Experiencing the World from a New Perspective: Songea, Tanzania

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Summertime

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.

Friday, October 30, 2009

Halloween Culutural Exchange

Last weekend the PCVs in my region had a Halloween party in Songea. It was also a chance to say good bye to the 4 PCVs of Ruvuma who will be finishing their service in November. I decided to dress up as a Songea Girls student for the party. Taking advantage of an opportunity for cultural exchange, I told my physics student about Halloween and that I wanted to dress up like them. They whooped and cheered at the idea. So we made an arrangement to meet on Saturday morning. They would bring me a full school uniform and I would bring some of my American clothes for them to try on. Then of course we did a little photo shoot. My students are so cute!

Friday, October 9, 2009

Pictures of African Dancing in Maguu

The theme with the white clothes and cowboy

hats seems to be making fun of white people

The 'Pope' carrying a toilet boil cleaner

Last Weekend with Joe

Immediately after Kara’s visit I traveled with some of the other volunteers in my region to our friend Jenna’s site for her school’s graduation party. Another PCV, Joe, also met up with us at Jenna’s that weekend. We had no idea that we would have the privilege of spending the last weekend of Joe’s life with him.

Most of us arrived in Jenna’s village on Thursday evening so we would be there in time for the festivities at her school all day Friday. We made some amazing grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup from scratch. Jenna had brought the cheese in from a town 9 hours away. The cold that I had been suffering through turned nasty on Friday morning, causing me to spend the whole day in bed, throwing up into a bucket. Joe arrived Friday afternoon, and I heard his voice among the group amidst my deliriousness, but didn’t actually see him until Saturday morning. When I was finally able to stand up on Saturday morning, I ventured out of bed and was greeted by Jenna, Erica, and Joe sitting around the charcoal jiko, sipping coffee.

I had met Joe once before, last March in Moshi for the Kilimanjaro Marathon. I did the half marathon; Joe ran the full shebang and faster than any other PCV too. He was one of the few PCVs I remembered having met on that trip. Joe was a nice guy, easy to talk to. We connected because we both taught A-level physics at boarding schools here in Tanzania. We discussed the trials of teaching in Tanzania on a rooftop bar in Moshi with a view of Kilimanjaro in one direction and the setting sun in the other.

When Joe saw me again at Jenna’s house, one of the first things he said to me was, “Oh, I forgot to email you those physics notes that I said I would.” He may have forgotten to do it, but I was impressed that he had remembered that he had forgotten.

After breakfast we hiked across the valley to the site of another volunteer, Mary Sunny. While we waited for Mary Sunny to get back from town, we took a little tour of the school and cathedral. Although catholic, Joe must have gotten bored with observing the Cathedral before the rest of us, because as we were gathering to leave, we couldn’t find him. After we walked outside we found that he had gone out ahead of us to explore other things. Joe didn’t like to just sit around for very long.

Mary Sunny’s school was having an end-of-the-year choir concert that day. The seven of us PCVs got to sit at the table in front for special guests. During lunch I sat next to Joe. We talked about our families. He was the oldest of three brothers. His family had come to visit him during his service and the three brothers climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro together. I also asked him about his post-service plans. Joe didn’t have specific plans after returning to New York, but on his way home, he wanted to visit his first Peace Corps site in Kenya, go river rafting in Uganda, and visit his ‘bestie’ in Japan. She had also been a volunteer at his school in Tanzania. Not only did Joe learn Swahili during his service, but he also picked up Japanese.

After lunch at the choir graduation, the MC coerced the seven wazungu (white people) to give an impromptu dance performance. He told the audience of school girls, “You don’t want to miss this. You are about to see something never seen before, something powerful and unforgettable.” No pressure! When the Bongo Flava music started playing, we gave it our best shot and then motioned for the students to come up and join us as soon as decently possible, which they did eagerly.

The next morning at Mary Sunny’s house most of us were feeling pretty lazy. We sat around drinking coffee, chatting, and reading. Joe got restless and decided to go for a walk. He was gone for a couple of hours. Finally we were ready to get moving and walk back to Jenna’s site, but Joe was no where around. Not too long after Joe showed and made us all envious with his description of the little adventure he had climbing to the top of a nearby peak and looking down over Lake Nyasa.

That day in Jenna’s village was a big party. Coffee is the major cash crop in the area. As the coffee is harvested, the profits are immediately put to use having elaborate parties every weekend with dancing. Each village in the area puts together a team of men to dance. The traditional dances of the women occur earlier in the year. Every dancer wore a white shirt, white shorts, generally with tights underneath, soccer socks and the most ridiculous accessories. It seemed the color of the soccer socks worn corresponded to which village the dancers were from. The dancers also carried kazoos made out of gourds. One guy was wearing a pretty awesome cowboy hat with flames on it. Apparently the point of dressing up in white and wearing cowboy hats was to mock the white colonialists and missionaries who first came to the area over a hundred years ago. One dancing group had a guy in front dressed up like a pope. Joe made sure to point out to me that the pope was carrying a toilet boil cleaner as a kind of scepter! It was ridiculous. Certainly not what I expected traditional African dancing to be like! You have got to see the pictures and even the video clips on my blog.

The next morning we all got up before dawn to go our separate ways. I headed back to site with a couple of other volunteers. Joe and Amanda headed out on a demanding day hike down to Lake Nyasa and back. That was the last time I saw Joe. It was the day before he died.

Joe made it to Lake Nyasa and back okay, but that wasn’t enough of an excursion to wear him out, so the next day he set out with Jenna to climb one of the huge rocks in the area. On the way down he lost the path and fell.

We had a really good memorial service for Joseph Chow last week in Dar es Salaam. Many wonderful and hilarious stories were told about Joe. Even a handful of his students came to the service and offered their memories about Joe. The most touching part of the service for me was listening to letters from Joe’s younger brothers read aloud. Losing a sibling at such a young age is one of the worst things I can imagine. Please keep the Chow family, Joe’s friends, Joe’s Tanzanian community and the Peace Corps community in your thoughts and prayers.