And I'm there: site

Hey everybody! Happy Holidays and all, I'm in my banking town for a couple days to do my banking and pick up all those things my house is missing, which is mostly spices. The two things I really want and haven't been able to find are some sort of cutting board (one of my friend's family had one in Morogoro) but no one here seems to have any clue why I would want something special to cut things on, and a little mortar and pestle for grindign spices. I may just have to have a carpenter make me a little cutting board and improvise the mortar and pestle. They must exist somewhere...

So it turns out the PCV I'm replacing left me with a ton of stuff. I started teaching very quickly, so it took me all of the last 3 weeks to really have a chance to go through all of it and find the goodies (e.g. a massive star chart! a hammock--if I can only find a good spot to hang it up) and separate them from some of the trash (IRS instruction from 2003, expired medical supplies). Anyway, it's been exciting.

Kind of exciting. Very interesting? Hmm. It's hard to describe. My first week at site was pretty miserable, I was really lonely and nothing was easy. I think I took some extra punishment for letting my homestay family take care of me in Morogoro, so I had to get used to cooking on a charcoal stove and other such things by myself. I've learned that to feel vaguely comfortable somewhere I really need to know how to get food, make food, and leave (getting on the bus and coming into town yesterday was like getting over yet another hurdle to feeling at home). Even just walking around in every direction, climbing the big hill to the South, walking to the road and a little beyond the the North, walking to the big church and big littlevillage to the West and to my closest PC neighbor about 5 miles to the East all have nurtured a slowly growing feeling of comfort.

Now, I can't publish openly the exactl location of my site, which probably includes my address, but I'm in the Souther Highlands region, and if you'd like my address just e-mail me and I'll be more than happy to get it to you. Or you can give me a phone call (text messages tend to work well): +255 752 122 810 is my number at my site, but here another line seems to work better so my alternate number is +255 786 229 772.

So, some news of my teaching: I'm lucky enough (I think...) to be teaching A-Level math and physics, which is the last two optional years of secondary school here. The kids begin to specialize in A-Level, so the courses of study offered by my school are PCB (Physics, Chemistry, Biology) and CBG (Chemistry, Biology, Geography). In addition to the three subjects of specialization, they take a General Studies course as well as BAM (Basic Applied Mathematics). So I am the only A-Level math or physics teacher here, which means I get to teach the 30 or so kids in PCB for physics and I get all 80-some kids at once for BAM.

For my first week I fit myself into the schedule that I think has been modified by some of the other teachers since the last volunteer left in October which gave me 12 40-minute physics periods and 4 math periods in one week. Now, however, the school is closed until Jan 3, and I've talked to the headmaster about balancing these periods a bit more, because the kids really need a lot more math than that.

The great benefits of teaching A-Level is that the kids are pretty highly motivated and are all quite bright--and generally speak English quite well. I also get to teach more fun stuff, we're working on derivatives right now in math and I covered simple harmonic motion in physics. A-Level is 2 years, Form V and Form VI, but my school recently opened A-Level so we only have Form V right now. Form VI will begin in March or April (I still don't have the calendar down very well), and I think before then I'm going to have to do a lot of work to re-learn lots of the Electricity and Magnetism is sort of botched my way through at Mudd.

My school also has a nice little computer lab (no internet of course) which they use to create school documents and such. No one is very competent there, but, unlike stories I've heard from many other volunteers, the people at the school are being very proactive in trying to learn and attempting to use the computer lab by themselves. So, in addition to my teaching, I'll also be conducting computer classes for students and teachers. The lab has power for about 2.5 hours each evening (the school has a generator), but apparently the school has a system in place where interested people can pay a little extra for the computer classes, the money being used to buy diesel for the generator.

I've also had one kid and one teacher show considerable interest in learning how to read and write music, so I may also start up some music classes. We'll see how much time I have... The old volunteer left me with a lot of coursework prepared for math, but the Physics is going to take a fair amount of preparation.

