Africa Cup of Nations

Well I'm back in Dodoma to upload pictures, blog, and check email. There's so much to say - where to begin? (Updated on 29 Jan.)

Mistaken Wazee
So everbody wants to be friends of the wazungu here because, granted, we have more money than they do no matter what you say. So, the first week we arrived we met some people who were friends with previous PCVs, let's call them M. and G. They are very nice and know English pretty well. M. told us about an mzee that worked for the previous volunteers and also a family of Indians for 20 years so he knows how to cook Indian (my favorite!) and knows what Americans like and don't like. So an Mzee comes to our house the second week or so and I ask him if he worked for the previous PCVs and he says yes so we say come back when the school opens in January to start. Meanwhile, another mzee, a chef, sees us in town and asks if we someone to cook meals for us. We say we have hired the person who worked for the previous PCVs but we got his information in case it didn't work out. Then, another mzee comes to our house and he doesn't want work, he wants money. We were told that people would ask to borrow money from us so we lend him Ths. 3000. He says he will pay us back at the end of the month so we get his informtion down. A few days before he was supposed to pay us back he asks for Ths. 5000, which I was a little hesitant to give him but Russ thinks it's OK so we go ahead and give it to him. He has a note saying he's going to a funeral and needs money for travel and for contributing to the service (very commmon to contribute money to help pay for weddings and funerals here). He says he will pay us back in a few weeks. Well, what do you know, a few weeks later, before he was supposed to pay us back, he asks for more money. This time it's Ths. 6000 to pay a local electrical company because they are going to shut off his electricity. He says he's not able to cook food without electricity and Russ asks him if he has a charcoal jiko (every Tanzanian does) and he says "No." Russ says sorry but until you pay us back you we can't lend you any more money. Only after that third meeting did we tell M. about him and his response was "Oh! That is a bad mzee" to which Russ and I burst out laughing. We figured so and I believe we're out Ths. 8000. Anyway, back to the first mzee. He starts working for us and I notice he looks a little nervous. Why would someone who has been working for other people for so long look so nervous I wonder? The next day we run into the "real" mzee...the one who worked for previous PCVs. Well, we had to let the guy we hired go (we gave him a good amount of money to say sorry, you lied to us, but we want you to be able to buy food for your family for the rest of the month) and hired the real mzee...who, by the way, is doing a fabulous job keeping our house, inside and outside, clean and cooks great Tanzanian and Indian food.

Mountain Bikes
Russ and I received (matching) mountain bikes from the PC! Bran spakin' new Trek 820's silver and blue still in the box in which they were shipped from America. (Jealous, Chris? ;) Russ had a good old time putting them together...if you know Russ he likes to take things apart and put things together. We took them out for a test run two weekends ago, with our matching shiny silver PC required helmets of course, and rode for an hour. We visited the cathedral that was recently built on the site of slaves who camped out on their way to the coast to be traded. The grounds keeper saw us bike up the hill. We stand out like sore thumbs...red sore thumbs crimson by the fierce African sun. He told us about the slave path...quite eerie to know that thousands of people passed that very place only to be sold across the oceans. Then we passed village after village waving to all the children who yelled "Mzungu!" and giggled. Much better than the little kids who scream and cry and run away from you. It was beautiful out in the villages, where we practiced the greetings we know in the local tribal language. One our way back I noticed a mouse run across the road. I stopped and watched it as it digged in the ground. Then I noticed a small snake (about 1 foot long) pop it's head up out of a hole like a periscope in a submarine. It did this many times. It was timing it's attack on the mouse who was hopping around the place. I called Russ over to see this and as soon as he came the snake wrapped around the mouse and strangled it.

