Planned Conferences and Surprise Vacations

Back in the beginning of August, I was up in Dar participating in our scheduled COS (Close of Service) conference, a mandatory yet fun class reunion designed to help us PCVs efficiently tie up loose ends in country, plan for the future, and slowly begin reintegrating back into American society.  Indeed, much like PST, IST, and MSC, COS is one of the major meetings required by all Peace Corps branches in all countries, and, despite its name, it’s actually supposed to take place ~3 months before a Peace Corps volunteer leaves, so that the PCV in question can prepare him or herself for the inevitable transition back stateside.  So yeah, while I guess COS conference isn’t the end-all be-all Peace Corps service, it’s the harbinger of the end… and, well, that can be a bit intimidating at times, even if the conference itself is a blast.

I don’t know about other Peace Corps countries, but for us in Tanzania, COS conference tends to be a pretty laid-back affair: it takes place at a fancy beach resort, attendance policies for sessions aren’t strictly enforced, and we usually get a lot of downtime during the afternoon and evenings to go swim, play volleyball, or just relax.  Tedious PowerPoint presentations are infrequent, flipchart-based small group work is nonexistent, and most sessions are primarily focused on us, the volunteers---reflecting on the good times had during service while preparing our résumés for the job market back home.  Moreover, all the food is prepaid, we sleep in air-conditioned rooms, and, given that COS usually happens during the low tourist season, we pretty much run the venue for the entire time we’re there.  In all, I’d say COS was not your average PC conference, and I had a pretty good time while I was there… the meetings were fun, the buffet was sumptuous, and I got an all-expenses-paid trip to a fancy, tropical resort on the American taxpayer’s dollar.  What’s not to like?

Perhaps the most lasting impact COS had on me was, of course, the food.  While I only spent 5 of my 11 days in Dar at the resort, I’m fairly confident I gained at least five pounds during my stay there, as we were constantly besieged by a relentless barrage of delicious Indian and Chinese food, five meals a day, every day.  A word to the wise for any would-be Peace Corps Country Director out there: as PCVs out in the bush, we’re essentially equivalent to a pack of mangy, starving dogs… if you present us with a sumptuous banquet---particularly a free one---we will compulsively and unhesitatingly devour it as if it were our last meal, every time.  Thus, if you present us with FIVE sumptuous banquets EVERY DAY, we will compulsively and unhesitatingly devour each one until we puke our guts out or our stomachs rupture, whichever comes first.  Thus, within 24 hours of being at the resort, I quickly succumbed to the “feeding-your-goldfish-too-many-food-flakes” effect, and it took no more than a few hours after Tandoori Tuesday for me to go belly-up and slip into an overfed stupor for the remainder of the week.  Moreover, given that it was mostly Bengali curry or Sichuan hotpot sluicing through my insides, I spent a great deal of COS not lying on the beach as I should have been, but rather doubled over in gastrointestinal agony, often seeking sanctuary in the resort’s numerous (and, thankfully, mostly clean) lavatories. Of course, though, this didn’t stop me from crawling back to the buffet once dinnertime rolled around… it’d be a shame to waste all that garlic naan, after all.

Might I just add that we happened to be at COS during the Olympics, and that the main dining area had a large projector with full-package digital satellite cable.  Nothing beats drinking cocktails, shoveling delicious food in your face, and watching international athletic competition.  It was like being in fat man’s Elysium.

While all this eating, drinking, and other assorted hedonism was fun, one part of COS did stick out for me in the end---namely, that this would be the last time our training class would all be together in one place.  Sure, we’ve already hung out a bunch of times in country, and a lot of the people present at the conference (namely, those whose sites are near mine in country) are the same folks who’ve pretty much comprised my friend group for the past two years, but it’s kind of crazy to think about the fact that I might not see any of them again, at least in any predictable capacity.  Peace Corps really does foster a strong family vibe among training classes and a strong community vibe in PCV-dom overall, and since everyone is scheduled to leave at different dates in the coming months, there’s this slow, inexorable feeling that the band is breaking up.  I guess this is something that all PCVs go through---I’m confident it’s not just my class that undergoes this weird, post-COS separation complex---but still, it’s a bit strange to think about how far we’ve come since those nascent days back in Philly.

