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).