Anyway, that's gonna be all for this blog post. Miss you all.

-Gregor

p.s.
I'm updating my wishlist: there's very little need for flyswatters here. I think the nicest things to get are going to be sweets and edibles. Thanks to everyone who has written me, e-mails and letters are all greatly appreciated.

There!

So, I've got a ton of news. Last Wednesday was the swearing-in ceremony and now I am a full Peace Corps Volunteer. Very early Thursday morning we left Morogoro and six other volunteers and I came down here to the Southern Highlands where our schools are. If you want more details on where I am, for paranoid security reasons you'll have to e-mail me.

I'm hanging out in my banking town for the weekend. I haven't been to my actual site yet, I'm told it's 2-3 hours away by bus. For now I'm buying things I think I might need, which is difficult since I'm replacing a volunteer and I'm not exactly sure what all she's left me. So far today I've bought a big bucket (70 L), some food in bulk, cleaning supplies, bug spray, and when this rain lets up I'm gonna get a little charcoal stove and make a run back the the (absolutely amazing) hotel to drop stuff off.

The weather here is great! It doesn't feel at all like Africa. A few people have commented that the town feels like a ski-town, maybe Lake Tahoe or something, though it's definitely bigger than that. There aren't big mountains around, just big rolling hills everywhere, but we are well elevated and there's even pine and eucalyptus trees, adding to a Northern California feel. It's also pretty cold at night, I'm sleeping under a nice blanket and it's the summer now! I even wore the sweater that I brought and thought I would never use a little bit last evening.

I'm feeling really lucky because I get to teach A-Level Math and Physics (there were only 2 A-Level teaching spots for the 39 in my training group). However, A-Level is on a different schedule, so I may start teaching about as soon as I move in. I'll tell you all about my site as soon as I can.

A bunch of PCVs in the area have been traveling in to greet us, which has been pretty fun (one even brought chocolate chip cookies), and I can't wait to see my site which is supposed to be gorgeous. I think there may be some mountains around there, and it's reasonably close to a big lake. As I've got some time to kill here I'm going to be very persistent about getting some pictures uploaded later today or tomorrow.

Also, due to the distance to my site, I'll warn that my Internet access is probably going to drop to once every 2 or 3 weeks or so. I'll still be really happy to get e-mails from anyone, I'll just be a bit slower in the replies.

Minorly Injured, staying close to home

I am officially done with language classes! Three weeks ago my Kiswahili was at an "Intermediate Advanced" level, I'm hoping to move up to full Advanced at our final language test which is in 2 weeks. Until then, I'll be practicing. This week I go to "shadow" a real PCV for a few days. Unfortunately, possibly due to my injured ankle (I twisted it pretty badly last Sunday playing Ultimate Frisbee and now I'm supposed to not walk too much)I got placed with a volunteer who lives about an hour away from our training site. So, while most people get to go see some more of this beautiful country, I get to see a slightly different side of the same hills. I'm still looking forward to it a lot because training has gotten a little tiresome lately and this is gonna be a good time, I think.

Anyway, it's been a pretty slow week. I said goodbye to the classes I've been teaching (they seemed very sad to see me go, which was nice), and Friday we had a farewell party with the teachers where we introduced them to Nutella and Peanut Butter spread on some mildly sweet cupcakes that they're familiar with. It was a huge success. This week we're having training in a big group before heading off to our shadow sites and then to Dar for a couple days. And sooner or later I'll get to find out where I'll actually be going... Pretty exciting. I think just about the whole group feels very ready to get out there and start actually doing stuff. Now we're just in a tense state of anticipation...

Anyway, I've updated my Wish List (see the link in the sidebar) because I'm beginning to get some ideas of things I wish I had. There's also my new phone number,
which will take effect in a couple of days.

Big Game!