All wistfulness aside, the rest of my stay in Dar was fun as well.  I had to add a few days both before and after COS to take care of some minor medical stuff, and, naturally, I took full advantage of my downtime to bask in the opulence of Tanzania’s capital---eating lots of safi food, abusing government resources at PC HQ, and hemorrhaging money like it was going out of style.  I won’t bore you with the details, but let it be known that I went and saw Batman in theaters, ate a crispy chicken sandwich, tore it up in the Peninsula club scene, purchased delivery pizza, slept on a real mattress on a king-sized bed with down comforters, enjoyed hot showers, consumed more cheese than is safe or reasonable, and ate my first Dorito in two years (it was Nacho Cheese flavor, and it was incredible).  Overall, it was pretty awesome, and I think I can now finally upgrade myself to from Songea-Based Country Bumpkin to Sophisticated Dar Urbanite.  It’s about time I figured out how the daladalas worked up there, anyways.

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So yeah, after a fun 1.5-week stay in Dar, I hopped on my standard 2x2 Super Feo Express Yutong Bus, which, after the normal 15 hours, dumped me back in good old Songea town.  Given that I had school the next day, I unfortunately didn’t have a lot of time to decompress from this little jaunt to Safi-land… but hey, I had a job to do, and I needed to assuage my massive guilt for abandoning my students for a whole week (yeah, I had given both my Form V and Form VI classes enormous problem sets before leaving, but I still felt pretty bad for forsaking them).

So I went to school the following day and everything proceeded as normal… until I made the unwitting discovery that---surprise---Songea Boys was ending its winter term three weeks earlier than normal.  A little backstory:

This year, the Tanzanian government decided to conduct the national census during the month of August.  I’ve heard that this was supposed to be the 2010 census, but whatever… in the end, at least the census is getting done.  Regardless, to accomplish this task, the Tanzanian government has decided to use public secondary O-level schools as tallying centers, or whatever kind of home base census workers need to get their work done.  Thus, to accommodate for this decision, most O-level schools in the country have changed the dates of their large breaks so that students wouldn’t be at school when the census was taking place, and the census workers could therefore make full use of the facilities.  A-level schools took longer to negotiate an acceptable compromise, but, back in July, it was decided that A-level schools would not be used as census centers and thus maintain their normal schedule of a September-October break.

This put Songea Boys in a difficult position.  Being primarily an A-level school but with a significant O-level component, the administration here couldn’t really decide whether or not to move the break to accommodate for the census.  To make matters worse, there was a nationwide teacher’s strike from mid-July to early August, meaning that most of the Songea Boys faculty only showed up to school to get their daily free lunch, and no major decisions were made regarding school schedules.

Fast forward to when I got back from Dar.  Turns out that, while I was gone, the strike was lifted and the decision was made to follow neither the O-level schools nor the A-level schools, but instead give Songea Boys its own break located between the two other breaks (of course, no one told me this until I happened to ask the day I got back).  This means that not only was I forced to cut all my Form V and Form VI syllabi short, but all A-level terminal examinations were suspended until the students return in early October, which pretty much guarantees that they’ll either (a) forget the material over the break or (b) miss the exam entirely because they’re late coming back to school.  Moreover, this effectively increased the number of major make-or-break tests my Form VIs will have to take to 4 over the course of the second term---Term 1 Finals, NECTA Mock Examinations, Pre-National Examinations, and NECTA Finals.  Needless to say, my Form VI students are in for a rough semester.

Incidentally, this also means that literally all my plans for travel, work, etc. during the break are now messed up, as half of them take place in early to mid-October, when my students will now (apparently) be back in classes.  I am less than pleased with this prospect.

