the dog days of Christmas

It was Christmas? Really? It didn't feel like it with the 90 degree heat all day long. Anyway, we did some shopping after I spent four hours at the Internet Cafe uploading pictures. We bought some things to eat during Christmas like cheese and pasta and potatoes. The market was super crowded and a few children followed us around while we bought baskets, etc. I kept an eye on our backpack. It is said that Dodoma is the beggars capital of TZ. Around every corner there is a person saying "Naomba" or "I beg". I gave an old man a coin on Christmas Eve but I can't afford to give everyone a coin. We boarded an empty bus to Courtney's site and waited for an hour until it filled up then we left.

Courtney has a very cute little house. She is about an hour from Dodoma in a small village. It's about a 15 minute walk from where the bus lets you off to her house. On the way out of the bus I cut my toe and it started to bleed down my toes into my Chacos. Good thing we were just a few minutes from a PC medical kit! Courtney is the sixth or seventh volunteer (correction: Courtney is the second volunteer at her site so the volunteer before her bought all that great stuff. Anna is the sixth or seventh volunteer at her site. at her site so she was set up pretty well with a fridge, small oven and two stove burners, radio, lots of books (we all borrowed a few), curtains, etc.

That night for Christmas Eve lunch dinner we had baked macaroni and cheese with peas and carrots. Courtney is an awesome host and cook!! We helped her out with a few things but she was cooking up a storm the whole time we where there. We opened a bottle of wine that we had bought in Dodoma and listened to Christmas songs on the radio. For desert we had banana bread and then played Apples to Apples.

Christmas morning was bright and sunny. We all said Merry Christmas to each other and ate freshly baked coffee cake and sweet pineapple for breakfast. For the rest of the day we really just read the magazines and books that were collecting in Courtney's living room. Lunch was scalloped potatoes with ham (sliced deli ham) and oranges. Once again it was delicious!! Courtney is an awesome cook. We listened to my ipod shuffle as Christmas songs on the radio werea bit depressing. People's families called if they could get through. We tried to text people but the network was saturated and celtel doesn't have very good coverage where Courtney lives (she uses vodocom).

For Christmas dinner Courtney and Anna made vegetable curry with rice, freshly baked bread, and peanut butter cookies. Awesome! We opened our other bottle of wine and played Quiddler, like scrabble but with cards, late into the night.

This morning we were off on the early bus to Dodoma to do some internet (what I'm doing right now) and buying a few more things before Dan, Anna, Russ, and I head to our villages. The bus was so crowded this morning that a girl had to sit on my lap the whole way!

Deb - thanks for the info. I'll email you our address and let my mom know she doesn't need to get the egg carrying case.

School starts on January 2 and I do not know what level of math I will be teaching but we should be having a staff meeting soon to sort all of that out.

dodoma for christmas

I'm here in Dodoma with Dan, Anna, Courtney, and of course, Russ. It's really good to see some familiar faces! We all have pretty interesting stories and I'll just list a few in no particular order...

We can get mangoes in our village and they cost 200 T.Shs (or 20 cents each!).

Russ and I made spaghetti last week and it was awesome! All the fruits and vegies are fresh here and taste so good...we made sauce from scratch...

We get a liter of milk daily but I don't drink any partly because it's whole milk and I got diarrhea the last time I drank it. We bought an egg tray in town and some eggs. Apparently when someone sells eggs they use the tray so as we were carrying this tray of eggs through town our whole village was laughing at us thinking the wazungu were selling eggs! Mom - talk to Anna's mom - she sent Anna an egg carrying case which is like a little plastic purse. Maybe you could find out where Anna's mom got it and send us one!

There was an issue at our school a few weeks ago. Apparently the boarding girls from Forms 5 and 6 did not do their cleanliness activities and therefore were not given dinner. Well, they were hungry so they started to bang on the doors and made a lot of noise. The principal was called and things were figured out. The girls ended up eating dinner but some where suspended from school for a few days.

Russ wants to build a pizza oven and raise bees for honey and wax.

Our neighbors have pigeons in a sort of chicken coop outside. I believe they eat them like they would chickens.

We have a hibiscus tree outside our window and I'm hoping my plumeria twig will grow up so i can plant it!

