Bodily Injury, Las Vegas, and How I Had a Gun Pointed at Me

I seems like trouble always finds me when I'm abroad, and I guess Tanzania is no exception.  I'll be honest, yesterday and today have been kind of a mess.

For the past few days, all of us PCTs have been living and training at the Msimbazi Centre on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam.  We haven't been allowed to leave the premises, due to the fact that none of us can speak Swahili and that Dar can be a somewhat dangerous place (violence and assault rates are relatively low, but the petty theft rate is one of the highest in the world).  Our next step is the city of Morogoro west of Dar for further training and homestays, the idea being that the smaller, safer town as well as the host family experience will allow us to integrate into the culture more smoothly before PC sets us loose on the country for two years.  Today was the day all PCTs made this transition from Msimbazi to Morogoro.

Well, all PCTs except me.

While playing ultimate frisbee at Msimbazi yesterday, I tripped on a stone and sprained my left ankle.  Bad.  It hurt so much I could barely walk, and I pretty much had to be carried everywhere.  Keep in mind that I JUST got over spraining my right ankle back in July, which made this suck even more.  Luckily, though, my fellow PCTs are awesome and really helped me out, be it by bandaging my foot, pumping me full of ibuprofen, or giving me piggyback rides.  I owe them all big time.

Even though I was 99% sure that it was just a sprain (i.e. no broken bones), it is Peace Corps policy to take me to the hospital and get it checked out (x-rays, etc.).  Therefore, while everyone else hopped on a bus to go to Morogoro this morning, I stayed behind to go to the hospital.  Lame.  After getting a first-hand look at the Tanzanian health system all morning (It's pretty good, although I had to keep telling the tech that it was my ankle that was messed up, not my knee), I got dropped off at a random hotel downtown since there were no more Peace Corps cars available and I would have to wait until tomorrow to rejoin the group at Morogoro.

At this point, I had a bright idea: why not explore Dar while I'm here?  I have nothing but time until I leave tomorrow morning.  What could possibly go wrong?  Nevermind the fact that I am alone, speak none of the language, have been living in a walled compound my entire time in Tanzania (which has been only four days), have only a vague idea of what the coastline of Dar looks like (much less the roads), have a gimpy left ankle, and am carrying three weeks' salary as well as my camera on me while wandering aimlessly around one of the pickpocket/mugging capitals of the world.  Seriously, looking back on this, I might as well have had a huge "ROB ME" sign stapled to my forehead.

In any case, using the sun as my compass, I hobbled my way towards the beach.  On the way, I managed to order some lunch with the help of some friendly Chinese people who spoke some Swahili (my first Chinese to Swahili translation... awesome).  I quickly learned that, given my compromised state, I was like a wounded gazelle on the Serengeti; despite my best efforts to look pissed off and busy, something about me just screamed "mzungu sucker" since it seemed that almost every street vendor/con artist seemed to gravitate towards me, chanting "Hello! Las Vegas! California! Baseball!"  It was annoying, but not entirely unexpected.

After about three hours of being lost and taking pictures of the harbor and Indian Ocean (which, by the way, are both beautiful), I ended up on a secluded beachside road taking a picture of what appeared to be a particularly nice-looking building located behind a closed gate.  As I learned from the military police that immediately pulled up and started yelling at me, this was the State House, and it is considered a felony to take pictures of said building.  After much submissive and rational explanation (well, as rational as I could muster given that one of them was pointing an AK-47 at me), they finally let me go, making me delete the picture in the process.  I think the turning point in the conversation was when I explained that I was in the Peace Corps and I was teaching physics: most of them had heard of it and said they were glad I was doing good for the country.  That being said, I think they got a real kick out of scaring the piss out of me.  Glad I could make their day.

Well, after an additional four hours of limping around Dar, here I am: in an internet cafe in the middle of the city with no support looking for dinner.  Wish me luck!

Pepsi Presents New Zanzibar

So, let's not mince words: Tanzania is awesome.

