Madam Heather

When Jason and I were placed at Mbeya University of  Science and Technology I was thrilled to learn that I would be teaching microbiology and genetics to the laboratory science students.  I still am very happy to be teaching my favorite subject, but the challenges I have faced so far have been many-and I know that there are more ahead.

My first challenge was to design my course-both the theory portion and the laboratory portion.  The class had been taught before, but the previous teacher did not leave any material behind.  I spent my first weeks crafting my syllabus and designing (what I thought to be) appropriate labs using limited materials.  As the semester drew nearer, I began to panic.  A laboratory technician had not arrived at work yet to show me what materials we had available.  Armed with a pre-test and my first lecture, I was ready to start teaching at the appointed time.  The indicated start date for the semester came and went, with no students showing up to my classes.  My fellow teachers told me to wait until the following week to teach, as students did not show up until the second week of class.  The first week of class is actually devoted to registration and the taking of supplementary exams (an exam that students take if they fail their final exam from the previous semester’s class).

I have now been teaching for five weeks.  My students are very excited, exceptionally smart, and dedicated.  I am a proud teacher.  Many students ask questions during my lectures that show me they are thinking critically.  I have students swarm around me after lab asking questions like “Madam, can you name all the of the normal flora found in the human body?” (Just in case you were wondering, no-no I can’t.  I can, however, launch into a discussion about the human microbiome in general).  Students email me telling me that they enjoy my lectures and they understand what I am saying very well.  I think I prefer Tanzanian students to American students despite the hardships of teaching in a different culture.  My Tanzanian students are so hungry for knowledge.

My teaching load is light (I only teach one class) but I am keep very busy.  I lecture once per week, during which my students take a quiz covering the previous week’s material.  I have lab three times per week, as I split my 120 students into three groups.  Lectures can leave me very frustrated at times, as I can observe some of my students cheating on their quizzes.  But I am also very happy, as students stop me to ask questions.  In lab so far students have learned how to stain cells and use a compound microscope, perform simple calculations and dilutions, and extract DNA.  I have to be creative when designing labs as resources are scarce.  For example, the university owns three compound microscopes.  40 students crowding around 3 microscopes to view their stained cheek cells is fairly chaotic to say the least.

Another challenge I am facing is the fact that the university has no stock cultures of bacteria (no available microorganisms to grow).  I am attempting to isolate microorganisms from the environment, but have encountered difficulties in growing them.  I collected a soil sample in an attempt to culture the common soil microbe Bacillus, a goat fecal sample in an attempt to culture the common fecal coliform Escherichia, and my fellow teachers and I donated a sample from our skin in order to grow Staphylococcus.  Just as my first round of isolation was complete, Tanzania went into a period of lengthy power outages.  This meant that I could not use the incubator to grow my bacteria or the autoclave to sterilize my materials.  Praise the Lord that power is now restored and I can continue isolating bacteria for my students to use in lab.

The work here is challenging, but I enjoy what I do immensely.  The smiles and laughter from my students keep me working hard to provide the best microbiology course I can offer them with the resources I have available.  Who knows?  Maybe one day the kid who wishes to become a genetic engineer will make an important discovery.

Peace,
Heather

I have 10 textbooks total for my class and 1 lab manual

When you have no electricity you set your students math problems

And to my utter surprise, they love to do math!

Their favorite lab so far has been extracting DNA from bananas

Pony Express

We thought that we would include a post about how to mail us goodies, if you are so inclined ;)

First, the logistics.  Letters are sent to the university and are given directly to Jason in his department.  Padded envelopes are cheaper than boxes to send and get mailed directly to us at the university as well.  Letters and padded envelopes seem to reach us in about 10 days time.  Boxes are sent to the post office in Mbeya.  We have to make a trip into town on Saturday to pick up boxes so they may sit for awhile until we can get into town.  Currently we are having difficulties with boxes as the notification slip is not being sent to us at the university.  If you send us a box, please email us at lavalleurs2011@gmail.com and let us know the tracking number.  That way we can see when the box clears Tanzanian customs and estimate when the box will arrive at the posta (local post office).

Many people have asked me what would we like to receive in packages.  Jason and I put our heads together and came up with the following items to choose from:

• Granola bars (Cliff, Nature Valley, Quaker Chewy)
• Goldfish crackers
• Starburst
• Pretzels
• Good-smelling candles in glass jars-make sure to pack in a ziplock as they can melt on their long journey across the sea
• Hand sanitizer
• Reese's Pieces
• Trail mix
• Salmon packets
• Beef jerky
• All beef summer sausage
• 3 x 5 white index cards
• Pictures of you!
• Pictures or postcards of California and Nebraska
• 40 compound microscopes (just kidding!)

Give Thanks

Tanzania does not celebrate Thanksgiving-it is just another day.  Jason and I both teach on Thursdays, so we will be spending the day in class.  Many Peace Corps volunteers get together on American holidays, but Jason and I will have to miss our region’s get-together so this past weekend we headed down to Tukuyu to visit our friend Beth and celebrate Thanksgiving together.  What does a Tanzanian Thanksgiving look like, you ask?  I will show you.

