Swearing In and Move to Site

16/8/12 – 2:45pm

I'm on a very long bus ride to site, so I figure it's as good a time
as any to get my blog on. So let's see, the big news is – I'm now
officially a Peace Corps Volunteer. Before I was a Peace Corps
Trainee, but I passed all my exams and survived training so Peace
Corps decided I can stay on another two years. Speaking of tests, we
had a bunch – medical exam, technical (aka teaching) exam, written
Swahili exam and oral Swahili interview. The fact the I passed the
oral interview is a testament to the existence of miracles.

Swearing in was a fancy ol' ceremony at the Ambassador's Residence. I
guess we aren't quite important enough to make it to the actual
Embassy, but the ambassador's house was pretty cool. We all dressed to
the nines; lots of people had Tanzanian dresses and such made here,
but I went with a more "used-car-salesman" look. Speeches were made,
songs were sung, oaths to defend the constitution were taken, and
tasty apps and zerts were eaten. Actually there weren't any zerts I
just like saying zerts. Zerts. Anyway, it was fun. We also discovered
the ambassador's house is like a block from the beach, so I got to see
the Indian Ocean up close for the first time. It looks wet.

After training got done in Morogoro we spent four days hanging out in
Dar Es Salaam before swearing in yesterday. We had some more info
sessions and learned some money matters. I think I'll be making
somewhere around 300,000 Tanzanian Shillings a month, so like $6 or so
a day. I also just hung out with our training class and took a mini
vacation to America for $20. Well no, that would be impossible unless
maybe you knew how to apperate. Which I don't. But I did go to Subway
and a mall, went shopping at a grocery store with checkouts and
conveyor belts and baggers, got ice cream and saw the Batman movie in
a theater. It was pretty great.

So now I'm on a bus to move to my site for realzies. All our school
principals came to Dar to learn how to deal with us odd Americans and
are now heading back on the bus with us. Let's talk about
transportation in Tanzania, since I'm experiencing it currently. So if
you have money, there's charter domestic flights that can get you
between big cities or you can hire a car and driver. In the city,
taxis are pretty common in the cities.

If you want to be cheaper, you ride dala dalas around town, which are
basically 9 person vans or sometimes small busses. They can get VERY
crowded – like 20+ in a 9 person van. Usually you are standing up, but
it's okay, you aren't going to fall down since there is nowhere to
fall. Personal bubbles do not exist. Another option are piki-piki's or
motorcycles. There are LOTS of motorcycle-taxis that'll take you
around the city. They are pretty dangerous though, and Peace Corps
doesn't allow volunteers to use them. Going between nearby cities you
can take coasters, which are larger, slightly less crowded dalas. Then
there are full on buses to get to different regions of the country.
They are more less crowded and more organized than dalas or coasters,
but are still crowded. Most of them pack 5 rows across instead of the
typical 4 in the states. Also, the trips are looong. I think my trip
from Dar to Tukuyu will be somewhere around 13 hours, though we've
been going through a bunch of construction so it might be a little
more. The roads in my area are pretty good – they are mostly paved
though there are lots of random speed bumps and stops for police check
points and construction, so it's pretty tricky to sleep. So you blog.

There are two interesting things about bus rides that I have learned.
First, the art of "chimba dawa" which literally translates to "dig for
medicine," but actually means peeing. These buses don't have
bathrooms, and they don't like to stop more than every five hours or
so, so you either have to be in significant pain, pee in a bottle, or
dehydrate yourself. Most, including myself, go with dehydration,
though I have seen all three being practiced. Often when the bus does
stop, it just stops by a patch of woods – one side of the bus is
designated "boys," the other "girls." Second, food. Though you might
have to pee, you won't go hungry. At any stop of any kind (including
police checkpoints and construction), there are a bunch of guys that
will run up to the sides of the bus and sell everything from bananas
to jewelry to watches. From my experience, the food is really, really
good. Today I had an excellent breakfast of chapatti, samosas and a
banana, all bought out my window, and for maybe $1-$1.50. It's
actually pretty fun to buy stuff.

