Mustaches, Celebrity Status, and the End of Summer Camp

Hey, folks!  It's been a little while since the last post, and A LOT has gone down in the meantime.  Luckily, now that I'm here in Songea, I've progressed from the incredibly structured life of the Peace Corps Trainee to the incredibly unstructured life of the Peace Corps Volunteer, which means I have a little more time to organize my thoughts.  With that, here's a disjointed highlight reel of the past two weeks of my life:

1) Swearing in was a blast.  A few weeks prior to the event, all the PCT males got together and formed a pact to grow the most hideous mustaches possible for the event (heretofore known as the almighty "Swear-In 'Staches").  The result was about 15 guys dressed in their most formal African-style clothing at an official US Embassy event, sporting the most ATROCIOUS mustaches imaginable.  For the more facial hair-challenged (like me), this resulted in a pretty ugly crust-stache/Fu Manchu look.  However, there were some real winners in the bunch: collectively, we rocked the "Tennessee Highway," the "Hulk Hogan," the "Dog the Bounty Hunter," the "Lightning-Sideburns," the "Muttonstache," the "70's Porn Star," the "Mario," and, of course, the "Ned Flanders," to name a few.  The pictures are hilarious... I think they're going to post one on the official PC website, and if it's the one I think it is, it's a doozy.  Here's hoping this tradition continues with the next trainee class.

2) As for the actual swearing in, things went pretty smoothly.  My speech for our class, while nerve-wracking (I was giving it at a formal US Embassy event in front of ~100 people... completely in Kiswahili), went by without too many hiccups, and afterward people said it was pretty good.  I was also recruited to play the Tanzanian and American national anthems on my concertina on stage, as well as a Kiswahili rendition of "Little Help from My Friends" for our class, and I didn't mess up---too much---on any of those numbers.  One thing of note: during the proceedings, there were a few ITV (the Tanzanian version of CNN) guys with cameras, but I didn't think too much of them at the time.  As I learned from our Country Director the following day, those guys apparently broadcast the majority of my speech/musical performance nationwide that evening.  This has been both completely awesome and completely embarrassing.  On the one hand, holy crap, I was just on the most-watched news network in the country speaking Kiswahili for ~10 minutes---a fact that has catapulted me to quasi-celebrity status (I've already had a bunch of people in Dar, on the bus to Songea, and in Songea recognize me).  On the other hand, holy crap, this is so embarrassing: I look pretty stupid in my pre-pubescent crust-stache playing the concertina, I totally botched a few parts of all three songs, and my entire speech was filled with so-called "American Sarcasm"---squat toilet references, tongue-in-cheek criticisms of Tanzanian chicken-slaughtering practices, and numerous zings at Kenya.  Well, I guess if my speech was good enough to be quoted in Majira (a national Tanzanian newspaper), I didn't offend too many people.  In any case, I'm looking into getting a copy of the footage, so stay tuned.

3) Songea is great.  It's a nice little town, pretty out of the way as far as the tourist circuit is concerned, but accessible enough that Dar is (in theory) a one-day trip.  I'm a big fan of my house: it's big, it has electricity, and it has running water.  Of course, the electricity and running water aren't on all the time, but who's complaining?  The people here are also fantastic, and all of the Songea crew threw a big Thanksgiving bash to welcome my classmate Veronica and me to site, which was definitely a lot of fun.  In all, things are looking up: good house, good site, good friends... hopefully this should be a fun two years.

4) If I must complain about one thing at site, though, it's the arthropod invasion that occurs at my house every night.  In Morogoro, I was in a never-ending, losing battle against the dust in the area... here in Songea, I'm locked in a never-ending, losing struggle for supremacy with the local insect population.  My house has the unfortunate combination of large windows and bright, incandescent lighting, meaning that every night I have to erect a zombie apocalypse-style barrier against the hordes of cockroaches, june bugs, mosquitoes, ants, spiders, and other creepy-crawlies that try to get in.  It's eerie sometimes... once the sun goes down, I rush inside, draw my curtains, and simply listen to the soft pitter-patter of bugs smacking into my windows for most of the night. Of course, no defense is perfect, and there have been a few breaches in my homemade defense system.  The first few days at site were spent murdering dozens of two-inch long cockroaches, followed by fending off a flanking movement of mosquitoes coming in through a hole in my bathroom.  While I've mostly managed to stymie these two incursions, my house has recently been completely overrun with ants: a leaked ~3mL puddle of palm oil was apparently enough to summon a freaking legion of ants ACROSS the entirety of my house... I don't think I've ever seen---or killed---so many living things in my life.  And I don't think this war is over, either.

5) Living alone at site has reminded me of how pitifully uneducated I am when it comes to food preparation.  I've mostly been putting off cooking for myself as long as possible, eating cold samosas or simply going hungry.  However, due partly to boredom and partly to shame, I've started making forays into the market to try cooking for myself.  My first food run in town yesterday yielded a kilo of beef (note to self: a kilo is WAY too much), three unknown spices, some overpriced vegetables, and a whole bunch of flour (whether it's corn or wheat, I don't know).  The idea was to make Chinese peppersteak per the instructions listed in the Peace Corps Cookbook, but I altered pretty much everything... I'm pretty sure, for example, that Chinese food doesn't have that much cumin in it.  I can say this much: whatever I cooked last night has beef, onion, and green pepper in it... just like real Chinese peppersteak, only without the deliciousness.  I'm also pretty sure I'm going to get heart failure from all the oil I've been using, or parasites from all the raw meat I've been handling.  Such is life, I guess.

Okay, this post is long enough.  I'm starting teaching next week, and I have to stop procrastinating.  The secondmaster says that my first class is going to have ~200 kids, so this'll definitely be interesting.  Wish me luck!