Drought
We have having the worst drought that people can remember here in Tanzania. The short rainy season was supposed to start in December. Sometimes it's late and starts, at the latest, mid-January. But the lack of rain has caused many people much pain. Goats and cows which are usually traded for maybe Ths. 60,000 and Ths. 150,000 respectively are going for Ths. 15,000 each in hopes of ridding the animals and making some, if any, profit before they die of starvation. It hit home to us when a cow from the family we receive milk from every morning died right in it's pen on the school campus. It was a big cow, bloated by the heat from the sun. The next day a grave was being dug right next to Russ's computer lab, that house and the lab are neighbors, to bury the cow. No water = no feed for animals. Beggars come to our house almost daily now and we hand out Ths. 50 and Ths. 100 here and there. I'm not sure what else to do.

Teaching
For the past few weeks I've been going to class, not as a student this time, but as a teacher. This is a new concept for me. I teach two classes and we meet three times a week each. One class is a "science" class that focuses their secondary education on the science (chemistry, physics, biology, mathematics) besides the normal classes of civics, social studies, etc. In this class I have about 29 boys (all of which are boarding students) and 1 girl. These students are very interested in learning about mathematics and are challenging me daily. My other class is focused on the "arts" and concentrate on things like history, social science, languages?, but do not take heavy science courses. This class is also about 30 students the majority of which are boys. They do not seem to care about what I have to say. Some don't take notes, others sleep until I catch them and wake them up, and nobody answers any questions I ask (unlike my other class). It's quite frustrating. I talked to our good friend at the school, who is also the discipline master (no, he doesn't use the stick - he likes to talk things out) and he talked to the students. A few wrote me letters apologizing for their behavior but I don't think it has helped. There's a belief in Tanzania that math is so difficult that it's nearly impossible to do. I'm trying to get around that and tell my students that math is fun and easy. We'll see. Any ideas, advice?

Russ is teaching computers and the class is optional. There are about 15 or so "working" computers and the students just want to play games. So, Russ physically disabled all the CD-Rom drives so the kids can't play games...just yet. He would like to actually teach them something about computers before they play. Right now the girls are doing better than the boys. The boys just want to type their names into the screen savers and have their names bounce around while the girls pay attention to Russ and have learned to open, close, and minimize windows. Using the mouse proves to be difficult for the students so Russ is starting off teaching them to play solitaire...not really for playing the game but more for learning how to click and drag, click, and double-click. It's going slowly. With five students per computer you can imagine the amount of trouble Russ has sometimes in getting the class' attention.

Africa Cup of Nations
Well, Russ and I do have access to satellite TV because we're not in the bush. We've been watching the Africa Cup of Nations (this year in Cairo, Egypt) - a soccer tournament for the African continent, although not every country is represented (including TZ). So I'm cheering for Cameroon which has Samuel Eto'o (Africa's player of the year) and man he can kick! I feel a bit out of place being the only female in a swarm of 50 or more men who is not serving drinks. I should be at home cooking, right? Well not this mzungu...I like soccer and I'm going to watch it. Last night we watched Ghana overpower Senegal. I've watched Libya, Angola, Cameroon, Senegal, Cote D'voire, and Egypt to name a few. There's a player on one of the teams whose name is "Jamba." In Kiswahili "jamba" means "fart" so there were some laughs when his jersey was shown. Side note: M. received a "jamba juice" shirt from a previous PCV and he wore it out one night! I think the tournament goes into February. We may be able to watch the superbowl in town...needless to say Russ is excited.

The power went out last week as it does every so often so we started up the charcoal stove. I feel for Anna who doesn't have electricity at all. It took forever for the coal to get started and there were so many mosquitoes outside. Speaking of Anna, she said that a few weeks ago one of her three dogs gave birth to four puppies, one of which is going to Courtney.

Thanks for all the packages we have been receiving and phone calls! We have learned to make friends with the postal workers. I think the school has stopped getting our packages for us...what happens now is I pop into the post office and say hi to ladies who work there and ask if there are any packages for us. They know our names, and we're the only wazungu in town besides an older couple, so they give us any packages that came from Dodoma for us.