But, in truth, not all is lost with my surprise early break.  With my now copious amounts of free time, I’ve been working on a bit of a secondary project with my sitemate at Songea Girls (Songea Girls is still adhering to the normal A-level break, so they finished their winter term a little later).  The project is primarily focused on teaching students about solar power and its uses, and it was originally put together by a few MIT graduates for use in secondary schools in Ghana.  Regardless, the material remains fairly applicable here in Tanzania: my sitemate and I have received a “kit” from back in the States that includes lesson plans, solar cells, and LEDs so that we can give students a bit of hands-on experience in building their own solar lamp (all while, of course, we stress the real-life applications of physics).  As of now, we’re still hammering out some of the details (how the heck am I supposed to find a 4.5 V lithium ion battery in freaking Songea?), but I’m still confident that we’ll be able to effectively continue the syllabus with my sitemate’s students when they come back in mid-October, or perhaps start afresh at Songea Boys when my students come back in late September.

Alright, not much else to report at the moment.  There might be some minor adventuring close to the end of break, primarily as an attempt to salvage what’s left of my shattered travel plans… but yeah, we’ll see how that goes.  Maybe it’s all for the best: by being forced to stay at site during break, I’m obliged to be a better volunteer, starting secondary projects and whatnot.  In the end, I guess that’s always a good thing.

Contract Extension, New Teachers, and How to Make Homemade Gunpowder

It’s been a while since I’ve posted about site, and since I’ve pretty much been doing nothing but chill here at Boys since April, I figure it’s about time I threw an update out there to keep the folks back home informed on all-things-Paul.  I mean, hey, I owe it to my fans, don’t I?

Again, because none of these events are really related to each other, I’m opting for another vignette-style post.  It’s a crutch, I know, but it works.  Plus, with the way most internet writing is turning out these days---brief and skim-friendly to suit today’s busy procrastinator---it’d probably be best to keep things short and noteworthy.  It’s not like I’m shooting for a Pulitzer or anything.

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Perhaps the biggest piece of news since the last update is that I’m extending my service here at Songea Boys until the end of the school term in March 2013.  Well, I guess this isn’t new news---extension was always part of the plan---but now I guess it’s more official than before since I’ve (finally) turned in the forms to PC HQ.

There were a number of influencing factors that led me to make this decision, not least among them being the fact that, under the normal schedule, I’d be leaving my school as early as November 2012, abandoning my kids to the fates right before their terminal NECTA examinations.  While it’d be nice to go home and eat hamburgers a little earlier, I’m confident that I wouldn’t be able to do so without being racked with guilt: again, my current Form VI students are the Form Vs I managed to snatch up near the beginning of my service, and I’d really like to see them through the entirety of their secondary school career.  Of course, the unstated agenda of all this is that, one day, when my students are all successful physicists and biologists working in state-of-the-art Tanzanian research labs in the now-famous Ruvuma Technology Corridor, they can look back and say, “I owe it all to that crazy mzungu back in A-level who kept invoking the Second Law of Thermodynamics to describe my own mortality.”  An unrealistic fantasy, yes, but I just really want my kids to know that they had a teacher for two years who genuinely gave a crap about their education, and I feel I can much better accomplish that by finishing out the school term.

Whimsical perspectives of service aside, there were practical considerations as well.  For whatever reason, it seems that PC TZ has been losing interest in the Ruvuma region over the past few years, as neither my sitemate nor I are being replaced, and new education or health/environment volunteers have been few and far between over the course of my service.  Thus, if my school is to find a replacement teacher for me, I need to give them an early heads-up so they can start looking… there’s not really that large a pool of eligible teachers to draw from around here.  In fact, I’m pretty sure my sitemate and I alone represent a significant percentage of the A-level physics teaching staff in the Ruvuma region as a whole (according to last year’s NECTA stats, there are only three schools that teach A-level physics in the entire region, and we represent two of them).  By leaving a little later and informing my headmaster that I’m not getting replaced, I save Songea Boys from a frantic mid-semester scramble to find a new physics teacher, which would mostly likely result in the hasty appointment of some fresh-out-of-Form-VI neophyte who probably got a 20% on his physics NECTA.  My school doesn’t want that, I don’t want that, and I think we’d all be better off I stayed a little while longer.

