Hello Winter!
In the thick of dry season here, which means lots of dust,
cold and wind. I’m still a fan of the cold weather but the rest of this season
I could do without. Availability of water is getting progressively scarcer as
our water source, which is a natural spring in the mountains, dries up. The
dust is quite intense. Everything in my house is constantly covered in a thin
layer of red dirt, including me. Enough about the weather though…
Couple significant things in my life – electricity and a new
bike! Yup, the long anticipated electricity is finally here, and it was worth
the wait. Electricity is awesome. I feel like a much more productive person
now, although it also comes with its distractions… such as the ability to watch
tv shows and movies until late into the night… But it also means that I can
write fun blog posts like this. Also a surprising large amount of my Peace
Corps work requires a computer, so it’s nice to be able to work on that stuff
in the village when I have the most free time instead of when I’m in town. So
yeah, don’t feel too bad for me out here, I’d say I’m living pretty comfortably
these days. If I could only find more water and maybe some western food, life
would be grand. But then that would kind of defeat the point of being here…
Having a bike is nice now too. Just biked into town and back
today, so I’m feeling pretty productive. Although the road right now is more
like a sand pit, so that made riding a bit difficult, but I think I’ll probably
get the hang of it eventually. My Tanzanian friend in town was nice enough to
bike back with me most of the way to the village and gave me pointers on how to
bike in sand. Going to town is mostly downhill and I made it less than 30 min,
but getting back is a bit tricky, so it was nice to have company for that part.
Let’s see, what have I been up to the past month or so… Well
last month I took a little vacation and went to the island of Pemba to get
scuba certified. There’s a great little beach resort on the island that gives
volunteers a really good discount, so it was too good a deal to pass up. Turns
out the coral reefs off the island are some of the best preserved reefs in the
world, so that was pretty amazing to see. I’m pretty sure I saw every sea
creature in Finding Nemo. And I have a new fascination with nudibranches. There
were also the best tide pools I’ve ever checked out. Stay tuned for pictures to
come! Now that I’m scuba certified I’m looking into other dive sites around
Tanzania. I hear there’s a good spot to dive with whale sharks, but I’ve got a
little phobia to get over before I agree to do that…
In village news…
I actually had a bit of a downer week recently. The day
after I got back from my vacation my mama’s brother died in Dar es Salaam where
he was living. He’s actually the same brother I wrote about in my last post who
came to the village to sacrifice a sheep to ask for help from the deceased. I
don’t know what trouble he had gotten into before, but his family says it
wasn’t health related and they thought he was in good health. There was a
dengue fever outbreak in Dar es Salaam a couple of weeks ago though and it
sounds like that might have been what he died from. The symptoms are similar to
malaria but more extreme, and unlike malaria there is no medicine to treat it.
From what I’ve heard people who get it just have to try and get past the pain
and wait for it to pass. His death was a major shock to the family and my mama
is just now getting back to her normal routine. Since I’m really close to her
family I spent the whole week helping out at the house and helping them get
ready for the funeral. It took a couple of days for the family to raise enough
money to transport the body to the village from Dar, so in the meantime I just
tried to be as helpful as I could, cleaning the house, helping with the cooking
and just being there for my mama. In one respects it was nice to see how the
village really comes together after a death. There is a village group that
comes over to the family of the deceased house and cooks all the meals on the
day of the funeral so that that’s at least one thing the family doesn’t have to
worry about. Extended family, neighbors and friends also spent every day
leading up to the funeral at the house helping out and just providing support.
It’s common and usually expected that most will also sleep at the house the
night before the funeral. The women wear two kangas to cover themselves to show
respect, and so I did the same. I’ve been to quite a few funerals in the
village since moving here because it’s expected that all villagers will at
least make an effort to go to a funeral if its in the village and if you are in
anyway related to the family it’s definitely expected that you show up. This is
the first funeral I’ve been to though where I actually knew the person who died
and knew the family well. My mama’s family was very welcoming to me though and
considered me as part of the family. As tough as it was, it was nice to see the
whole family come together and help support each other through this. I also gained
some street cred with my ability to cook Tanzanian food and prepare vegetables
the Tanzanian way for a huge group of people.
That’s
pretty much it for my June and July updates… Stay tuned for August update
coming up soon!