We planned on having chicken, mashed potatoes, rolls, peas, and an apple cobbler.  Miraculously, everything came together and our Thanksgiving dinner was a success!  First off, all of us were too, well, chicken to go through the whole process of killing a chicken.  We had a mama do the killing and the cooking for us.  A mama also helped us start our peas, as the electricity was out and we only had Beth’s charcoal jiko to cook on.  Eventually we ended up with two jikos and we were really cooking!  Once dinner was all cooked we sat down and ate ourselves into food comas.  We enjoyed the fellowship with Beth-we played games and tossed a Frisbee around with some of the kids who live at Beth’s school.  It was a wonderful Thanksgiving day.

 

Me cooking over the charcoal jikos-we had to have help to get them started as they are hard to light

Our Thanksgiving table-Beth set the table so pretty!

Jason is very excited to dig in to the good food

Looking at the picture makes me hungry all over again!  Such good food!

Jason playing Frisbee with the neighborhood kids

 

Being in Tanzania these past few months has helped me to appreciate the simple and small things in life.  We don’t have much, but what we have is enough and I am truly thankful.  I thought I would share some of the things I am thankful for this year:

• The view of the mountains I have while hand-washing my laundry
• Water-and not even clean water, as we cannot drink what comes out of the tap until we boil it, but I am so thankful for water when it is around
• Family and good friends both near and far, far away
• My students, who make every day worth the struggle of living in a culture different from my own
• Spices-they make beans and rice so much more interesting
• Our gas stove-so useful when the power goes out
• My husband-for following God’s call and leading us to Tanzania
• For the opportunity to live a life full of adventure and service!

Peace,

Heather

Chef Jason

I am a very blessed woman-my husband loves to cook.  And he is a very good cook.  Here in Tanzania we have to be creative when it comes to dinner time.  At our local market we can find tomatoes, onions, garlic, carrots, bell pepper, cucumbers, avocados, bananas, fruit that is in season (right now it is mango season!), corn, potatoes, wheat, rice, and every type of bean that you could ever imagine.  There are also all types of leaves that Tanzanians like to cook in oil, as well as peanuts that you roast yourself.  And spaghetti noodles (where would we be without pasta?).  So behold the creations of Chef Jason-made from scratch and mostly local.

Banana bread with black tea is our staple breakfast.  We used to have wonderful loose leaf tea from Irente Biodiversity Reserve in Lushoto, but we enjoyed it too much and it is now gone.  Now we enjoy a cup of Chai Bora with our freshly made banana bread.

One of the first meals Jason perfected was spaghetti with tomato sauce.  Good old comfort food sometimes served with a side of parachichi for me.

Jason tried another variation on pasta-peanut noodles!  We can buy peanut butter at the store on campus and it has saved our lives (not really, but we are thankful for peanut butter).  We serve our peanut noodles with grated carrots and cucumber.  So refreshing and tasty!

This meal is one of my creations.  Chef Heather serves up roasted potatoes with local vegetables and rosemary.  I plan on growing a little rosemary bush on our back balcony to have fresh rosemary available.

One day Chef Jason marched to the local butcher in search of meat.  Our butcher shop consists of a little room that is tiled with identifiable and unidentifiable parts of cows and goats and mystery meat hanging from the ceiling.  Jason brought back some mystery meat for this delightful stir fry made with tomatoes, onions, bell pepper, and soy sauce.

Tonight's meal was homemade pizza.  We made the dough and sauce and a fancy store in Mbeya provided the cheese.  Served with an ice-cold Tangawizi (a type of ginger ale soda made by Coca Cola) a bad evening can turn into a good evening.

And now I am off to go grade quizzes.  Enough procrastinating for me.  Until next time,

Peace,
Heather

Better Homes and No Garden-Tanzania Edition

Welcome to our home in Mbeya, Tanzania!  We have a two bedroom apartment with a view of the local mountains from our living room windows and front balcony.  Jason and I have spent time cleaning and organizing and now we have have a very livable home.  We still have some things we would like to purchase, but for the most part we are all settled in and can welcome guests into our home.  Karibu!

When you first enter our home, you will be welcomed into our living room.  We have maps of Tanzania and the world decorating our walls at the moment.  We have a nice selection of books left by the previous volunteer in our bookcase.  Jason and I sit and play games at the coffee table most every night.

Up next is our kitchen!  We have a nice, big kitchen in which to prepare our meals.  We have a little stove that has both electric and gas burners (the gas is very nice when the power is out) and a little oven.  We have a kitchen sink, but I need to do dishes in basins as the sink has no stopper and the water is not usually on anyway.  Jason and I bought a refrigerator a couple of weeks ago and it has been so nice to have cold water to drink.  On top of the refrigerator is our drinking water, which we collect from the bathroom sink, then boil to make it safe to drink.

Our bathroom!  We have a shower room with a shower that spills cold water, so we normally take bucket baths.  We have a toilet room with a Western toilet!  The downside of the Western toilet is that it really only flushes when the water is on.  And lastly we have a little sink area where we can store our buckets of water.  We have water ~3 times per day, so we need to collect and store the water in order to have it when we need it.

This is our guest bedroom.  We have two almost twin-sized beds, and a chair.  Come visit us!

Our bedroom!  We have a large, king-sized bed with the most amazing, fuzzy blanket on which Jason has bestowed the title of "Beauty and the Beast Blanket" as it is purple with pink roses that look like the forbidden rose in "Beauty and the Beast."  We have a big wardrobe in which to store our clothes and not pictured is a little vanity with a big mirror on which we store our toiletries.  Our bedroom windows look out over the mountains.

