Right now is the most beautiful time of the year in Songea. The rains have been saturating the deep red soil since November, nourishing tall shoots of grasses, fresh green leaves on the trees, thick deep green corn stalks, tangling pumpkin vines, and bright yellow sunflowers. I want to soak it all up before desiccation reigns again in a couple of months.
It is also a beautiful time of year because I am on break from school. It is nice to finally have time to reflect on my first full year of teaching here in Tanzania. During the past few months my busy schedule has matched pace with the growth of the voracious vegetation.
Back in December my family (Mom, Dad, Kara, Keegan and Devin) visited for a balmy summer-time Christmas in Songea. Their trip was wonderful, but too short, which was not helped by the fact that they arrived a day later than scheduled. This was not due to any transportation fiasco in the developing world, but because they missed connecting flight in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia due to a late flight departure in Washington, D.C of all places.
While they were here they got to see my home, school, and the town of Songea as well as meet some of my neighbors, Peace Corps friends, and even some of my students on Christmas day. We also enjoyed a safari in Ruaha National Park and had dinner with my pre-service training host family in Morogoro.
Just after the new year I was reunited with my training group in Dar es Salaam for mid-service conference, meaning my PC service is more than half over. Out of the 33 of us who found ourselves together at staging in Philadelphia last year, 25 of us are still here in Tanzania seeing it through.
The new calendar year also signaled the approaching end to the school year at Songea Girls. We celebrated graduation in January, and then my form VI students took their two week long national examination process in February. When the results come back next month we’ll see if my efforts throughout the last year have paid off. I would be ecstatic if even one of my students scored at least a D in physics.
We closed school at the end of February, giving me just enough time for the two day northward journey in order to arrive in Moshi in time for the Kilimanjaro Marathon. I had been training the last few months with three other female PCVs, Amanda, Erica, and Kelly, who live near to Songea. We all traveled to Moshi together. Before we left, my students threw me an early birthday/End of the year party. I celebrated my actual golden birthday (turning 26 on the 26th) among PC friends in Moshi on a rooftop restaurant with views of Mt. Kilimanjaro.
The marathon itself was awesome. We had quite a crew of Peace Corps volunteers running. Most ran the half marathon, and I ran the full with 3 other people I knew. The first half of the marathon was a piece of cake. Then came the hill. The third quarter of the marathon is relentlessly up hill. But at least you get to run among beautiful coffee plantations with precious glimpses of Kilimanjaro to encourage you on. Then after running up hill farther than you thought possible, you get to turn around and coast in for the last 10 kilometers. I finished in just under 5 hours, and was hardly sore the following days…maybe I could have run faster?
After the marathon I took an amazing day trip to the Ngorongoro Crater with 3 other PC women. We stayed with a park ranger who is a friend of one of my PC friends. Tanzanians are known for their hospitality, but his hospitality blew me away. When we did not see any lions in the morning, he called up to his colleagues stationed on the rim of the crater with their huge binoculars to find out where the lions were. Then, not wanting to make the other park guests jealous, he waited until the other cars had cleared out before taking us off road directly to the lions. We also go to see the endangered rhinos up close. There are only 36 in the park, up from a population low of about 8 in the 1980s. We also saw elephant, zebra, wildebeest, ostrich buffalo, and a lake covered with pink flamingoes reminding me of the scene in Out of Africa when Robert Redford and Meryl Streep fly over the African savanna. Ngorongoro crater is the most beautiful place I have seen in Tanzania so far.
The next day, without wasting any time I jumped on a bus and headed to the Usambara Mountains to visit my friends Theresa, Nick and Leigh, who were all in my training group. Not only did I have a chicken pecking at my toes the whole way, but the woman in the seat in front of mine, in an attempt to project it out the window, vomited all over me. It’s amazing how I have learned to take these things in stride. The Usambara Mountains are beautiful, but I found traveling through there also a little sad, because so little the natural rainforest remains.
Now I am back in Songea, recovering from the journey and trying to reflect on my last 18 months of Peace Corps service. It has flown by, as I knew it would. I feel like I am finally starting to get the hang of living here in Tanzania. I think these last 8 months have the potential to be extremely productive compared to my last year and a half of service. And because there is so much I still want to do here, I am considering applying to have my PC service extended for another year…we’ll see. I also terribly miss America and my family and friends there.
Before the marathon with my girls from the Ruvuma region 
The last stretch
Happy to be done
They accidentally handed me a half marathon shirt. I made sure that was corrected real quick.