We are going to hire an mzee, old man, to help us out when school starts. He will clean and cook us lunch. He, like many tanzanians, have a hard time distinguishing "r"'s and "l"'s...so sometimes i'm called Risa and sometimes Russ is called Lassi.

Finished Guns, Germs, and Steel...good book...it reminded me a lot of Age of Empires when reading it!

We had a huge rain storm the other day. First the winds blew from the East and caused the dirt in the roads to swirl up a hundred feet or so. Then the rains came and we found out that there is a leak in our ceiling in the kitchen. The water just sprinkles through. It will be fixed after Christmas.

You wouldn't know it was Christmas except for the one radio in the soko (market) that plays Christmas songs.

Dodoma has so many more things that our little village so we have a big ole list of things to buy. The other pcvs are being so nice as to follow us around while we gather things they already have from the pcvs they replaced. Russ has a cell phone! Email me for the number. We should be able to make it to Dodoma about once a month so expect an update to this blog or replies to emails about every month. I found a great internet cafe here and it has made uploading pictures a lot quicker.

Courtney, Anna, and Dan are doing well. Anna has two mosquito nets up because of the mice and bugs at her home. She has no electricity and sleeps with a flashlight and phone under her pillow. She would like to get a cat, like many PCVs, to get rid of the mice. I thought we had it bad with just roaches! Courtney is nice enough to share her space with us all. Dan locked himself out of his house...briefly... ah yes, typical Peace Corps stories.

Hopefully we'll get a radio while in town so that we can actually hear news and know what's going on in the world!

Small world: So we all went out to eat last night at a restaurant and saw two wazungu women sipping wine and talking. After a while, and listening to our conversations, one girl came over and asked if we were Peace Corps Volunteers. So we said "yeah!" and she said she was Emily and her friend, Alli, just finished their PC service in Ghana and were travelling for a few months before heading back to the states. Emily is from the same town as Brendan and actually saw him at the PC office in Dar last week!

quick post!

so there is internet in the next village...sort of...it's a government building that has private internet and our friend asked if we could use it to check our email... so this will be a short post and will not happen often.

as my mom mentioned we live very simply. we have fought roaches (and are winning!) and have gotten into the routine of filtering and boiling water. our site is very dry, brown, and dusty at the moment but i hear it should rain any day now.

russ is fixing up and cleaning the computer lab at the school while i go into the market and buy food. what is available to us: beans, rice, potatoes, okra, tomatoes, nyanya chungu (like bitter tomatoes), pumpkin leaves (they're excellent), spinach (mchicha - which i can't eat because of an allergy i have with spinach), leaves of sweet potato, and garlic. that's about it. i would love peas and carrots... maybe in dodoma.

well, i've got to go so i will try to upload pictures when in dodoma in a few weeks.

Final destination

This is written by Lisa's mom since there is no internet in her town. I told Lisa that I would update her blog and let you know how she and Russ are doing. PRIMITIVE conditions! They have moved to a small town to teach in the local school. Their house has no running water. But a neighbor close by has water and they carry 5 gallon buckets on their heads (like the natives) [or by arms in our heads get sore!]to their house. I just got off the phone with them and they are busy doing laundry with a bar of soap and bucket of water. They need to boil all their drinking water and got their stove hooked up to electricity shortly after they arrived. They have no refrig but can purchase one if they need. They bought a coil to heat up their bath water (bucket) and that was a treat. The house needs a lot of cleaning and roach extermination so that is keeping them busy until the school year resumes in early January. There are about 5 fellow PC "nearby" meaning a 3 hour busride away. So they will spend Christmas with these friends. They have NO contact with the outside world (maybe not such a bad thing, nowadays). They plan to buy a shortwave radio so at least they can get some news and music, etc. I have a International calling card and call them all the time The connection is excellent. They are very upbeat and cheerful everytime I talk to them. A couple of kids live next door and come to visit. They [try to] only speak Swahili. Before they left for their post, they celebrated Thanksgiving in the capital at the embassy. There was food (turkey, pumpkin pie, etc) and drink for about 200 peace corps people. Good to know our tax money was finally put to good use!!
Cissy (lisa's mom)