Dodoma region!
Russ and I have been placed in the Dodoma region. We will be teaching at the same secondary school. I'll be teaching math and Russ will be helping the school with the computer lab and also working at the local teacher's training college. I'm not sure if I should put the name of the village we'll be living in for the next two years on the Internet so email me if you would like to know. The dodoma region is known for wine and peanuts!
Russ and I cooked "American" food for our host family one night and it turned out pretty good. We cooked mashed potatoes, steamed carrots, fried okra, cornbread, and banana crisp. It was actually difficult to come up with things to cook here because of the lack of available foods and jikos. Even though we had to be creative with things like use cracked cookies instead of oatmeal for the crips it turned out fine and the ate everything up!
This weekend we went to Mikumi National Park kind of as a treat to ourselves for passing our Kiswahili exams and making it through training and saw lots of "safari" animals such as elephants, giraffes, zebras, lions, warthogs, etc. Check out the pictures...once I get them all loaded up.
We swear in as volunteers on Tuesday then we're all off to our sites. I've heard Russ and I have a pretty big house with a bathtub! There were two couples placed at our site previously. The first couple COSed (Close of Service after two years) and the next couple only lasted a week before they ETed. Russ and I will make it to COS. The plan for Christmas is for us Dodoma people is to spend it as our house.
As an answer to a question: The things I miss, apart from family and friends who I hope will visit in the coming years, are hot showers, tea garden drinks, and I must admit washing machines. Washing clothes by hand is brutal to the knuckles. I can heat up the water to take a warm bucket bath but that's a lot of work for our host family. Perhaps when we get to site we'll heat up the water if we don't already have hot water.
Things are coming to an end here during training and it's bitter sweet. Bitter because all the people that I've gotten to know over the past two months will be hours and many will be several days away, especially our host family. Sweet because our Peace Corps service is actually going to start now and we'll be placed in our new communities and start the real work of being a volunteer.
Russ and I cooked "American" food for our host family one night and it turned out pretty good. We cooked mashed potatoes, steamed carrots, fried okra, cornbread, and banana crisp. It was actually difficult to come up with things to cook here because of the lack of available foods and jikos. Even though we had to be creative with things like use cracked cookies instead of oatmeal for the crips it turned out fine and the ate everything up!
This weekend we went to Mikumi National Park kind of as a treat to ourselves for passing our Kiswahili exams and making it through training and saw lots of "safari" animals such as elephants, giraffes, zebras, lions, warthogs, etc. Check out the pictures...once I get them all loaded up.
We swear in as volunteers on Tuesday then we're all off to our sites. I've heard Russ and I have a pretty big house with a bathtub! There were two couples placed at our site previously. The first couple COSed (Close of Service after two years) and the next couple only lasted a week before they ETed. Russ and I will make it to COS. The plan for Christmas is for us Dodoma people is to spend it as our house.
As an answer to a question: The things I miss, apart from family and friends who I hope will visit in the coming years, are hot showers, tea garden drinks, and I must admit washing machines. Washing clothes by hand is brutal to the knuckles. I can heat up the water to take a warm bucket bath but that's a lot of work for our host family. Perhaps when we get to site we'll heat up the water if we don't already have hot water.
Things are coming to an end here during training and it's bitter sweet. Bitter because all the people that I've gotten to know over the past two months will be hours and many will be several days away, especially our host family. Sweet because our Peace Corps service is actually going to start now and we'll be placed in our new communities and start the real work of being a volunteer.
posted by lisa at
14:44
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