A New Beginning

This will be our last post, as Jason and I have ended our Peace Corps service after seven months of living and working in Tanzania.  Tanzania presented many challenges for us, all of which we gladly faced, eager to nurture young minds and enact changes at our university.  There was one challenge that proved too difficult to face in country.  In February I (Heather) suffered from a severe panic attack while riding home from an excursion to a local coffee lodge.  We were determined to seek counseling in Tanzania for my increasing anxiety after we visited the USA and returned back home to Mbeya.  This was not meant to be, as I suffered from another panic attack while boarding our flight home to Tanzania.

While our Peace Corps service has ended, our passion for development and helping the least of these has not.  We learned much about ourselves and a different culture-we gained a new perspective and widened our world view.  We are not the same people who left the USA seven months ago.  While we went to Tanzania to create positive change, we find ourselves to be the most changed from our experiences.  Coming back to the USA is not an ending; it is a new beginning.

Love,
Heather and Jason

Gratitude

Lately I have been missing what I left behind in America…family, friends, my cat, hot showers, hockey, ice cream, rock climbing, and backpacking just to name a few. Whenever I find myself missing home, I try to remind myself of all the things I am grateful for here in Tanzania.

My Students

Awesome thunderstorms

The view from our balcony in the evening

Time for baking

Time for self-reflection

Mwaka Mpya

Mwaka Pya.  A New Year. New Beginnings.  We have now been in Tanzania for 6 months.  We have survived the holidays away from our families.  For Christmas we visited our friend Beth in Tukuyu once more.  We only had Christmas Day and Boxing Day off, so it was a short visit.  We made chili, Jason bought a little Christmas Tree in a stationary store in Mbeya, we watched Beth open her Christmas box, and we read the story of Jesus' birth.  It was a merry little Christmas.

When I asked my fellow Tanzanians how they celebrated Christmas they responded that they travel home to visit their family and eat pilau (spiced rice-the traditional Tanzanian celebration food).  Turns out here in the opposite hemisphere people spend Christmas with their loved ones too!

A belated Merry Christmas from the Lavalleurs

For New Years we invited Beth to visit us in Mbeya.  We made pizza, played games, and watched a movie.  One of the benefits of working at a Tanzanian university is that our departments have projectors.  Jason asked his department if he could bring a projector home and they said yes!  So we watched movies in style (instead of on our little netbook screen).  Who needs a movie theater when you have a projector?

When the clock struck midnight, ushering in the new year, we learned that Tanzanians like to honk horns.  They just hold down the horn and let the trumpet sound for a good long while.

Beth and Jason enjoying their pizza-maybe I should go into business

Jason and Beth marveling at the size of our movie screen!

See you in 2015 America!
Peace,
Heather