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