Attached to the guest bedroom is a little balcony that gets plenty of sun.  I hope to grow a bucket garden here one day soon.  The first balcony picture looks west to the eucalyptus forest and the farms upon which the teachers cultivate their maize.  The second picture looks east to more staff housing and the university beyond.  We are happy to call Mbeya and Mbeya University of Science and Technology our home for the next two years!

Peace,
Heather and Jason

Hearing Their Cry

This post stems from a conversation I had today with a young man attending the university Jason and I work at.  After going through the usual Tanzanian greetings and finding out where I was from, he proceeded to ask me a rather difficult and uncomfortable question: "Where does all the money America gives to Tanzania go?" he asked. "We are still crying.  The people never see it."  He told me to go tell the American embassy that the money they give to Tanzania is going to the wrong people.  "There are people all over Tanzania who do not know how to end their day" he said.  "Their crying is not heard."

"That is why we are here," I explained.  "We have been sent to listen.  The Peace Corps sends volunteers all over Tanzania to work alongside Tanzanians in villages and towns.  We help Tanzanians connect with the right people so that they do not have to cry anymore."

A smile widened the young man's face.  "This is good," he said.  "You will learn from Tanzanians and Tanzanians will learn from Americans."

And this is what it is all about.  Listening.  Sharing. Learning.  What we are doing here seems small and insignificant, and the work here is harder than I ever could have imagined, but it is good.  We hear the cry of our small little community.  God hears their cry.  And together, us and God, we make a terrific trio.

Peace,
Heather

Tukuyu

One fine weekend in October Jason and I visited our friend Beth when we had time off from work due to the Tanzanian national holiday, Nyrere Day (celebrating Tanzania’s founding father).  Beth lives near the hopping little town of Tukuyu and is surrounded by lush mountains that you can climb and tea fields that you can meander through.  We did both on our visit.  I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.

This is on the trail on the way to the top of Ngozi Crater, which is not too steep at this point in the journey.  Ngozi Crater holds a deep blue lake which locals spin magical tales about.  You can see little banana trees growing around us.  Full grown banana trees have leaves as tall as Jason!  On our hike back down the mountain, we saw monkeys swinging in the tall trees that guard the path on the crater.


Tanzania’s Crater Lake, a nice 2629 meters high and well worth the scramble to the crater rim. We ate lunch on the rim and enjoyed the rumble of thunder from an approaching storm that surrounded us.


Beth (in the pink shirt) and Rachel (in purple) and I scrambled/down-climbed the steep sides of the crater in an attempt to reach the lake.  Roots from sturdy trees served as our climbing ropes in some cases.  About halfway down the crater wall to the lake, I chickened out and returned to the rim.


Jason and I hung out on the rim while our friends took a swim in the crater lake.


In the tea fields near Beth’s school!  The tea plantations stretch as far as the eye can see over verdant rolling hills.


Beth, Eunice, and Jason.  Eunice attends college in Mbeya and over the weekend she gave us a tour of the tea fields.  She has a very bubbly personality and is very patient in teaching Kiswalil.  She is also very generous.
Until our next adventure!
Heather

Homestay Songs

Here are two recordings we made of our host family singing before going to bed. This post uses HTML 5 which may not work for everyone, so I included a few download links as well. Please post a comment or e-mail me if you are having issues.

When the storms of life are raging (download):


How great thou art (download):

Fish out of Water

As funny as it may sound, before I came to Tanzania I would not have been able to put into words what defines American culture (I could, however, describe to you a bacterial culture).  I guess I never gave my own culture much thought.  I grew up in it, I lived in it, and I knew what was expected of me and how to behave.  Now I find myself in Tanzania-and making mistakes, like not bowing to let the little children touch my head when they greet me.  According to the experts from our Peace Corps training, being aware of your own culture and being aware of your own limitations are the top two qualities necessary for living and working in another culture.  Seeing and experiencing a different culture has made me more aware of my American culture as I learn about my new culture.

One of the striking differences between American and Tanzanian culture is independence/community.  Americans are very independent.  We like to figure out solutions to problems on our own with minimal intervention from others.  Here in Tanzania, however, you rely on your community much more heavily.  For example, today Jason and I took a long walk into the village situated along the main highway.  This village has more shops than the little village located just outside of the University grounds.  We were looking to buy some mahindi ya bisi (popcorn!) as well as some siage ya karanga (peanut butter!).  While searching we ran into a worker at the University who has been helping us with repairs around our apartment.  Our American mindset would be to fix our broken cooker ourselves, but here in Tanzania we are learning there is a great need for community support.  We never would have found a proper electrician without the aid of our friend.  Today while talking we mentioned we would like some little stools made.  Our friend immediately offered to talk to the carpenter who he uses and get the stools made for us.  My American reaction is to not have our friend handle the making of the stools for us, as I would like to have a say in how our stools are made.  We see the world through our culture-colored lenses and I am learning to adjust mine.

