Good Day Sunshine

Well, the seasons are changing, the mangoes are ripe for the picking, villagers are preparing their farms for planting, and it is hotter than Hell in the village of Nanjota these days. Most of the day I just try to find shade and keep myself from sweating uncontrollably. I am glad that there aren't any thermometers to tell me how hot it really is. The mangoes are ripe now and everywhere I go in the village, if a mango falls from a tree, the moment it hits the dirt and you hear the thud of the mango, swarms of children come running out of nowhere fighting for the ripe mango. Mangoes are pretty much the only fruit that's available in the village. Luckily I am a huge fan, and I could eat mangoes all day. I'm so happy they're ready!
This week there was a soccer game at the field in front of my house. The secondary school students played. It was the boys from Form 1 versus Form 3. Meanwhile the girls and I played volleyball nearby without the net.
The Country Director came to visit the village this week and talk about progress. She said that my house looked like something out of Hansel and Gretel and she was very impressed with the chai that I had cooked for her. She was very nice and helpful with answering questions about future work and making sure that I was doing well. She gave me some magazines to hand out to the kids later, which almost turned into a riot at my front door when I ran out of them and there were still many kids who hadn't gotten one.
The next day, I was sitting outside the front of my friend Mama Tupatupa's house with her as we shelled some cashews that we had just roasted. Sidenote: There was one day when I roasted cashews and shelled them and ate them on four separate occasions with four different families. I can't leave my house without someone feeding me cashews, or asking me to help them roast cashews, or go with them to their farm to harvest cashews. All I ate was cashews that day, and it was enough. Cashews have become a major part of my diet. Luckily I like them. Anyhoo, back to the story...Mama Tupatupa's brother wanders over to say hello, and begins to tell me that he would like to have an American wife, so I needed to keep my eyes out for a wife for him when I go back to America. I said okay and asked him what his criteria was. He's looking for a taller white woman with long hair. So if anyone is interested in a totally eligible, Kimakuwa-speaking, cashew-farming villager from the deep and dirty south of Tanzania, I found him! Please contact me. I've also gotten to learn a bit of the tribal language of Kimakuwa too. The villagers are always happy to hear me speaking Kmakuwa, even if its only a few random words here and there.
One day this week, I visited the secondary school and talked to the principal there for a while about possible project ideas. The secondary school in my village is the only school for the entire ward, which includes 6 separate villages and approximately 13,000 people. But there are only two permanent teachers at the school and there is no nearby water source at the school. So many times, students have to leave the classroom to walk a couple hours to go get water for the school, which takes away from their study time. Also, they still don't have any water to drink while at school and no food, so it is difficult for them to study. So I talked with the teachers about maybe doing a water project there, whether that be looking into water catchment for the school buildings or building some kind of well near the school, I don't know yet. But eventually they want to build dormitories and a kitchen so that students can live at the school since many of them come from far away. However, none of these things can happen if there isn't first water readily available at t he school. I also talked to them about doing an after school peer education and life skills club, as often times many of the students have to teach themselves, and there is an overwhelming problem with girls leaving school due to pregnancy.
The other day there was a massive thunder storm in the village. Luckily I had made it back to my house from the village office before the rain started. I was sitting in my house shelling peanuts that a neighbor had given me as a gift the day before. It started to downpour, and the rain was so loud when it hit my tin roof that I thought my whole house was going to cave in. I scrambled for some empty buckets to set up in my courtyard to catch water coming off my roof. It was a really good feeling to see those buckets fill up with water all by themselves. Then in the front of my house there was a herd of goats running past my front door. They all got scared of the thunder and began to scatter. They started to crowd and kick at my front door trying to get shelter from the storm as I sat inside shelling my peanuts.
Last Saturday, I visited my friend, Maimuna, who is one of the women in the women's AIDS group that I've been talking to. She farms and sells upupu, which in English I've been told is cow rash beans. They taste a bit like lima beans, but they take two full days to cook before you can eat them without becoming intoxicated. So I helped her finsh up the cooking and then we sat outside her house on a mat yelling "buy upupu!" together until people began to stop by to buy the delicious and nutritious upupu! I talked with Maimuna more about helping the group to collect and manage money to start a chicken project that they would like to do to help generate income for the 12 group members.
In addition to cashews and Kimakuwa, another characteristic of Nanjota is the number of rats that one will encounter in the village. I found out recently that my neighbor, Uncle John, catches rats at his farm and brings them home to cook up with ugali for dinner every night. At first I thought that the rats and I could coexist peacefully, but they have gotten out of hand. One night I couldn't even sleep because the rats in my house were apparently throwing a party. Why? I don't know, but I didn't get an invitation and i didn't want one. The next night I'm laying in the dark and I hear a noise coming from my bedroom door. I turn on my light and take a look to find a rat gnawing away at the corner of my wood door. I think fast and grab the can of bug repellent I keep under my bed. I jump out of bed and proceed to run around my room in my underwear spraying this rat in the face with my bug repellent while he scrambles and tries to find an escape route. He finally disappears into the wall and I go back to sleep. A few minutes later, he appears again and proceeds to chew at my door. So I start spraying him in the face again. I couldn't bring myself to beat the rat to death in cold blood, so I figured the bug spray was my only other option at the time. After the second spray, he didn't come back. The next morning my neighbor came to visit and I told her about my rat troubles. She was kind enough to give me some rat poison, and later that night Tupatupa himself came to help me put the poison in some tomatoes and place them around the house. I awoke the next day with the excitement of a 6 year old on Christmas morning to find two dead rats! I was very excited.
This week I also had a village meeting. The meeting was scheduled for 12:00 but didn't start until 3:00 because well this is Tanzania. Fifty people ended up comng which was great. I introduced myself and told them I hadn't come to Nanjota to hand out money, but rather to work alongside them to find solutions to problems of life within the village. I had them split up between men and women and makes list of the top five challenges they face everyday in the village. Water was definitely number one on both of the lists. But the guys focused more on electricity, tractors, and a new road, while the women wanted help starting their own businesses and forming groups for orphans and vulerable children. Overall, the meeting was a success. Now I am getting ready for IST (In Service Training) where I will get more training for the projects that I want to carry out, as well as get to see all my great Peace Corps friends again which is exciting!...I think that's all I got for now. Until next time!