Lastly, there are selfish reasons for extending.  Going home in November would make me too late for school, too early for applications, and under too tight a period to find any meaningful employment.  By finishing service in March, I’m at least a little closer to the summer school/summer employment market, which will hopefully open up a few more opportunities for me in terms of the ol’ career path.  So yeah, between the choice of working a little bit longer in Tanzania or spending six months as an unemployed 25-year-old living with his parents, I’ve made the easy decision.  Plus, if I extend, I get to do a little free-form traveling after service, and that’s always a good thing.

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In other Songea Boys news, I’ve been (somewhat) relieved of my duties as chief A-level biology instructor this term, as we managed to recruit a new teacher from nearby Chipole Secondary---a nun who apparently did some studying in America once upon a time.  Overall, she’s really nice: her English is great, and she’s definitely more dedicated to her students than the average Songea Boys teacher.  She’s also had me over to her place a few times, and we’ve had some nice conversations about America over chai and boiled magimbi (yams). Perhaps most importantly, though, she’s been helpful in alleviating my workload: teaching Form V and VI physics as well as Form VI biology, not to mention occasionally teaching Form V biology when I had time, was beginning to crush my spirit, and it was getting to the point where I actually was getting seriously depressed in anticipation of our regularly-scheduled exam weeks---grading 450+ exams every couple of months is no picnic.

Despite her help, though, there are some aspects of her teaching style that I find a bit troubling… although, admittedly, they provide some insight into the system I’m working with here.  For one, despite her having been an O-level biology teacher for a few years at Chipole Secondary (and having “majored” in biology back in her seminary in Kansas City, where she graduated, or something), she’s really not qualified to teach high school biology, at least by American standards: she doesn’t know what atoms are, she has serious issues understanding how modern genetics works, and she’s a devout creationist (like, “Adam-and-Eve-in-the-Garden-of-Eden-5000-years-ago” devout… she’s a nun, after all).  I mean, I didn’t even think you could pass biology without knowing what atoms were, much less make a career of teaching it at the magnet A-level secondary school in a major province in a nation of 40 million people.  What’s fortunate is that she recognizes her lack of expertise in the subject, and she’s asked me to give her private tutoring sessions to help her review the material… it’s a shame, though, that after a number of such sessions over the past few months, it’s become apparent that she really just needs to go back to school (well, that, or pick a different line of work).  I’ll give her some credit: she does seem to really want to learn the material and she is working hard (well, hard for Songean) to gain a general level of competency.  I just don’t know if it’ll be enough to ensure a high level of biology tuition at Boys for years to come.

Another problem is that, again, while she’s nice and fairly dedicated, she’s just so… Tanzanian.  I’m sorry, I love Tanzania and the Tanzanian people, but there really is a lack of independent thought in Tanzanian culture: Tanzanians are the type of people who will spend 12 hours a day every day lugging sacks of maize up a hill on their backs but won’t spend 6 hours one day designing/building a wheelbarrow and 6 hours every other day doing the same chore for less energy.  The same principle---that is, lack of critical thinking and disregard for individual ingenuity---applies to the education system here, and despite the time our new biology teacher has ostensibly spent getting an education in America, she remains an unmistakable product of a Tanzanian public school education.  As a result, she---like most Tanzanian teachers I know---sticks unquestioningly to the MoE-approved syllabus (despite the syllabus’ flagrant omissions and her lack of understanding of the material in general) and champions the classic “learning-through-blindly-copying” approach to higher education.  Yes, she “studies” biology for three hours a day, but I’ve seen her notes, and all she does is literally transcribe her biology textbook onto a piece of paper, which she then proceeds to transcribe verbatim on the blackboard during class the next day.  Thus, while I’m constantly badgering my kids with annoying, theme-oriented questions during my biology classes (“So, we’ve talked a bit about the differences between arthropods and vertebrates.  But why do you think arthropods tend to be smaller than vertebrates?  Why aren’t we getting eaten alive by giant spiders as we speak?!”), she spends most of her classes writing down the eleven (and yes, according to NECTA, there are exactly eleven) advantages and disadvantages of flowering plants and making the kids repeat them back to her ad nauseam.