About half an hour ago I got back from a trip to Mikumi National Park. The Peace Corps was kind enough to give us Saturday off, creating our first completely free weekend, so we organized a trip to the nearby park. It was AWESOME!!! We saw lots of impala and monkeys, some baboons, warthogs, zebra, water buffalo, wildebeast, plenty of elephants (with babies), giraffes, a couple crocodiles, and hippos. The hippo's didn't seem terribly hungry, though.

We also saw lots of cool birds. I think my favorites were the zebra or the giraffes. We took one drive around the park last night near sunset, and then one more this morning just after sunrise. Unfortunately, we didn't see any lions or cheetahs, but what we did see was really cool. It was also really nice to get out and have a break from things.

Recently, I've been playing my violin a bit. It's really nice whenever I do. My family enjoyed seeing me play, but they are not sure how to react. For them it seems to be a novelty. Awareness of music beyond hymns and what is on the radio is nonexistent. In the past week I've played for some teachers who live near me, and they liked it quite a bit, and I took it over to Jacob's house (another trainee... Hi Jacob's mom!)and played for his family. His baba liked it a whole lot and sang some hymns with me. I also brought the violin along on the trip which was a lot of fun for all of us.

I haven't reread my last post, but I think I made it a week ago when Idii was still undecided. The holiday turned out to be on Tuesday and Wednesday, so I got to teach my two double periods on Monday. The students now are taking a school-wide test, so I don't get to teach for my scheduled final week of teaching training, so I reviewed what we had gone over the previous week and gave them some practice problems. Class went very well, with many of the students successfully solving the problems, and I think understanding what they were doing. I had an observer in one of my classes, and he seemed impressed by how many students were making real attempts at the problems and were working together and such. It was a very nice final note to this small teaching segment.

I'm gonna cut this post off here. Feel free to leave comments if there's more stuff you want to hear about or if you have questions you'd like me to answer. Oh, and a note about pictures: I haven't yet been able to successfully upload any, sometimes the Internet is slow, sometimes the computer I get to use has an old OS that can't recognize my camera, and once the USB port was just broken. So, I will eventually get some pictures up, but as for now it's too much of a hassle and I don't have any fantastic pictures yet. I'll get there eventually...

Salama,
Gregor

After one month, a typical day

I've had a request to describe in detail what a normal day is for me, so I'll try to do that in this blog entry.

Everyday, I get woken up at 4:45 by the mosque a couple houses down. At first, I would get up around then, but now I'm very good at sleeping through it, though it still wakes me up when it starts. It broadcasts the call to morning prayer through a megaphone speaker on the roof. There is talking and singing, mostly in Arabic, though sometimes there is some Kiswahili too, saying things like "Wake up your family and come pray." Ramadan is going to end either tomorrow or the next day, depending on the moon (like Groundhog Day, kind of), so I'm hoping that the mosque will be a little less enthusiastic when this month is over.

I get up to start my day around 6:15, and I brush my teeth and get my water for my morning bucketbath. Usually my dada (sister) has been up and put some water on the charcoal stove to warm up for me, which is very nice, so I pour that in my bucket and go to the hose in the courtyard (my family's only source of running water)to dilute it down to a nice temperature. I then go into the shower room and use the plastic cup with handle and pouring spout provided for me by Peace Corps to pour water all over myself (armpits are the only tricky part, but I've found a good technique), then I soap up and rinse off. This has only been awkward a couple of times when I've forgotten to bring the towel in the shower with me... but I haven't exposed myself to the family yet so everything's good. Either before or after the shower I also make a stop off at the pit latrine, which is 2 doors down from the shower, next to the cowpen. Then I go back to my room, get dressed in my clothes for the day (usually khakis and a short-sleeved button-up shirt), and go have breakfast, which is tea, a couple hard-boiled eggs, and bread with margarine and jam, or sometimes chapati, which is kind of like an omelette crossed with a crepe, but very greasy.

