Digits

I'll dig a tunnel
from my window to yours,
yeah a tunnel from my window to yours.
You climb out the chimney
and meet me in the middle,
the middle of the town.
And since there's no one else around,
we let our hair grow long
and forget all we used to know

UPDATE: Ok, so it turns out the best way to reach me is to dial +011 255 773 430 916 (if you're dialing from outside the US). If that fails, the one listed below should work... probably. African cell phone networks, gotta love em.

Who knew, but Morogoro has a cell phone signal. I got out a bit early from training today and went and bought a super cheapo phone. I'm not sure if I'll have reception when I'm actually on site, but for now I'm back in the network. My number is:

0773 430 916

The country code is 255 (I think).

I can't make calls out of country, but I can receive them. There are some pretty cheap calling cards out there, so if you absolutely can't live without hearing my voice give me a call. Just remember that I'm 7 hours ahead of East Coast time.

I wake up usually at 5:30am, and go to bed at 9:30. I walk to the school I'm training at between 7:15am and 8:00. (It's about 3 miles) That'd be a great time to give me a ring. On the flip side, I get out of training at about 5:00 pm.

In other news, I did my laundry by hand for the first time on Sunday. Washing machines are my new favorite invention. The soap they use here burns your hands, and you have to scrub unbelievably hard to do a decent cleaning job. It took me about 2 hours to wash 3 tshirts, 2 button down shirts, and 2 pairs of pants. Bad. Times. My hands and wrists are still raw. My hands are going to be super gnarly by the time I come back stateside. Either that or I'm going to splurge and hire someone to do my laundry for me. Probably the latter. 2 hours of chemical burn every Sunday is not a particularly endearing proposal.

I also saw the fattest rooster ever while walking to training this morning. Holy god this thing was huge. I'll try to get a picture of it at some point. This thing will blow your mind. I know it made my day. (Yes, this is the type of excitement I've been reduced to. If you think this is bad, just wait 2 years.)

And now, I'm off. I hope to hear from some of you.

Kwa heri!

Lately it occurs to me

What a long, strange trip it's been.

It's only been 10 days since I arrived in Tanzania, and I couldn't even begin to describe everything that's happened since I've been here. I'm finally starting to feel settled here at my host house, and I think I'm starting to get the basics of Kiswahili down. The people in Morogoro have been wonderful, and it's an absolutely beautiful town. It's at the base of a spectacular mountain called Mlima Uluguru. A tribe of monkeys is known to live in the woods near my home. I've seen a couple of them so far. I'm definitely not in Maine anymore...



This week's been one hell of a ride. We finished up staging in Dar es Salaam last weekend. In Dar we got to meet all of our support staff in Tanzania, as well as a couple active volunteers. Strangely enough, I've met two other Mainers already: one is a current volunteer from Waterville, the other is a member of the Peace Corps Tanzania staff hailing from the County. We spent 2 days in Dar getting stuck full of needles and crash coursed on Peace Corps Tanzania basics. Here's some of us at the Peace Corps Tanzania headquarters:



Conor and Mike were my roommates during staging, and Dick (the older fellow) is in my language training group here in Morogoro. This is Dick's 3rd round with Peace Corps (Iran in the 60s, and Samoa a couple years ago). Talk about hardcore. He's one of the other ICT volunteers, so we'll be doing most of our training together. I'm sure I'll be able to learn a whole lot from the guy.

After finishing up in Dar we took a bus to Morogoro. This was my first real chance to see the Tanzania I'd been expecting. Driving out of Dar and seeing the city fade to countryside was amazing. You're going to hear me saying this a lot, so get used to it: Tanzania is beautiful.




We arrived at the training facility in Morogoro in the afternoon, and immediately after arriving we were met with a traditional African dance. Despite how deliriously tired we all were, (between the let lag, frayed nerves, and utter lack of sleep we were all pretty messed up at this point), most of us got pretty into the dance.

We spent 2 days training in the Morogoro facility learning basic Swahili and the main health issues to worry about (boil, cook, or peel everything, pit toilets suck but you'll get used to them, and don't go swimming... ever). After that, it was off to our host families. I don't think I've ever been more anxious in my entire life than I was on the dala dala (bus) ride over... (think first-date-ever anxious). I'm sure I made a ridiculous impression on my host family when I first arrived. I was sweating bullets, stuttering, and what little Swahili I thought I knew decided to completely and utterly vanish from my head. It was prettymuch a train wreck all around. (After talking to the other trainees though, we all had more or less similar experiences. It's a rite of passage I guess.)

I hope to have more pictures of where I'm living posted soon, but I don't want to look like a tourist in the first week here. These are going to be an interesting but really challenging 10 weeks of training. The other trainees are a great bunch, and I'm going to really enjoy going through this with them. I think it'll be really hard to say goodbye to them when we ship off to our actual sites.




That said, all in all I'm doing well. I couldn't be happier about being here. Hamna shida! (That's the Tanzanian equivalent of hakuna matata).