Perhaps the clincher with all this is that, as far as my school is concerned, she outranks me.  Oh, sure, I’ve been at Songea Boys longer and I’ve been working with the A-level syllabus one year longer than she has, but she’s got one more year of overall teaching experience than I do (she’s class of 2008), and she’s a biology teacher, whereas I’m a physics teacher who’s merely dabbling in biology to help the school out.  It doesn’t help that most of the administration doesn’t really know much about biology, so, as far as they’re concerned, she knows more about biology than I do---never mind that, again, she really doesn’t know what atoms are (seriously, she really doesn’t…  I had to tell her what oxygen was and why it is essential for life).  Therefore, whenever an issue comes up between the two of us, we are frequently and dismissively told to “work as a team,” which doesn’t really solve the problem and results in further clashes of interest down the line.  This is especially the case when my supposed “teammate” is constantly trying to get me to do her grading for her or teach her classes because she’s not “comfortable with the material.”  Or when she decides to spontaneously take a sick week and call me at 5am Monday morning to tell me that---surprise---I now have to teach double my periods because she has “malaria.”  Again.  For the third time this term.  Even though it’s cold season.

I’m actually still a bit divided on that issue: do I bite the bullet and teach her classes for the benefit of the students, or do I abandon the students so that she might get in trouble and I teach her a lesson about professionalism and responsibility?  It’s a tough choice.

In the end, though, I’m not going to hate on her too much.  She's a nice person, and she really is more dedicated than most teachers at my school, which is always a good thing.  Moreover, I need to emphasize that I am NOT a model teacher myself: there have been plenty of times I’ve stumbled into a class entirely unprepared and ended up winging it for 80 minutes (I’ve actually gotten remarkably good at that).  I guess this is just part of what happens when you work within a cruddy system: when there’s a dearth of teachers in the country overall, you have to make do with what you’ve got.

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Of all the comparisons to other American institutions, I’d have to say that PC TZ is a lot like high school.  We’ve got our principal (the CD), our deans (the APCDs), and we have four “classes” of PCVs in country at any given time---two classes a year, two years of service.  Moreover, given that we’re mostly a bunch of bewildered, post-baccalaureate twenty-somethings desperately trying to stave off real life by moving to another country for two years, I’d say our general maturity level ranges somewhere between 9^th grade and freshmen orientation week in college.  So there’s that as well.

Going with this analogy, my class would currently be the “rising seniors” of PC TZ, as the health/environment class before us has just started leaving to return home to America (or extend their contracts as super-seniors).  Therefore, after they’re gone, my class and I will enjoy three glorious months of being the kings and queens of Peace Corps High before we too move on with our lives and bequeath our coolness to the next class below us.  In the end, it’s all part of the wonderful, never-ending cycle that is Peace Corps.

So, given that the 2012 cycle of PC TZ has started and the newbies have arrived, I was summoned to go do a hands-on science training with our current prefrosh earlier this month.  On the whole, I’d say it was pretty fun: the new group seems like a pretty solid bunch, and although we’re not getting any of them down here in Ruvuma (total bummer… thanks a lot, Peace Corps admins), I’m sure they’ll all have happy, productive services at their respective sites in the near future.  Here’s hoping our session was helpful (and maybe even inspirational?) enough to get them started.

What I liked best about the week up in Moro was that it was pretty much a non-stop geek-out.  There were three of us PCVs from my class and one PCV from the new (2011) class, and with the four of us representing the three major disciplines of science (biology, chemistry, and physics), we were tasked with introducing the new (2012) class to the so-called “Shika kwa Mikono Initiative”, a PC- and MoE-sponsored project designed to encourage low-income schools to use locally available materials to ghetto their way through the NECTA syllabus.  As bootleg as it may sound, it’s true: with patience, perseverance, and a little low-tech ingenuity, it’s amazing what you can engineer out of a bunch of seemingly random garbage, and you can pretty much set up a fully-functional biology, chemistry, or physics lab for ~1/10 the cost of buying everything directly from the science supply stores.

