Kwa herini Morogoro

My host family


Zanzibar islanders at the swearing in ceremony


It was tasty


Philly Staging roomies, happy to be done with training


Because she asked so nicely, this one's for Kit's mom


I don't really know what's going on here


Peace Corps puts a lot of effort into swearing in


These guys roam the earth whenever it rains. If they get scared they spray acid. This one is pretty small too. Karibu Tanzania!


Me and Cynthia


Nazia and Kavisa, making me look tall


I'm not really sure what Kris is wearing...


So long, Morogoro


P.S. I've safely arrived on my island. Settling in is proving to be a slow process, but I'll get there. The people here have been wonderful so far, and the staff at my school is great. My house needs a bit of work, but in a month's time I should be fine. I've been super busy this past week, but when I get a chance I'll post a real update.

Together, more or less in line

You’re sick of hangin’ around and you’d like to travel;
Get tired of travelin’ and you want to settle down.
I guess they can’t revoke your soul for trying,
Get out of the door and light out and look all around.

Sometimes the light’s all shinin’ on me;
Other times I can barely see.
Lately it occurs to me
what a long, strange trip it’s been.



What a week! Following the Kiswahili language exam a week ago all us trainees were bused off all over the country for shadow visits. Craig and I were lucky enough to stay with current PCV Eric up in Moshi. The above picture of Kilimanjaro is from his front yard. Pretty unbeatable. The mountain is utterly awe inspiring. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to climb it at some point.

It was really nice getting out of the heat of Morogoro for a few days, and Eric was an excellent host. Seeing an actual volunteer living and working out in the field was really reassuring as well. I think it’ll be a great two years.

Following shadow visits Craig and I bused it down to Dar es Salaam. It was a 9 hour trip on a very hot and stuffy bus. Not. Fun. At least we got to see a large portion of the countryside though. From the protection of the bus I was able to take some pictures of typical places I visit but normally never dare to bring my camera. Here’s a shot of a small town shopping center, (called dukani in Kiswahili). Most small towns in Tanzania have sections that look pretty similar to this. Morogoro has a number of them. They always carry lots of good, basic items. They also happen to be useful for keeping a pulse on some of the more colorful local slang.



As enjoyable as Moshi was, Dar was where the real excitement of the week took place. The suspense of site announcements has been growing since pretty much week one of training. It’s not surprising that we all were really anxious to know where we’d be spending the next 2 years of our lives. The big day did not disappoint.



The Peace Corps Tanzania staff put an enormous map of the country outside displaying the pictures and locations of all the current volunteers in Tanzania. One by one, the country director called the names of our training group. She announced each person’s site, and we then each went up and pinned our picture up near our location. I gotta say, it was pretty damn exciting.

As I wrote in my last entry, I’ll be going to a remote post in the Zanzibar Islands. I’m told my house is right near the beach, and is it just a short walk away from my school. I should get some really nice Indian Ocean trade winds, which will hopefully save me from the extraordinary heat and humidity, (which are significantly worse than Morogoro apparently).

The Zanzibar Islands were originally the portal to Africa in the Indian Ocean spice trade. The early form of the Kiswahili language was created by the Zanzibar traders in an effort to standardize the Bantu dialects of the mainland so that Arab and African traders could communicate. Needless to say, the culture and history of the place is incredibly rich. The Zanzibar Islands are almost entirely Muslim, so it seems that I’ll be more or less living the Muslim lifestyle for 2 years. Talk about a once in a lifetime opportunity.

I’ll be working at a college of education, teaching computers to the students and staff. Apparently the school just acquired a decent number of new computers along with network and satellite internet equipment. By teaching computers to the future teachers of Tanzania, I hope to make a pretty decent impact. I’ll also have the task of setting up a network and the internet. I’ll then have the next 2 years to train the teachers and staff to repair and maintain the system. It’ll be challenging, but really rewarding I hope.

There’s one other education volunteer assigned to my island, although we’re being placed on opposite tips. Here’s Mike and I trying, (keyword being trying), to look appropriately badass, (we are going to one of the most remote Peace Corps Tanzania locations after all).



The photo was taken at the U.S. Ambassador’s house during the big Thanksgiving bash. The Ambassador was more than generous in allowing all of the Peace Corps staff, volunteers, and trainees in Tanzania to crash his front yard for a feast of epic proportions. After subsisting on mostly rice and beans for the last 2 months, I almost got tears in my eyes when I sat down to spend some quality time with my turkey platter. It was so very good. You don’t even know.



Richard, Kit, Cynthia, and I were appropriately pleased after gorging ourselves. Richard’s site will be exactly where Craig and I visited for our shadow visit earlier in the week. The man’s got a straight shot of the mountain from his doorstep. This is his 3rd tour with the Peace Corps, so I guess he’s earned it. Kit and Cynthia will be in the north near Kilimanjaro as well. The three of them are not a terribly far journey from my site, but my being on an island will make travel a little difficult. They were all great friends during training, and I’ll miss them a lot. I do plan on visiting the mainland whenever possible, however, so I should see them from time to time. Meanwhile, Craig is going down to the Southern Highlands, so he’ll be a serious trek away.

As for now, we’re all back in Morogoro for the last week of training. Next Friday, everyone heads off to the toughest jobs we’ll ever love, (old Peace Corps slogan… sorry, I couldn’t help myself). I’ve got to say, I am thrilled about where I’m going. It will truly be the adventure of a lifetime.

It's my island

We got our site announcements on Tuesday. I'll be spending the next two years at a college on the Zanzibar islands. Peace Corps policy does not allow anyone to announce their exact location over website or blog, so I'm not able to disclose the exact island or school here. If you'd like to know exactly where I'm going just shoot me an email.

