The Twilight Zone

It's 3:00 in the morning and my alarm goes off. I have just enough time to put on my head lamp and run to the choo before I hear the Peace Corps car pull up outside of my house. My Mama wakes up and Baba greets Jumapili as he walks through the door. Meanwhile, I'm in my room scrambling in the darkness trying to get my bag packed. He wasn't supposed to be there until 3:30! But I guess I was the first stop. I finally emerge from my bedroom and say goodbye to Mama and Baba, and then I was of! This week was shadow week and I was on my way to Njombe in the Southern Highlands. After 16 hours on a cramped bus ride, JP, Tyler, and myself arrived and met our PCV, Marilyn.....None of us could have prepared for the days to follow. Welcome to the Twilight Zone. She wasn't exactly what we were expecting. She was very excited to have us for the next few days, and she talked A LOT, and was a bit scatter-brained. Marilyn is an Education Volunteer and she teaches Math and Life Skills at the secondary school in her village. She is 61 years old, she doesn't speak Swahili, and it is my personal belief that she has gone a bit mad. I wish that I could express my experience through these words, but there is no way that you can fully understand the extent of crazy that I have endured for the past few days. But she was very welcoming and happy to have us. We took a taxi back to Marilyn's village. Njombe is completely different from the Tanzania that I have seen thus far. It's up in the mountains and it was freezing. It was probably about 40 to 50 degrees and really windy. On the way to the house, the road was lined with miles of dead corn fields surrounded by forests of tall pine trees. I couldn't believe I was still in Africa. The next day, we went to church with Marilyn in the morning, and then we got to help her teach a life skills session. Ironically the session was about effective communication, and I've never had a harder time understanding anybody in my life to be honest. But it was fun to get to work with the kids. Even the people here are very different from what I'm used to in Kilulu. The kids were very shy and it was almost difficult to get them to talk to us at times. Meanwhile, in Kilulu there are always kids talking and singing in my face. It was so bizarre! Later that day, we got a chance to test out our cooking skills. Marilyn's house is so different from what I'm used to or what I was expecting. It was huge and the walls were attached to the ceiling so that there weren't any critters coming in at night. She had a courtyard behind the house, and her water came right out of a faucet right there! No need to go fetch water every day from the well! She even gets electricity from 7 to 10 every night! She's living the high life.
So, for dinner,we decided we would make pizza, pasta, and a salad. Marilyn had bought a huge block of delicious mozzarella the day before! We cooked on a kerosene stove, a charcoal stove, and over a wood fire. We baked the pizza and the cake in a couple of pots that we basically turned into a dutch oven. We had to work hard for this meal, but we knew it would be worth it in the end. Everything takes so long to cook and there is so much more work that goes into cooking out here. But we were successful! And the chocolate cake was so delicious that we decided it was necessary bake it again the next night. Blair would have been proud of my extreme baking skills. Who needs an oven anyways? The food was great, but on top of that we discovered that Marilyn had a bucket of wine in her kitchen. "I'm sorry what did you say?....You have a bucket of wine in your kitchen that you made yourself three weeks ago?....Where is it and why aren't we drinking it?" She made the wine with pineapple, passion fruit, mango and banana, and it was delicious. That wine was literally our saving grace this week. I don't think the three of us would have survived our shadow without it.
The next day we got up early to introduce ourselves at the morning assembly at the school. It was freezing!! I can't believe how cold and windy it is up here. We met the headmaster of the school and introduced ourselves to all of the students. This school was much bigger and nicer than the one in Kilulu. The students live in dorms at the school. We walked into one of the dorm rooms to take a look. It was just a huge room filled with about 20 bunk beds jammed together. The students all sleep two to a bed, which looked about the size of a twin bed, and then they keep a trunk of their belongings under the bed. Everyday they line up outside the kitchen with their plastic bowls and cups to get their food. After the assembly that day, they couldn't start class right away because they had to go out to the school farm to collect corn. The school schedule didn't seem very structured and walking around, there were even a number of classroom full of students but there was no teacher. The classrooms were just huge rooms filled with small wooden desks all pushed together and a large chalkboard up front. There are probably about 50 students in a classroom at a time. We got a chance to visit the staff room and talk with the other teachers a bit. There are 700 students at the school and 10 teachers. They teach classes for English, Math, History, Geography, Swahili, and Civics.
After school, we returned home for a bit before heading to the village soccer field. There was a game that day between the students and the teachers and Tyler and JP had been invited to play with the teachers. Girls don't get to play soccer. Instead I got to watch them with Marilyn who continued to ramble on and talk my ear off. But I got some good pictures of the guys trying to keep up with the Tanzanians. The game ended up being a tie at 2-2. Later we returned home and got things ready for dinner. We decided that we had had a long trying day with Bibi (Marilyn) that day and we needed to keep working on the bucket of wine. I made some pasta sauce using tomatoes, garlic, onion, some seasoning, and a can of V8, and we ate the leftover pasta. It turned out pretty good actually. And of course we baked the chocolate cake again. We were all drinking bucket wine all night. Even Marilyn started to get a little tipsy. We got tot talking and laughing, and eventually somehow the boys decided that they needed haircuts and I would be the one to do it. "Of course, I can cut your hair for you. I've only been drinking bucket wine for the past 4 hours and its only pitch black outside. Sounds like a great idea!" So we proceeded to the courtyard. I put on my head lamp and began to cut JP's hair in the darkness of the night as he sipped on his glass of bucket wine. I gave him a good trim and then it was Tyler's turn. Surprisingly nobody was injured during this exercise, and the hair cuts weren't too shabby. I may have a future as a drunken hair stylist. After we decided that we weren't going to make it to the bottom of the bucket that night (and after Tyler fell asleep mid conversation in his chair) we figured it was time for bed. We said goodnight to Marilyn, and the three of us piled into the other bed and I read The Hobbit to the guys as they drifted off into a deep bucket wine sleep. I was soon to follow. It was such a fun night. The next morning, we all woke up and Tyler asked "What happened last night!? Wait, you cut our hair and then read The Hobbit to us?! We're staying with a crazy lady in the middle of this weird village in Tanzania where its freezing?! What's going on?"
So my shadow experience started out a bit painful, but proved to be a great time. Solution to problem: cook up a good batch of bucket wine, and have some good friends handy.

Before leaving for shadow last week, we had our site announcements!! It was very exciting and the whole day I couldn't wait to find out where I would be living! I got assigned to the Mtwara region in south eastern Tanzania. I will be living and working in the village of Nanjota, which is in the Masasi District. I don't know much about it yet, but I will be able to ask Ellegard more questions when I get back to Muheza from my shadow. I am really excited! I will be working in a new site. There hasn't been a volunteer living there before. My house is about half a kilometer from the secondary school. I can't wait to find out more. This past week we have just continued with technical training sessions at MATI. I have learned more about tree identification, and the different uses for certain trees. I learned how to make natural pesticides, and fertilizer with one tree. We learned about one tree called Mwarobaini, which means 40 because it has about 40 different uses. Parts of it can be used as medicine, to filter water, its entirely edible and incredibly nutritious. It's an awesome tree!
My host family is doing really well. I can't believe how quickly time has gone by and soon I will have to leave them. This Sunday we have a village party to see everyone before we leave for site, which will be fun. I think that's all the news I have for right now. Hope everyone is doing well at home1 Wish me luck so that I survive the 16 hour bus ride back to Muheza!