Thus, upon our arrival in Morogoro in early July, we were essentially given a wad of cash and instructed to go downtown and buy whatever local materials we needed to recreate common NECTA practicals.  What’s funny is that, if you’ve spent any time with science nerds, you’d know that this is roughly equivalent to handing a bunch of kindergarteners $500 and setting them loose at a Toys-R-Us.  So yeah, we went a little wild over the next two days.

Granted, as a physics guy, my shopping list was pretty lame (rock + string = pendulum!), but I got a lot of joy out of some of the more random crap we bought: I managed to get a hold of a computer-murdering 25-W speaker magnet and some VCR guts for physics, we scored some 15-molar NaOH solution for chemistry and biology (which we promptly mixed with some 5-molar battery acid to “test it out”… bad idea), we literally cleaned out a traditional medicine store for their cheap CuSO₄ and sulfur, and I bought my first packet of urinal cakes ever (for the NECTA physics practical where you freebase them over a charcoal stove… no joke).  I gotta say, it was probably one of the cooler shopping sprees I’ve done in recent memory.

And, of course, no geek week would be complete without explosions, and we did our best to hold true to this mantra during PST.  Because we were spending our 4^th of July in Moro and exploding hydrogen gas is for little girls, we opted for something a little bigger this year---making homemade gunpowder and setting it on fire.  As it turns out, gunpowder is actually incredibly easy to make: all you need is fertilizer (specifically, KNO₃), sulfur, and charcoal dust, all of which are in plentiful supply in TZ.  There are a few minor steps involving grinding, boiling, and drying the powder, but it’s nothing that can’t be accomplished in an evening with a few basic tools… we managed to get by with a standard wooden mortar and pestle (kinu and mtwangio), some gauze, a charcoal stove, a thin, aluminum sufuria (cooking pot), and a little elbow grease.

It’s funny: every time we do a hands-on science training session in Moro, it looks like we’re operating out of a meth lab… this time, I think we finally graduated to “domestic terrorist hideout”: imagine a dimly-lit concrete room containing a few scruffy PCVs in dirty clothes, all of whom are hunched over their respective preparation stations, vigorously grinding, stirring, or drying some suspicious-looking black paste onto pre-prepared racks (read: flipchart paper).  Yeah, I’d be thinking the same thing.

Also, let me just add that it’s a bit unnerving squatting over a red-hot charcoal stove, whisking a rapidly-drying pot full of highly-combustible gunpowder.  Don’t try this at home, kids.

Oh, and one last description of the maturity level of our little operation: over the course of the evening, we discovered that you could throw KNO­₃ directly into the fire, whereupon it would immediately burst into a shower of sparks and make a loud “woosh” sound.  This started a combustion-frenzy, where we proceeded to throw handfuls of the fertilizer directly into the charcoal stove while periodically shouting “WIZARD!”.  I think we went through half the bag… yeah, we’re grown-ups.  If anything, the numerous scorch marks we left around the house are testament to that fact.

But yeah, the gunpowder worked, and we had a pretty cool opening to our session where we set all of it on fire in front of the main conference hall.  Apparently, that stuff burns pretty hot: we put our fireworks on a large trash can, and we melted a giant hole in it.  Go figure.

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Not much else to report.  Teaching is teaching, work is work, and we have a COS (close of service) conference coming up in two weeks.  Man… I know that with my extension I’ve got another 7 months of TZ-time left, but I can’t help but feel that this crap is almost over.  Before I know it, I’m gonna be back in America.  Scary.

And since I don't have any relevant pictures for this post, here's a cute picture of one of my dogs.  Enjoy.