Needless to say I am more than excited. Two years on a tropical island that was once a center of the Indian Ocean spice trade. It's 95% Muslim, and because the site is away from any tourist areas everyone is apparently very friendly. Talk about the cultural experience of a lifetime. Because the island is mostly Muslim, many religious Muslim rules are considered law. For instance, during Ramadan it is illegal to drink or eat anything in public. It's going to be an amazing 2 years.

I'm in the Peace Corps headquarters right now, and I'm about to head over to the ambassador's house for some tasty foods so I have to keep this really short.

Happy thanksgiving everyone!

Highest highs, lowest lows

If there was a better way to go then it would find me. I can’t help it, the road just rolls out behind me. Be kind to me… or treat me mean. I’ll make the most of it, I’m an extraordinary machine.

Last Friday was the last day of language training. With only two more weeks left until we’re sworn in and shipped off to our sites, training’s finally starting to wind down. Peace Corps has been a hell of a ride so far, certainly one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Training went by at a breakneck pace, which although exhausting, in retrospect I think was very intelligently designed. Being here in these first few months can be utterly overwhelming, and by keeping us super busy the Peace Corps does a good job at getting us out of our own heads.

Seven weeks ago we arrived in an entirely foreign land with a culture we knew very little about, and were dropped into host families who spoke minimal (if any) English. I knew essentially no Kiswahili, (I knew how to say hello and thank you… my grand summer aspirations of learning a decent portion of the language didn’t exactly pan out). To call the last seven weeks a culture shock would be a vast understatement. The towns and landscape looks like nothing I’d seen outside of National Geographic, and while the people are extremely friendly it’s truly impossible to avoid attention absolutely everywhere I go. I’m constantly stopped on the street and bombarded with questions about where I’m from, and what the hell I’m doing in Tanzania. 95% of the time, this is really great. I enjoy meeting the people here, and for most of them I’m the first American they’ve ever met. It’s a very cool experience. Sometimes though, when I’m really tired and just want to get home and lie down, having to stop every 5 minutes and answer the same set of questions to every new person I pass on the road can be exhausting.

The majority of my time here has been really rewarding though. My Swahili is coming surprisingly rapidly (while disastrously awkward at first, total immersion works wonders), I’ve gotten used to the heat (as much as a Maine boy can anyway), and my body seems to finally have acclimated to the food. There are days when everything seems to come together, and I wouldn’t trade that feeling of “wow, I can’t believe I’m actually pulling this off!” for anything.

Of course, with the good there’s also some bad. I’ve been sick some, this past week especially. I spent a good part of the week feeling exactly like terrible. The general consensus among the medical staff here thinks it was a minor case of malaria. Luckily the meds I’m on seem to have done the trick. Spending five days sweating bullets while trapped in my bed was not particularly pleasant. Being really sick for the first time so far away from home gets to anyone’s head I imagine. I went through a whole reevaluation of why I’m here, and my fever afflicted brain really put up a good fight. It certainly didn’t seem to accept most answers I tried to provide. Definitely had a few despairing moments back there. Luckily, as the fever broke clarity returned.

It’s hard sometimes during the thick of training to remember exactly why I’m here, as it seems kind of silly at face value to be teaching computer science in a country plagued by larger environmental, endemic health, and economic problems. I definitely do feel like I have a good purpose though. There is a strong need here for information technology. Tanzanians are amazingly excited about the potential of computers, and in a world of rapid globalization computer technology really does have the potential to help East Africa make some very significant steps forward. I have no false aspirations of saving the world or anything grandeur like that, but I do feel like the engineering and teaching I do on site will make some worthwhile impacts. Time will tell I suppose.

Speaking of site, only one week remains until I find out exactly where I’ll be spending the next two years! All the trainees are getting pretty eager at this point… it feels like we’ve been waiting forever. There are four ICT (information and communication technology) trainees in our group, and we are pretty confident that we’ve deduced the 4 sites where we’ll be going. We just don’t know who’s going where yet. It does sound like some pretty prime real estate though: two of the sites are on the island of Zanzibar, apparently home to some of the most beautiful beaches in the world; one site is near Mbeya, a town way up in the cloud based rainforests of the southern highlands; and the last site is at a university in Moshi, literally on the base slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro. No one ever said being a geek didn’t have its benefits.

I’ll actually be heading up to Moshi this Thursday, as Wednesday marks the last day of training in Morogoro. Thursday through Sunday each trainee will be living with a current volunteer for a shadow session. Following that we’ll be going straight to Dar es Salaam for site announcements and Thanksgiving at the U.S. Ambassador’s house. Should be a rockin’ good time.

While I’m in the nostalgic mode, here are some random photos from throughout training, (I actually got these from Kit and Greg’s cameras, so I have to give credit where credit is due). This first one is from our last night in the U.S. A bunch of us went out on the town in Philly. A good time was had by all. It is strange thinking about staging though… it feels like a lifetime ago.



Here’s one of Richard, Kris, Jon, and I during training on a particularly hot and unpleasant afternoon, (we all look fabulous, no?):



This is Paulo, my small group’s fearless language trainer. He was an amazing teacher. Our group was really lucky to have him. Funny, funny guy too.



And here are a couple sneaky shots Kit caught of me on the bus in Mikumi. The ‘rents have been pestering me for pictures that actually prove I’m reasonably healthy, so here you go!




And finally, last week a group of us visited a local brick making operation. The place was pretty neat. Brick pyramids as far as the eye could see… literally for acres. The site has been in operation for more than 30 years. Super Mario, anyone?



This will most likely be my last real entry for a good couple of weeks. I’ll try to post a quick announcement of where my site is as soon as I find out, but I don’t expect to have significant Internet access until after Thanksgiving. So, happy early Turkey-day everyone! You all have my very best. Siku kuu njema! (Have a great holiday!)