Another difference between American and Tanzanian culture is in the way each culture handles greetings and goodbyes.  In America, we are casual with greeting each other (Hey!  What's up?) and we spend time saying goodbye to each other and wrapping up conversations.  In Tanzania, greetings are elaborate.  We are asked "Habari za leo?" (what is the news of the day?), "Habari za nyumbani?" (what is the news of home), Habari za sokoni? (how was the market?).  Because we are teachers, school children will often say "Shikamoo" to us, which is a greeting of respect meaning literally "I hold your feet."  While greeting each other, you often shake hands and continue to hold hands for what feels like a very long time to this American.  While we are on the topic of holding hands, it is perfectly normal to see two males or two females walking and talking and holding hands, but a male and a female should not hold hands in public (scandalous!).  Tanzanian goodbyes are brief.  In fact, if you are having a phone conversation, there may be no goodbye.  Tanzanians just hang up when they feel like the conversation has come to an end.  Jason and I have not mastered how to discern when the end is yet.

As Americans, we value privacy.  We enjoy alone time, especially when sick.  If you come to Tanzania, you may feel like Tanzanians are nosy, but their inquisitiveness is actually a part of their culture and how they build relationships.  For example, when meeting someone for the first time, you may be asked if you are married, if you have children, and what your religion is.  In America, these are not the usual questions you ask after asking a person's name.  Another example is when Americans are sick, they like to be alone and rest. Tanzanians want to be constantly checked on to make sure they are alright.

Lastly, I would like to share with you how Tanzanians view Americans.  Some of these attributes may come as a shock, while others may make you proud.  I know that listening to Tanzanians describe Americans was enlightening to me, so I hope you find the following list interesting and challenging:

1. Not tolerant
2. Punctual
3. Hard-working
4. Direct
5. Frown upon corporal punishment
6. Anxious to know what we do not know
7. Risk takers
8. Self-centered
9. Like space and privacy
10. Appreciate nature
11. Gender sensitive
12. Like animals
13. Like to cry/emotional
14. Concerned about human rights and democracy

A Place to Call Home

Site Announcement.  Those two words create a spark of excitement that spreads like a wildfire among Peace Corps trainees.  Every trainee waits for this day-the day they find out where they will be spending the next two years of their lives living and working alongside Tanzanians.  The Peace Corps makes site announcement very dramatic.  The staff bring out a map with each trainee's picture covered by a post-it note and linked to a region by a string.  Each person is revealed one at a time.  People bounded up to the board, excited to hear more details about their site.  My name (and thus Jason's too) was called as a picture was revealed linked to the region of Mbeya!  Mbeya is a region located in the southwestern corner of Tanzania.  We were told that Mbeya is a lush, mountainous region full of tea plantations and banana trees.  Sign us up!  After learning about our region we were informed that we would be living near the city of Mbeya and teaching at the Mbeya University of Science and Technology (MUST)!  Jason was assigned to teach ICT subjects (Information and Communication Technology) and I was assigned to teach Biology.

Three days later we found ourselves on a bus headed from Korogwe to Mbeya via Iringa.  A word about transportation in Tanzania.  The roads, while mostly paved, are rough.  The bus does not stop very often, which means you should not drink water while traveling. If you do, you might have to "chimba dawa" (literally meaning "to take medicine") which entails stopping the bus to squat on the side of the road.  When the bus does make official stops, you are bombarded by vendors selling soda, fruits, and other snacks.  If you did not buy any from the vendors who push their wares through your window don't worry, your neighbors on the bus will notice and share food with you.  There is no air conditioning operating on the bus, which made for a warm ride.  Buses do not often arrive on time.  We found ourselves waiting at the bus stand for two hours wondering if the bus was still coming.  All these things make traveling in Tanzania an adventure.  If you approach bus travel in Tanzania with the mindset that life is about the journey, and not the destination, you will be just fine.  That, and bring your iPod.  You are going to need it.

Once in Mbeya we spent some time with current volunteers.  They spoiled us.  They made us homemade pizza for dinner the night we arrived and homemade cinnamon rolls the next morning.  Then it was off to our site!  After a short dala dala (mini-bus) ride, we hailed a taxi to travel the last stretch of dirt road and arrived at the doors to the university.  We then waited quite some time to see the acting deputy head of the school.  In fact, much of our time at site visit was spent waiting-karibu (welcome to) Tanzania!  We toured the university during our stay, Jason met some of his fellow teachers in the ICT department, and we learned what we will be teaching!  Jason will teach Electrical Fundamentals and Introduction to Software Engineering and I will teach Applied Biology I and II (basically Microbiology and Molecular Biology/Genetics) in the Laboratory Sciences department.  We are very excited to begin working with our fellow teachers at MUST.

After spending three days at our site we returned to Korogwe for some final training and our final exams (which we both passed :) ).  On September 12th we officially swore in as Peace Corps Volunteers.  Swearing-in was quite the event as it was held at the US ambassador's residence in Dar es Salaam.  Speeches were given, all of us new volunteers sang a song, and there was food-very fancy food.  The Tanzanian media was present, so we were on the news!  We spent most of the 13th (14 hours!) on a bus from Dar es Salaam to Mbeya.  Praise the Lord that we were on the nicest bus we have ever traveled in while in Tanzania, it was only four seats wide instead of the usual five.  We have been living in our apartment for a few days now.  The place needs cleaning, but once we tidy up it will be very nice!  We have electricity (it seems to go out every night-it's funny as we live right next to the girl's dormitory and they all scream when the lights go out), running water three times per day (morning, noon, and evening), two balconies, a big living room/dining room, kitchen with attached pantry, two bedrooms, a shower room, and a western style toilet (oh yeah!).  Pictures will be forth coming once we settle in.  Right now we are busy cleaning and trying to figure out where we can buy all the things we need (like flour...unga wa ngano uko wapi?)  After next week Jason and I will begin to prepare our lessons for the start of school on the 28th of October.  Sorry for the long absence from our blog...we have been busy!