So what's driving like here? First off, for anyone thinking about
coming here, don't even consider driving your own vehicle. I would
instantly crash if I tried to drive here. Lanes, stop signs and
lights, and distinctions between road and shoulder are not followed to
any significant degree. The best way to describe it I think is a sort
of complicated dance. Vehicles honk and flash their lights to
communicate, but also generally have a guy on the passenger's seat
just to signal other drivers. Buses tend to pass pretty recklessly and
often have to squeeze in between vehicles at the last second to avoid
being hit by oncoming traffic (hence the signaler). They also have a
nasty tendency to pass on blind curves with their horn blaring to warn
opposing traffic. Fun times.

So my school starts up on September 10th. From now until then, I'll be
setting up my house and prepping for school. Unless things have
changed drastically since I last saw it, my house has a bed, dresser,
desk, and some chairs. All things considered, that's pretty good, but
I've got lots to buy. I'm still not totally sure what classes I'll be
teaching, but once that's figured out I can start prepping lesson
plans and such. I'm also hoping to get a bike ASAP so I can get to
town easier. Next week I'm headed to Peace Corps's Mbeya Super
Regional Conference, which I think is focused on HIV/AIDS prevention
stuff. We shall see. It'll be cool to meet all my Peace Corps
neighbors as well.

Oh, I'm getting a new address soon, so if anyone is thinking about
sending anything in the next week or so, maybe just wait until I get a
P.O. Box set up – I'll get it faster if it doesn't have to go through
the Peace Corps office. I'll post my address when I get it.

Righto – time to attempt a nap again. I must bid you adieu dear readers.

Site Visit Etc

Pictures! Check my facebook! Here's a link that should work even if you live under a rock and don't do facebook: Pictures!

K so - my site. My nearest banking town is actually Tukuyu, not Mbeya. I spent most of my week of "site visit" in Tukuyu shadowing a current volunteer, Hannah. Another new volunteer, Mandy, and I were shadowing Hannah. Basically, we just sat around cooking (mostly them) and eating (mostly me) American food and watching movies. It was awesome. Hannah has a really safi house. "Safi", by the way, translates to "clean" but also is slang for like "really nice" or something. Anyway, spent a lot of time making the house nice, and has a mini refrigerator and oven and such, its super nice. So yeah, I felt like I was in America. We also got to walk around Tukuyu and see the area. Its really beautiful - hilly and green, with lots of evergreen trees. Its also pretty chilly - maybe getting down to the low 50's at night. At first that doesn't sound so bad, but then you have to remember my house has zero heating or insulation, so its low 50's inside, which is a bit chilly. But I like it! Cool is way better than hot in my book. OH! I got to fly my kite for the first time in Africa! It was quite excellent. The wind wasn't great, so I had to run around like an idiot. When we started there were like 3 kids on the field but within a couple minutes probably 50 kids were running around chasing the kite. It was literally the greatest thing.

I just spent one night actually at my school - my house is still being used by student teachers and the students are in the middle of exams, so there wasn't too much for me to do. My school seems pretty great. Its about 16km down the main road from Tukuyu, then 5km down a dirt road. The school is a boarding school sorta out there all by itself. I'm somewhere around 10km away from the nearest village with a market. There isn't any public transportation from the main road out to the school, so I'll need to get a bike or make friends with someone with a car ASAP.

So I just finished all the language exams yesterday. I did my final written exam a couple weeks ago. Just got the results back, and I did way better than I thought! 92%, yeehaw! The oral interview was yesterday, which I'm sure I did a lot worse on, but I didn't feel HORRIBLE about it, so that's good!

Training is finally really slowing down. Today all we did was practice singing the national anthem of Tanzania (and the U.S. one as well. never gonna get those lyrics down.) and "Don't Worry, Be Happy" which we translated into Swahili. We're apparently going to be singing a lot for our Swearing In ceremony. Which, by the way, is next Wednesday! We're headed to Dar on Sunday, then go directly to our sites on Thursday the 16th.

I'll start teaching probably around the 7th of September. Yesterday I got a bunch of books for A-level physics and math. I was looking through them, and there is some pretty intense stuff they go through. I've got a lot of review (and lets be honest, first time learning) to do! I'm excited though, it will cool to really know my stuff physics wise after two years of teaching it.