host families owned mirrors, so she hasn't seen herself in four weeks.
Keisha, 21, from London: Also hilarious, (it's a good group!) she has the thickest british accent I've ever heard and I couldn't understand her for the first two weeks.
Ali, 23, from London: Ali is a pro at Africa. She's been in Ghana for the past four months so she's a lot more chilled out than the rest of us. Last week she got a marraige proposal from one of her Tanzanian neighbors.
Doratea, 27, Birmingham: An art teacher who is originally from Sudan, so she brings some african flava to our mzungu group.
Gwen, 25, Belgium: Gwen already speaks like 45 languages and is much better than the rest of us at Swahili. Oh, Europeans...
------------------------------------------------------------------
On a more sobering note...HIV/AIDS in Tanzania:
While in Njombe we visited an HIV testing site to get information about the HIV/AIDS rate in our specific region. We have been placed in the Iringa region because of its alarmingly high HIV infection rate, (up to 20% in some places). This is due to a number of reasons:
Iringa is located on a main bus and truck route. People pass through the region to go to Dar es Salaam, Lake Victoria, Kenya, Rwanda and Burundi in the North and Malawi and Mozambique in the South. Iringa is also a large university town so there are many young people milling around. And you know what young people do...
It has been proven that it is much easier for uncircumcised men to catch and spread HIV. Southern Tanzania is much more Christian than the heavily Muslim North, and most Muslim men are circumcised.
Gender roles and cultural beliefs add an extra element. The HIV infection rate is highest among people aged 24-50, (In the US the highest infection rate is 13-24). This is interesting because most women start to get married around age 24, so many of the people getting infected are married. Typically, women become pregnant within two years and many Tanzanians believe that it is uncouth to have sex when a woman is pregnant or breastfeeding. Since Tanzanian families have an average of five kids, it could be a decade before the husband and wife can be intimate on a regular basis. This leads, predictably, to infidelity. Men are almost expected to have affairs and some even take multiple wives! A don't ask, don't tell policy leads to infection within the marriage.
55% of Tanzanian infections are in women. It is much easier for a woman to get HIV than a man because the virus can very easily penetrate the vaginal wall. On top of all this, divorce is frowned upon and men often abuse their wives.
In other interesting cultural news, a few friends directed me to this article about the albino killings:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/health/17albi.html?_r=1&emc=eta1
**A note on packages**
It's pretty expensive to send bulky packages to this far away part of the world, so I don't want anyone spending too much money! That said, you should send me things anyway.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Still have not managed to escape from Njombe. It rains here all day, every day. Even the girls from London are depressed.
Ok, so we have this houseboy named Faki. Fak, for short.
Faki is 16 years old and does all the cooking and cleaning. I'm not sure why anyone in their right mind would hire a teenage boy to do anything. Case in point: yesterday my host mama bought a chicken for dinner and Faki lost it. He left the gate open and it ran out. When I came home from school he was running around the neighborhood looking for it, but alas, it escaped and we had rice and beans. On the bright side, chickens are only $7 here so... guess what everybody's getting for christmas next year!
I also made the mistake of showing Faki my ipod shuffle. He didn't take it off for the next three days. Apparently he's a huge Beyonce fan because he kept listening to "Irreplaceable" on repeat. There seems to be a pattern here because another volunteer's host-sister keeps taking her shoes.
I actually really like Faki though. He doesn't speak any English except for "Good morning," so I'm forced to practice my kiswahili with him. My host mother thinks it's a good idea for me to help him cook dinner which basically consists of me watching Faki cook ugali while I eat peanuts and say the words "You are cooking ugali" in swahili over and over.
The families in Njombe feed us much more than in Iringa. My host mother told me I eat like a baby and asked if I was scared to get fat like her. I wasn't really sure what to say because of COURSE I'm scared to get fat like her. duh.
The families get very offended if you don't eat their food so I've taken to trying some anoroexic schemes to get rid of all the meat they give me: hiding it under the rice, wrapping it in a napkin and taking it to school the next day to throw out. Another volunteer actually hides half the food her family gives her in her bra so she can dump it in the trash at school.
I think I wrote earlier that I was picking up Kiswahili quickly. That was a lie, I'm sorry. Turns out that even though they don't really have a lot of verb tenses, they have 9 ways to say the word "there."
I also found this weird bug in my bed which I found out is called a Nairobi Fly. Apparently if they bite you your skin starts burning and falls off.
Ok, so we have this houseboy named Faki. Fak, for short.
Faki is 16 years old and does all the cooking and cleaning. I'm not sure why anyone in their right mind would hire a teenage boy to do anything. Case in point: yesterday my host mama bought a chicken for dinner and Faki lost it. He left the gate open and it ran out. When I came home from school he was running around the neighborhood looking for it, but alas, it escaped and we had rice and beans. On the bright side, chickens are only $7 here so... guess what everybody's getting for christmas next year!