Kwa heri!
Heather and Jason

PS-If you would like our address, leave us a comment or send us a note via email.  Or Facebook me :)  Or, if you know my mom, ask my mom.

The main tent under which speeches were given-go America!

Jason and Me all dressed up for the occasion-I had the dress made in Korogwe!

Our Community Based Training (CBT) group-we will miss everyone!

A day in the Life of a PCT

I thought all of our readers would enjoy learning about a typical day for a PCT in Tanzania (although, there really is no typical day).

5:00 am-We hear the Muslim call to prayer and Jason's alarm goes off to help start the charcoal jiko in the morning.  Our family heats water to take a morning bucket bath, which I am grateful for.  A cold bucket bath would not be pleasant.

6:00 am-Heather wakes up to take her bucket bath after Jason.  We bathe in our indoor choo, which is tiled.  There is a nice line to hang up all of your clothes and towel on while you bathe.  It is just starting to get light at this time of the morning.

6:30 am-We eat breakfast.  Breakfast here is chai with bread.  Jason and I expanded our breakfast menu by purchasing peanut butter at a local shop.  We were even more excited when we brought back jam from Lushoto!  After breakfast we finish packing our bags and brush our teeth.

7:00 am-We begin our 30 min walk to school.  Jason and I both teach 7:40 am classes most days of the week, so we need to leave early to prepare our classes.  On our walk to school we greet many neighborhood children.  They often serenade us with a chorus of "how are yous?" and "Wauzungu (meaning white person or foreigner)! "

7:30 am-10:20 am-This time can be chaotic.  Sometimes we are teaching, sometimes we are in Kiswahili class.  There are three other volunteers in our community-based training group, so more often than not someone is teaching during this time.  When we have Kiswahili class, we will often review what we learned the day before and practice our speaking skills.

10:20 am-10:55 am-Chai time!  It's the best time of the day, really!  We order what we would like for the day from a Mama who cooks at the school.  At our school, there is a row of huts lashed together with poles and grass roofs and under each one sits a different Mama who cooks.  Our Mama sits in the last hut.  Around 9:30 am one of us will go and place an order for chapati (sweet, thick crepes) and maandazi (the Tanzanian doughnut).  We take chai in the staff room with the other teachers.  We eat our bites and drink sugar with tea.  You did not read that wrong.  Tanzanians like to put a fair amount of sugar in their tea.  It is incredibly sweet.

11:00 am-1:00 pm-Teaching and Kiswahili again.  By this time we are moving into new material in our Kiswahili.  We all take lots of notes and ask many questions of our language facilitator.

1:00 pm-2:00 pm-Lunch time!  This can be less than thrilling.  One lunch last week we were given ugali and dagaa (ugali is a stiff cornflour and dagaa are little fishes that were sundried then recooked).  Only about half of us ate it and our language facilitator explained to our mama that we do not care for ugali and dagaa.  So now we mostly get some variation of rice, beans and meat.  We are also getting more spaghetti like dishes.  The noodles here are cooked with sugar instead of salt so the first byte plays tricks with your mind.  Sometimes, lunch is spectacular.  For example, everyone except Jason likes chipsi mayai.  Chipsi mayai is fried potato wedges and eggs used to stick them all together.  The potatoes are surrounded in fried egg goodness.  Heart attack on a plate?  Yes, but it is delicious.

2:00 pm-4:00 pm-More Kiswahili.  I must say, the Peace Corps language program is excellent.  We can converse about our daily activities and our families, and ask questions.  And we are only a little over halfway through training.

4:00 pm-We walk home.  We are alone on the walk as the students get out of school around 2:00 pm.  The walk home is normally hot.  We greet many people on our way home.  Our favorite people to greet are the kids.  We give Tanzanian high fives all around and try to teach them to say "good evening" instead of "good morning."  We often get followed all the way home.

4:30 pm-8:00 pm-We are home!  Heather will sweep the floor of our room and we will converse about our day with our host family.  We will study some Kiswahili and work on lesson plans.  Our little sisters will cause general pandemonium, occasionally making it difficult study without retreating to our room.  We may help cook dinner.  The most common task we are given is to sort through the rice.  We have to pick out all the chaff and stones.  Heather may iron clothes if laundry is dry.  Now, when you think of Heather ironing, think Little House on the Prairie style.  We iron with a charcoal-powered iron.  You pick hot coals out of the charcoal stove, plop them in the cast-iron iron, and go to town ironing your clothes on the coffee table.  Dark falls around 6:45 pm here, so the ironing is usually done by the glow of a solar-powered LED light.

8:00 pm-8:30 pm-We eat dinner!  I am always very appreciative of the cooks, as a meal takes around 2-3 hours to prepare.  For dinner we normally have things like rice, pilau (dirty or seasoned rice), beans, spinach, beef, oranges, mangoes, cucumbers, and salad called kachumbari made of a tomato, cucumber, and bell pepper.  Delicious!  We will talk with our host family during and after dinner; they like to ask questions about America and we all enjoy comparing and contrasting American life to Tanzanian life.