The Joy of Cooking in Tanzania

There's a lot to learn about life here in Tanzania, and I've been quite busy over the past three weeks, be it teaching, cleaning, or killing cockroaches with a machete.  So far here in Songea, however, the most challenging aspect of my life---and, by extension, the one I'm most determined to improve---is cooking.  I'll be brutally honest: I have the cooking ability of an epileptic chimp suffering from an aneurysm... prior to my arrival in Africa, the closest thing I had done to proper cooking was chem lab, and I wasn't any good at that, either.  Thus, becoming a decent chef has been the overarching theme of my last three weeks at site, and I've definitely had a bunch of thrills---and spills---along the way.  So, without further ado, I present for your viewing pleasure "Three Weeks of Cooking with Paul in Tanzania---the Cookbook."


Paul's World-Famous Failburgers
Buy a kilo of meat.  Realize the butcher gave you a crappy cut, and hack off 3/4 kilo of bone, gristle, and connective tissue.  Run remaining meat through a meat grinder.  Have meat grinder jam.  Take apart meat grinder and remove more connective tissue.  Reassemble meat grinder and try again.  Have about 1/2 burger's worth of meat come out.  Take remaining jammed meat and cut into tiny pieces.  Break an egg over the pile of meat, accidentally getting bits of shell into the patty.  Decide you're too hungry to care and fry the patty in a pan using too much oil.  Have patty disintegrate the second you place it in the pan.  Consume sullenly over a piece of bread.

N.Y. Strip Steak with Sauteed Onions, Green Beans, and Mashed Potatoes
Spend all day picking up the necessary ingredients.  Get really excited for the feast you have planned.  Come home.  Have the power go out.  Realize that the only stoves you have in your house are electric.  Also realize that, while you own a kerosene lantern, you don't have any matches.  Eat bananas alone in the dark.

Two-Day-Old N.Y. Strip Steak with Sauteed Onions, Green Beans, and Mashed Potatoes
Wait 36 hours for the power to come back on.  Excitedly tear open the newspaper wrapping your raw meat.  Sadly realize that the meat is now completely spoiled/full of maggots.  Give meat to a hungry dog.  Die a little inside.

Garlic Hash Browns... with a Kick!
Chop garlic, chop potatoes, chop hot pepper.  Put too much oil in the pan.  Don't think it's a big deal, and dump everything in.  Have one drop of scalding hot oil splash out of the pan and land right between your eyes.  Look like you have a bindi for the next three weeks.  Also realize that, despite all odds, hash browns are actually delicious.

The Almighty Calorie Pile
Don't eat anything all day.  Miss the last daladala into town.  Return home and take everything remotely consumable in your kitchen (meat, eggs, potatoes, rice, spinach, tomatoes, onions, garlic, hot peppers, bananas, last night's leftovers, etc.), chop into fine pieces, and dump into a giant pot.  Add some water for good measure.  Cook the **** out of everything for 1.5+ hours.  Pour resulting grayish mixture over rice.  Serve.

Toast
Can't mess up toast!  Oh wait, yes you can.  Turn heat all the way up and put bread on a pan.  Forget you're cooking toast and go out and work in the garden for 30 minutes.  Be alarmed when you see black smoke issuing from your kitchen window.  Come back inside to realize that you've almost burned your house down.

Make-Believe Grilled Cheese
Take two pieces of bread.  Fry in a pan with a little bit of oil.  Put one piece of bread on top of the other.  Pretend you have cheese.  Savor.


In all honesty, my cooking has, in fact, come along somewhat, and my meals are slowly becoming more palatable as I gain more experience.  It's a growing process, I guess, and I have a whole two years to perfect my art.  Now, if you'll excuse me, all this talk is making me hungry.  I think I'll buy some more bananas in case my power goes out again.