Then I ride my bike to school (it's a nice one, on loan from Peace Corps) to school, which takes 10 to 15 minutes, mostly uphill. The school has 5 classrooms for the students (3 for Form 1 (freshmen), and 2 for Form 2 (sophomores)), a teacher's room, and 4 unfinished classrooms. The most finished of the unfinished classrooms has been given to our training, and so the other 3 volunteers assigned to this school and I have our Kiswahili classes there whenever we're not teaching. We started teaching this week, and it's been pretty fun. The students seem to like us a lot, but it's very hard to gauge their understanding. All of their instruction is in English, but that only starts in Form 1, and before secondary school their English instruction is minimal. Also, they don't have textbooks, so they write down everything you write on the board verbatim, which can be very time-consuming. Teaching Form 1, I assume that the students do not understand English well, so they will only really be able to understand things that I write on the board, so class goes slowly. I am teaching Physics, because the school only has one Physics teacher, and there is another math volunteer at my school. The topic I'm teaching is pressure, which I did some good demos for. The first day I attached an extra violin string to my bag and to contrast how the same weight can feel different when held by a wire and by a nice wide strap, which I thought was a good introduction to pressure on solids. The second class I brought in a water bottle with holes poked in the side near the top and near the bottom, and the difference in pressure was easily apparent from the amount of water coming out of the two holes.

The first class I taught seemed to understand well and get very far, in the first 80 minutes I taught all my solid pressure material and I started on liquid pressure. The second class didn't get quite as far, and then the third class wasn't familiar with "area", so since pressure is force divided by area, that slowed us down a lot and I got to teach some math. I was looking forward to trying to re-gauge how well the first group actually understood this week, but there are holidays for the end of Ramadan, and next week the school is giving them examinations, so even though I'm supposed to practice teaching for the next two weeks, I may only teach 1 or 2 more 40-minute periods. Each class gets 3 physics periods a week, first a double period and then a single period, but the way my schedule worked out I teach 4 periods on Monday, and then one each on Tuesday and Wednesday. Last week I picked up and extra double period because the other teacher needed to go into town. It's hard to get more than a couple students to participate in class, and the speed class has to go can be frustrating. I used my single period to get the students to do an example problem, so I told them this, wrote up a problem, gave them about 5 minutes to copy it, read it, and started walking around to help them. The whole class appeared to be busy when I gave them time to write, but it was when I started walking around that some students began to write the problem, which will take them about 10 minutes to do before they will begin work on it. Then, other students will just stare at the board waiting for me to present the solution... sometimes I feel very ineffective, but the students really seem to like me as a teacher. I got ovations after 2 of my classes, and some of the Form 2 students tried to trick us into teaching them math instead of their normal math teacher. They told us as we were walking by their classroom that they were waiting for their math teacher (true, and as per usual here she was starting class about 5 minutes late), and that she hadn't been to class in 3 weeks (completely false). The other math teacher and I went to the teacher's room to offer to teach more if the school needed it, and the headmaster said that they had all their classes covered, and would tell us if they needed more help. Apparently, they just wanted us to teach them too, so our reputation mus be pretty good.

After school, sometimes we go into town, or sometimes we have a bigger meeting with about 16 volunteers to discuss teaching strategies or other issues. I'm always home before dark (about 6:30) because it's not very safe for me to walk around by myself after dark. I have dinner around 7:30, and spend the evening preparing lesson plans, studying Kiswahili, and talking with my family and occasional visitors. I take another bucket bath before bed, and usually read a bit and listen to some music on the iPod, which is a very nice way to end the day.

I've been at the internet cafe for 90 minutes now, so I'm going to call this post long enough and go back home for lunch. Also, I got my phone working (thanks for everyone who sent advice), so anyone who wants to can drop me a line or a text message at +255 71770 8150. Also, Saturday I got my first pieces of mail, thanks to those who sent letters, I'm working on replies.

salama,
Gregor

So, I have been in Tanzania for about 10 days, and at our training site in Morogoro for just over a week. I'm staying with a small Tanzanian family, just a Mama and a 16 year-old dada (sister--who is actually my Mama's niece), as my Baba (father) works in Dar es Salaam. My days are extremely busy, and my Kiswahili is improving very rapidly.