9:00 pm-We are heading to bed.  Our little sisters follow us outside and we all brush our teeth by the light of our headlamps.  We may sing and say prayers with our family before bed.  We tell our family goodnight, tuck our mosquito net securely around us, and fall to sleep to the sounds of our village (chickens, radios, laughter, dogs, the call to prayer).  Our family stays up later than us.  We are still not sure how Tanzanians do as much work as they do on so little sleep.

That's it for our typical day. Our next post will be an exciting one! Later today, we will learn where we will be placed for 2 years. Then on Saturday, we get to make a road trip and spend all next week at our site! Though if we get placed in the southern portion of the country, we may get less than 72 hours there because it takes almost 3 fully days to travel each way.

Baadaye!
Jason and Heather.

Lushoto

Tanzania is a beautiful country.  We have not seen all of it yet, but what we have seen has been stunning.  The town of Lushoto will take your breath away.  Literally.  With an elevation of 4800 ft, the huddle of homes is tucked away in the Usambara mountains.  Our travel from Korogwe to Lushoto took us up a winding mountain road past many waterfalls.  We took lunch at Irente Biological Reserve.  Lunch was fantastic!  Most all of the food is grown locally and sustainably.  We ate rye bread with homemade cheeses, homemade jam, cucumbers, tomatoes, and guacamole.  We were in American Food Heaven.  We most definitely bought some cheese and jam to bring home to share with our host family.  Irente is owned by the Lutheran Church, with a portion of the proceeds from lunch going to an orphanage, a school for the blind, and a school for the mentally disabled.  You can camp or stay in well-appointed huts at Irente.  The Usambaras are known for their great hiking, so Irente would be the perfect place to start your Tanzanian hiking adventure.  We hiked 2 km to a viewpoint overlooking the valley below and the sight was spectacular!  But the goodness of Lushoto does not stop at Irente.  After Irente we headed to Lawns, a guesti in Lushoto.  Free wi-fi and cold sodas made these two Peace Corps Trainees very happy.  Lawns was a haven of Western Civilization, which was wonderful to visit after a month in Tanzania.  I would definitely recommend a visit to Lushoto if you make it to Tanzania.  You can soak up the Tanzaian culture in town and still have a hot shower and a Western toilet waiting for you when you retire for the evening.   For now, Kwa heri!

The Usambaras

The view from Lushoto-if we live here, will you come visit us?

Jason on our hike to the viewpoint

Our Homestay

As many of you already know, we are spending the first 10ish weeks living with a host family in Tanzania. Our family has a baba (father), mama (mother), bibi (grandmother), 3 dadas (sisters, aged 6, 4.5, and ~3 weeks), and one shangazi (aunt on the father’s side). The bibi is just here to help with the new born, the rest are residents. In Tanzania, they don’t talk about pregnancies until the day of the baby’s birth. It is also a taboo for the mother to leave the house during the first 3 months after birth. This is why our bibi has come to visit and help with the chores.
Now to the living conditions. I think our conditions are slightly above average for the typical Tanzanian PCT. Our house is ~95% complete. We have 3 bedrooms, a living room/dining room, a pantry, a kitchen/cooking room, an attached chicken coup and 3 choos (toilets).One choo is inside for “public” bathing and night time use. Another choo is conneted to the master bedroom. The final one is outside and the one assigned to primary “duty”. The house has a very nice flat concrete floor. There is a ceiling in most of the house, except our room and the kitchen.
Our indoor choos appear to have pipes in the walls, but water here functions on a very elaborate bucket system. You’ve got the big bucket (55 gallon drum) to hold the water for the week. Then there are several smaller 5 gallon buckets: a few buckets for laundry, a few for bathing, a few for cleaning food in the kitchen, a couple for moving water back and forth to the kitchen, and finally a special clean one for the water than has been boiled and cooled to drink.
Electricity is a similar situation. Our house is clearly wired with UK style plugs and light bulb sockets, but we do not have electricity. We have 1 semi-permanent light connected to a battery and a solar panel that hangs on its wire by a staple right next to the permanent fixture. This light has enough power to run for about 3-4 hours a night, if the day was sunny enough to fully charge the battery. The family had 2 portable solar lights. When the Peace Corps gave us each another light, we nearly doubled the lighting capacity in the house. All of the lights are fairly efficient LEDs. I cannot imagine how limited their life was 20 years ago before either solar or LEDs were available.
When you first stroll through the countryside, you will notice many “abandoned” looking houses. These houses might just be a foundation, maybe standing exposed brick walls overgrown with weeds, perhaps even finished plaster walls or part of a tin roof. But strangely, they all look very new. They are in fact not abandoned at all. Financing is very difficult and expensive here, even for middle class in Tanzania. Our baba mentioned he could only get a loan with +20% interest that needed to be paid back in 5 or 6 years. He has a steady job that can support a family. He said it was near impossible for anyone working less than 3 years to get a loan of any type. So instead of financing, they invests into their own homes polepole (bit by bit, or slowly). They save for 2-3 years, then buy a foundation. Another 2-3 years might get you the walls, etc. The extreme limited access to credit greatly cripples the economy here, but I will save other aspects for later post.
Until next time, Kwa heri!
Jason