I arrived here in Dar on Friday... at least, I think it was Friday.  From Philadelphia, to New York, to Zurich, to Nairobi, to Dar es Salaam, it took about 29 hours total.  Not fun.  Not much to report on the trip, other than the fact that I watched a ton of movies.  For the record, "Kick Ass" was mediocre, "Unforgiven" is still totally badass, and "Shrek 4" made me want to hurt something small and innocent.

In any case, the past two days have been pretty fun.  The folks here don't trust us to go wandering off in Dar by ourselves (probably because we have about six words of Swahili among all 39 of us), so we've primarily been confined to the convent/community center/dormitory/canteen/bar area the whole time.  Mornings have been spent listening to lectures regarding culture, language, safety, and other vital stuff while evenings have been dedicated to hanging out, staving off jetlag, and coming to terms with the fact that we're totally in Africa right now.  We'll be shipping out to the Morogoro region (west of Dar) on Wednesday to get a few more days of training before dividing up to live with our host families for the next 9 weeks.

Accommodations are quite nice here.  Single rooms with running water and electricity, maid service, cheap beer, you name it.  I'll post pictures as soon as I have a chance (or, rather, when I take any).  Mosquitoes are a bit of a problem, but they're NOTHING like the tiger mosquitoes we have in DC.  While tiger mosquitoes can quickly escape danger, bite through clothes, and will essentially stop at nothing to drain you of your life force, the mosquitoes here seem much more... lethargic.  Although I guess they do transmit malaria... eh, not important.

Actually, slightly funny story/sage advice regarding mosquitoes: make sure that there are ZERO mosquitoes on the inside of your mosquito net when you go to sleep.  Otherwise, you could spend a full hour jumping around your bed with a flashlight trying to kill the little ****s only to fall off and faceplant on the floor like an idiot.  This is hypothetically speaking, of course.

Okay, this post is long enough.  And it's dinner.  Tutaonana!

Alright chumps, let's do this.

So, you know that feeling you get when you're being hoisted up a particularly intimidating rollercoaster... and it's your first coaster of the day so you're kind of out of it... and you didn't get much sleep beforehand because you woke up extra early to get the theme park... and that McMuffin you snarfed earlier in the morning isn't sitting too well... and those screaming preteens behind you are about to give you a ruptured eardrum... and you just round the crest of the incline and the situation suddenly becomes incredibly real and you realize that there's no way you're getting off now and you are moments from being plunged 300 feet to your simulated death?

Yeah, that's kinda what this feels like.

I just finished staging today, and tomorrow I'll be boarding a plane at JFK airport and leaving the country for the next two years.  I haven't really slept much this week, and I doubt I'll be doing too much tonight.  Luckily, everyone here seems awesome and this'll probably be a great experience, but I reserve the right to be a little apprehensive before I go.  I'm just hoping that I didn't forget anything else in my luggage.

In any case, this is it.  I'll see you all on the other side.

So It Begins...

So, yeah.  This is my Peace Corps blog.  Nice.

It seems that nearly all Peace Corps members have one of these things nowadays.  Personally, I'm not a fan of blogging in general, although I can definitely see the benefits of keeping one for a trip like mine.  Not only does it help me keep in touch with friends and family, but also I now have a means to effectively keep track of my time in Tanzania.  Plus, I finally have something interesting to talk about, and it's always nice to feel like you're the center of attention, even if it's on the internet.


So, for the one person reading this who doesn't know me personally, some background: my name is Paul, I live in Bethesda, Maryland, I'm 23 years old, and I'll be teaching high school level physics in Tanzania.  I am typing this one day out from my official Peace Corps staging in Philadelphia.  As of right now---hunched over my computer typing this at 3am---I am barely packed, horribly sleep-deprived, and utterly unprepared for the next two years of my life.  I don't know a word of Swahili.  My physics knowledge is rusty at best.  I have literally no concept of what a Tanzanian electrical outlet looks like.

I hope to God I'll be okay.