The other day in class were writing sentences about our days, mine went something like: Kila siku msikiti inaamsha mimi saa kumi na moja kamili. Every morning the mosque (1 house down) wakes me up at 5 am. Getting up early hasn't been much of an issue because I'm normally exhausted at the end of the day and I go to bed around 9:00 or 9:30. We Peace Corps Trainees (PCTs) are spread around secondary schools in the area, 4 of us at each school. My school is out in the boonies and has 5 completed classrooms, and 2 that are under construction (though I haven't seen any indication of work being done). The week after next I will begin teaching Physics at this school, as they only have 1 physics teacher. I will teach here for 3 or 4 weeks during training to get some practice in before I go off to wherever I will go.

The food has been very good. My mama, I think, is very happy to have a son again--her youngest child and only son is at University in Iringa, 6 hours to the south. I normally have chapati, which is sort of like a crepe crossed with an omelette, for breakfast. Lunch and dinner can be lots of things from a cinnamon rice pilaf to various stew-like concoctions sometimes with boiled bananas or plantains. I haven't found anything I don't like yet, and the tomatoes (nyanya) are especially good.

Ummm, what else? I feel like I've been here for months already. I'm making good friends, and my language teacher is amazing. I haven't been too homesick yet, as everything is still new and exciting. I'm vaccinated against more things than I ever thought I would be. The staff is wonderful and friendly, and the medical staff is especially funny. My time on the internet is running low, so I'm going to wrap up this entry. I'll try to post a picture or two next week.

Who's in Tanzania?

I'm in Tanzania. After about 26 hours of traveling, I arrived in Dar Es Salaam around 10:30 last night. Today's excitement has included a Yellow Fever immunization, as well as many many neat introductions. There are a couple of volunteers here at the end of their 2-year stay, and they have been happy to answer all of our eager questions.

My group is pretty neat: there are 41 of us, 3 are computer teachers and the rest of us are secondary school math and science teachers--so it's a group dynamic (nerds) I'm familiar with. One of our volunteers is on his third Peace Corps assignment, he first went to Iran in '67, and more recently to Samoa in '01. He says that he's going to "keep doing it until I get it right."

Tomorrow we go to Morogoro, which besides having a really cool sounding name, is supposed to be a lovely place. Dar, though I haven't seen much of it, is not the nicest of cities (though the weather seems better than Houston's, if only by a little). Morogoro on the other hand, is supposed to be quite lovely. It's about 200 km inland from Dar and is pleasantly hilly.

Tomorrow night will be spent in a hostel in Morogoro, but after that I will be living with a Tanzanian family until Nov. 29, when training ends. I can't wait to dig in to learning Kiswahili and see everything I possibly can.

Off!

Here I am, with everything that I'm taking for the next two years. Two years, two duffel bags (one just contains a big backpack), a messenger bag, and a violin.

Wish List and Mailing Address

Main Mailing Address:

Gregor Passolt
PO Box 666
Njombe, Tanzania

I'll probably get a letter from America around 3 weeks after it's sent. Packages are also welcome, but never with a high declared value (Under $10 should be good), and when possible padded envelopes are highly preferred.

Phone Number: +255 752 122 810

I'll appreciate mail more than you will ever know. All letters will be responded to.

WISHLIST
I still have months left, but it feels like nothing. I don't need anything but a good welcome when I come home.

The First Post

In 10 days I'll be flying to Philadelphia, where I'll go through some brief orientation activities and get to know all the Peace Corps volunteers going to Tanzania with me. Then, on Sept 21, I'll go to a clinic to get jabbed by a lot of needles before getting on a plane for Amsterdam, where I have a very brief layover before an even longer flight to Dar Es Salaam.