Haven of Peace

Salama!  Dar es Salaam translates to Haven of Peace.  The term certainly applies to our whereabouts at the moment.  We arrived in Dar es Salaam at the Kurasini Training Center on Friday, July 5th.  It is BEAUTIFUL here and the people even more so!  Since our arrival we have had time to learn, rest, and reflect on our journey so far.  We have learned about Tanzania's history and culture, health issues, and the history and Peace Corps method of development.  All of these subjects deserve a blog post of their own!  Our days are filled with Kiswahili lessons, history lessons, cross-cultural training, eating (seriously, we are fed five times a day-breakfast, chai, lunch, soda, and dinner), sleeping, paperwork, and shots (sad day).  I (Heather) have now been vaccinated for MMR, Polio, Yellow Fever, Meningitis, Typhoid, Hepatitis A, and Rabies.  We also take our malaria prophylaxis every night.
Can I go on more about the food?  Let me tell you, the food is tasty albeit a bit monotonous.  For breakfast (chakula cha asabuhi) we have toast, a hard boiled egg, and porridge (made out of millet-it is tasteless, so Tanzanians add heaping spoonfuls of sugar to liven up the mud-colored mixture).  Chai consists of tea (made with milk or water) and some finger foods.  Sometimes there are these pieces of fried dough called andazi.  If you eat them with sugar, they taste like a doughnut.  If you eat them with salt, they taste like pretzels!  There can also be fried plantains and something like a large fried won-ton filled with meat or vegetables.  Chai is my favorite part of the day.  Seriously America, you do not know what you are missing.  For lunch (chakula cha mchana) we usually have rice, a spinach dish, meat (chicken or fish), and a fruit (plantains or watermelon).  Soda is pretty self explanatory.  Jason is pretty ecstatic as they serve Mountain Dew.  What we eat with soda seems to vary.  Today we had roasted nuts, the fried won-tons, and tomato sandwiches.  Dinner (chakula cha jioni) is normally the same as lunch.  So we are well fed.
Lest you imagine us living right now in a mud hut, let me tell you about our hostel.  We have a nice, big bed with a mosquito net and fuchsia sheets, red carpet, a desk, a big yellow chair, a TV (have not turned it on yet), air conditioning (we are lucky-the other volunteers have dubbed our room "the honeymoon suite-it's super safi (nice!)), a cold shower (the best part of waking up?), sink, and a Western toilet.  We expect much less when we go to live with our host family on Thursday, but we are content.
Besides all of our lessons, we have also had two excursions outside our beautiful compound walls-one into downtown Dar es Salaam and one to the Peace Corps Office.  For the visit to Dar our group of 42 education volunteers was split up into smaller groups with a Language and Culture Facilitator (LCF) as our leader.  We road a daladala (little mini-buses) into town, then walked to a kanga (a wrap skirt) shop where I bought a pretty dark blue and white kanga with the assistance of my LCF.  I then had the kanga tailored.  There are little shops all over selling everything you could ever imagine.  And if you want to make a purchase, you need to muscle your way to the shop owner and be aggressive, as Tanzanians really do not form lines.  They are very polite in every other way, although I should not impose my American idea of politeness on the Tanzania.  From the tailor shop we saw different sights in Dar, including the Indian Ocean!  Lunch was rice and beans at the YWCA.  Our daladala ride home was interesting, as the daladala became packed full of us and Tanzanians!  I would not want to drive in Dar, as the traffic is a nightmare, even with uniformed traffic officers guiding all the buses, daladalas, motorcycles, bajajs (three-wheeled vehicles), and bicycles.
At the Peace Corps office we met all of the administrators for Peace Corps Tanzania.  We toured the offices and walked the grounds.  It was a wonderful day and we had the best chai and lunch while there.
We have one more day left here in Dar before we head to our homestay family up north.  We are excited and nervous, as we do not know much Kiswahili at the moment.  We have focused on greetings, as greeting are very important in Tanzanian culture.  Keep us in your thoughts and prayers!  We miss you all!
Baadaye!


The Training Center grounds are so pretty!  I love the colorful buildings

One of the huts where we have language lessons with our LCF

The one about packing

Everything we need for our 27 month assignment is now packed into a total of 5 bags with a combined weight of 135 lbs.  Jason and I each have a large pack (60-65 L) and a small backpack.  We share a medium sized duffle bag which mostly contains our camping supplies, books, and extra toiletries.  If you are interested, here is a link to our packing list.  I must say, my husband is one amazing packer!  Maybe it's all those years of playing Tetris?

Before

After!  5 bags and 1 poster tube

Application Timeline

This post is more of a "standard Peace Corps blog" posts. A lot of people are surprised to hear that we've taken almost a year to complete the process. Ours is a bit unique as the Peace Corps upgraded many of their systems and we were among the first to try them out. Here are some of the major milestones along the way:

• 1/31/12-Created an account to apply.At this point, we were just exploring the process and didn't fill in much of the application.
• 7/12/12-Received an e-mail indicating our application would be deleted if we did not submit it before the 27th. Normally applications can sit for a year before being deleted, but the Peace Corps had a system upgrade scheduled. By this point we had most of the easy boxes filled out, we were just dragging our feet on the essay and resume sections.
• 7/26/12-Submitted our applications. Exactly 1 day early.
• 8/13/12-We were contacted by the Peace Corps requesting some additional information: marriage certificate, transcripts, a couple's questionnaire, and a few outstanding references.
• 8/15/12-Received login information to the "Medical Portal". We had to fill out a brief survey here. Later this website will be where we upload all of our medical forms.
• 9/12/12-After digging in their spam e-mails, the Peace Corps found the few missing references that had been sent in. We were now cleared for the interview.
• 9/24/12-A recruiter from PSU (Portland State University) contacted us to schedule an interview for October 3rd.
• 10/3/12-Interview day. First we interviewed separately, then finally together. Heather expressed a little nervousness so the recruiter asked to scheduled a follow-up phone interview.
• 10/18/12-After discussing things again, Heather felt much more comfortable for our phone interview. We were cleared to go on.
• 11/5/12-Officially nominated. The descriptions for both Heather and I indicated we would be in "Secondary Education-Math and Science" with a tentative departure in June (pretty close to what we are doing!).
• 11/12/12-Sometime around here Heather received her Legal kit and returned it within a week.
• 11/30/12-We contact the Peace Corps legal department about Jason's missing legal packet. We found out they sent it to the wrong address. They send us a new one to the correct address.
• 12/26/12-Legal kit returned. Over Christmas break we figure out what happened to the original packet. I (Jason) had applied once before, and the Peace Corps had sent the legal kit to the address that I had applied with in 2008. My mom had just sold this house, but my brother had put in a "mail forward" notice for anything with his name, Blake, on it. So the USPS in their best efforts, took the packet addressed to Jason, slapped a new label with Blake on it, and sent it to my mom's new house. You can imagine her confusion now wondering if both her boys were going to the Peace Corps. Once we opened the packet, everything was addressed to Jason, so that quickly cleared things up.
• 1/26/13-First contact from the placement office. They asked us to fill out a questionnaire for GIS (Geographic Information Systems). This confused us quite a lot, but we filled the form out anyway. We were willing to try the position, but didn't feel like it was a good fit, especially for Heather.
• 2/26/13-We hadn't heard from the Peace Corps in over a month, so we contacted the placement officer who gave use the Mexico questionnaire. We were informed that we were no longer being considered for the Mexico program.
• 3/1/13-Invitation Received! We got all of our information electronically, so we didn't get the exciting "blue envelope" that everyone talked about. We weren't expecting it to happen that fast after the process with Mexico. Our departure date was set for July 8 with the note that it may change by a few days.
• 3/3/13-We took the weekend to consider it and talk about it. We decided to accept and started informing our families (and our employers).
• 3/6/13-A bunch of new forms to read and e-mails start showing up. This includes our login information to the "New Volunteer Portal" and more medical forms start popping up in that portal as well.
• 4/22/13-Medical forms completed. This includes a physical exam, dental exam, optometrist exam, and lab blood work.
• 4/30/13-Heather's last day working.
• 5/17/13-Jason's last day working
• 5/22/13-Staging date changed! The Peace Corps bumped up our departure date from July 8th, to July 3rd. We were a little disappointed because it cut out quite a bit of time to see Heather's family, but we accepted it in stride.
• 5/31/13-We leave Oregon to move our stuff to Nebraska. This starts our tour to see family one last time before we depart.
• 7/2/13-Leave for staging! We start staging in Philadelphia on the 3rd at noon. We are hoping to squeeze into a movie theater to see Despicable Me 2 before we depart.
• 7/4/13-Leave for Tanzania! We will ride a bus at 2:30 AM to JFK in New York where we will fly to Dar es Salaam via Johannesburg, South Africa.

He let the cat out of the bag

Dear Tanzania,

You sure do know how to keep us on our toes.  We will see you 5 days sooner than had originally been scheduled!  July 3^rd will be here before we know it!

I write this post from our first stop on our epic moving truck (to Nebraska), train (to Chicago), and plane (to California) travel adventure.  Jason and I packed up and moved all of our belongings, and our cat, to Jason’s mom’s home in Nebraska.  Our move from Oregon went smoothly and traveling with a cat in a moving truck was not as bad as we were expecting, except for one incident.  Jason let the cat out of the bag at our first rest stop in Oregon.  And she ran away.  Into a thicket.  And she would not come out.  We spent over an hour calling and searching for our frightened feline.  In the end, the sound of her food being poured into her food dish brought her out from her hiding place.  Thank the good Lord our cat is a connoisseur of kitty kibble!

Grace the Cat all ready to move to Nebraska!  Note: this is not how she traveled

Heather, Grace the Cat, and Jason all cozy in the moving truck

Welcome to our Peace Corps Tanzania Blog!

Dear Tanzania,

In T minus 53 days we will meet in person.  So excited for the adventure and lessons which await us!

For those of you who don’t know us, we are Jason and Heather Lavalleur, a young married couple serving in the Peace Corps as secondary math and science teachers in Tanzania.  Here in the United States you might know us as a software engineer and a microbiologist.  After a year of marriage we decided to follow our passions and God’s call to serve those in need.  We chose the Peace Corp through which to complete our service as we value their cultural sensitivity and emphasis on cultural integration and exchange.  After a year-long application process, here we are!  We leave July 8^th (or thereabouts-we won’t know the exact date until we get our tickets in about a month) and we will return September 2015!  We are excited and nervous and cannot wait to reach Tanzania.  For now, we busy ourselves with finishing up work and packing up our little apartment prior to visiting with family and friends before our departure.  We will do our best to update this blog, as we anticipate it being the easiest way to keep in touch with all of you back home.  However, internet in Tanzania may be hard to come by depending on where we are placed.  We are thrilled to share our adventure with you!