And Now, a Moment of Reflection

So, I've been at site for two weeks.  I'm firmly out of training: I'm spending most of my time now teaching, drawing up lesson plans, exercising, and thinking about my next meal.  I'm by no means an expert on Tanzania---I'm still about as green as they come---but these past two weeks have given me some perspective regarding life as a Peace Corps volunteer.  In that spirit, I'd like to share a minor revelation I've had during my service thus far:

Despite my relentlessly cheery attitude in most of my blog posts, service hasn't been all smiles and sunshine.  During the first week of CBT (cultural-based training in Morogoro), I felt surprisingly isolated and homesick, even though I had only been in country for two weeks.  I was with a host family, for sure, but I still felt alone, separated from my family and friends back home.  I even felt isolated from my fellow trainees, who seemed incredibly distant in their neighboring villages... none of us had cellphones and there was effectively a communication blackout until our first big meeting the following weekend.  As time passed, however, these perceived distances began to shorten, and eventually I began to realize that my friends in Peace Corps weren't that far away---hell, we were practically next-door neighbors.  I didn't realize until the second week, for example, that a whole other group of trainees was literally located across the street from my host school.  As a result, by the end of training, we all were pretty much reunited in my mind: we could navigate the town, go to market together, or just hang out if we felt like it.  The last week in Dar was especially fun... we essentially got to relive the awesome first week we had in country, only this time we all already knew each other.  Plus, there was Thanksgiving dinner, which kicked ass.

For lack of a better analogy, it's kind of like your first time swimming as a little kid.  You go through all sorts of preparation beforehand---you put on your floaties, you take one last whiz, and you take a few, cleansing breaths.  But, no matter what you do, when you walk up to the edge of that pool and stick your toe in the water, you're terrified: the pool is huge, and the water is deep and full of the unknown.  This situation is made considerably worse when your father finally gets fed up with your cowardice and pushes you in, at which point your oh-my-God-what-the-hell-am-I-doing-here reflex kicks in and you desperately flail around in a panicked attempt at survival.  After clawing your way to the surface a few times, though, you finally begin to get the hang of it, and, suddenly, the pool doesn't seem so big anymore.  You begin to notice small comforts, like a passing pool noodle, a warm pocket, or the fact that your feet can touch the bottom (and, like an idiot, you totally didn't realize this until just now).  Most importantly, you begin to realize that there are other kids in the pool who are enjoying themselves, and if you can join whatever game they're playing, then maybe---just maybe---life won't be so bad after all.

That's kind of how I feel about the current situation here in Songea.  This time, however, it's as if I've been forcibly extracted from the kiddie pool of training (which, in and of itself, was not easy to get used to) and unceremoniously dumped into real life volunteerdom.  I really shouldn't complain: my house is quite nice by Peace Corps standards, and I'm only a 15-minute daladala ride from civilization (of course, I sometimes have to wait an hour for this daladala, but whatever).  Still, the first few days alone at site were really kind of tough... not knowing where anything was in town, getting called mzungu by pretty much everyone (even my own headmaster), and having to completely furnish my house from scratch---none of these elements of PCV life was particularly glamorous or enjoyable.  I've spent countless hours wandering the seemingly endless streets and alleys of Songea, armed with only my backpack and a cheat-sheet of translated words for things I need to, well, live.  These past two weeks have effectively been my "clawing to the surface" period, replete with self-doubt, insecurity, and, in some isolated instances, moments of sheer panic.

But now, after two weeks at site, I feel as if I've come to a turn of sorts... I'm finding the proverbial pool noodle amidst the waves of uncertainty.  I can teach.  I can clean.  I can cook (kind of).  I have worldly possessions (like my awesome new meat grinder).  If I need a new pot, I know where to get one.  If I need more avocados, I know a guy.  And if I want to get out of the house, I know where the best view is.  I'm beginning to experience the small comforts of life as a volunteer, and, slowly but surely, the swimming pool is getting smaller.  It's only a matter of time before I start jumping off the high dive.

Granted, getting to this point won't be easy.  I still have a lot to learn and a lot to experience before I truly feel comfortable in my surroundings.  The process, however, has begun.  All the other kids in the pool seem to be having a good time... I guess it would be rude of me not to join the fun.

And now, to go home and get back to work.  Those giant winged termites aren't going to exterminate themselves.