I also made the mistake of showing Faki my ipod shuffle. He didn't take it off for the next three days. Apparently he's a huge Beyonce fan because he kept listening to "Irreplaceable" on repeat. There seems to be a pattern here because another volunteer's host-sister keeps taking her shoes.
I actually really like Faki though. He doesn't speak any English except for "Good morning," so I'm forced to practice my kiswahili with him. My host mother thinks it's a good idea for me to help him cook dinner which basically consists of me watching Faki cook ugali while I eat peanuts and say the words "You are cooking ugali" in swahili over and over.
The families in Njombe feed us much more than in Iringa. My host mother told me I eat like a baby and asked if I was scared to get fat like her. I wasn't really sure what to say because of COURSE I'm scared to get fat like her. duh.
The families get very offended if you don't eat their food so I've taken to trying some anoroexic schemes to get rid of all the meat they give me: hiding it under the rice, wrapping it in a napkin and taking it to school the next day to throw out. Another volunteer actually hides half the food her family gives her in her bra so she can dump it in the trash at school.
I think I wrote earlier that I was picking up Kiswahili quickly. That was a lie, I'm sorry. Turns out that even though they don't really have a lot of verb tenses, they have 9 ways to say the word "there."
I also found this weird bug in my bed which I found out is called a Nairobi Fly. Apparently if they bite you your skin starts burning and falls off.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Njombe
On Sunday we took a bus to a city called Njombe, which is much higher and colder than Iringa. I'm not sure why we're here, but I guess that's the way things go in Africa.
The bus trip itself was an experience. It was basically a five-hour daladala ride. Honestly, this must be the way they transport people to Hell. People were stuffed five or six to a four-seat row, and since there were no aisles you'd get stepped on when someone wanted to get out. Everybody also had a baby in their lap at one point or another and no less than seven armpits in the face. One of my many seat companions rested his chin on my shoulder when I was reading Why Men Love Bitches (not my book, ok?) and kept telling me how interesting it was. He actually asked if he could have it. I said no. At one point the bus slowed down and a woman on the side of the road ran up to the driver's side window and handed him a CHICKEN. The driver just passed the chicken back to another passenger who passed it back to another passenger and so on until someone stuffed it under a seat somewhere. I guess since they are 70% feathers, chickens are pretty compactible.
Njombe is ok...not quite as picturesque as Iringa. The new host family is nice, but they keep trying to feed me large quantities of really sketchy meat. Also my host mother keeps asking why I'm not married and/or having children right now.
The night before I left for Njombe I actually went to a wedding in Iringa, which was a long, drawn out affair. Everyone dances all the time at Tanzanian weddings. If you want to go somewhere, you have to dance there. We danced up to toast the bride and groom. Then they danced around with the wedding cake for a while. Then the bride's family danced over to the groom's family, then the groom's family danced over to the bride's family, then everyone danced in a conga line up to the bride to give her presents. Then the bride and groom danced to each table to thank everyone. Then we all danced to the buffet, and finally, 17 hours later, we danced to a taxi and went home.
Alright, goodbye for now! I have to PAY for my internet here so I can't write every day!
The bus trip itself was an experience. It was basically a five-hour daladala ride. Honestly, this must be the way they transport people to Hell. People were stuffed five or six to a four-seat row, and since there were no aisles you'd get stepped on when someone wanted to get out. Everybody also had a baby in their lap at one point or another and no less than seven armpits in the face. One of my many seat companions rested his chin on my shoulder when I was reading Why Men Love Bitches (not my book, ok?) and kept telling me how interesting it was. He actually asked if he could have it. I said no. At one point the bus slowed down and a woman on the side of the road ran up to the driver's side window and handed him a CHICKEN. The driver just passed the chicken back to another passenger who passed it back to another passenger and so on until someone stuffed it under a seat somewhere. I guess since they are 70% feathers, chickens are pretty compactible.
Njombe is ok...not quite as picturesque as Iringa. The new host family is nice, but they keep trying to feed me large quantities of really sketchy meat. Also my host mother keeps asking why I'm not married and/or having children right now.
The night before I left for Njombe I actually went to a wedding in Iringa, which was a long, drawn out affair. Everyone dances all the time at Tanzanian weddings. If you want to go somewhere, you have to dance there. We danced up to toast the bride and groom. Then they danced around with the wedding cake for a while. Then the bride's family danced over to the groom's family, then the groom's family danced over to the bride's family, then everyone danced in a conga line up to the bride to give her presents. Then the bride and groom danced to each table to thank everyone. Then we all danced to the buffet, and finally, 17 hours later, we danced to a taxi and went home.
Alright, goodbye for now! I have to PAY for my internet here so I can't write every day!
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