Sugar Cane Juice

One of the most delicious drinks available in Zanzibar is sugar cane juice.  The men use a machine to take the sugar cane stalk and squeeze as much juice out of it as they can.  In addition to this, they add lime and ginger to the press and you end up with a naturally sweetened drink with a hint of lime and ginger.  I wish we could bottle it up and take it home with us.

 

Small World

Jon and I got off our ferry around 6:00 pm and tried to find our hotel without a taxi which is quite difficult because Stone Town is a maze of alleyways. As our luck would have it, we ran into a friend of ours who is a volunteer about four hours away from us!  He was visiting Zanzibar with his family who is visiting him.  He recommended the hotel he was staying at and helped show us the way.   The next day, his family and my family (Jon and I), went out on a little boat to see tortoises and go snorkeling. 

Our first stop was to “Prison Island” which as the name suggests was an island for prisoners (specifically slaves), however, it never came to be used for that.  It was then planned to be used as a quarantine for people with severe illnesses.  But, as with the prison (which had actually been built), this never came to be.  Now, it’s just a touristy area.   The most notable reason to visit this island is for the rare tortoises called the Aldabra Giant Tortoise.  And giant they are!  These gentle giants are not native to the Zanzibar area, but were brought as a gift over a hundred years ago.  The oldest tortoise in the group is 150 years old!  It is believed that tortoises are the longest lived of all animals. 

After playing with the tortoises, we took another twenty minute boat ride to a beautiful area where snorkeling was ideal!  We saw beautiful coral reefs, starfish, sand dollars, clown fish, zebra fish, schools of fish, sea urchin, and many, many other fish that I could never identify.  It was so amazing and we were so lucky our friend included us in his day out on the boat to see giant turtles and super colorful fish!

Tanzania, really?

Zanzibar is like a whole different world from the part of Tanzania in which Jon and I live in.  It’s hard to tell it’s the same country.  We stayed in the world-famous area of Stone Town which has been built up to attract many tourists.  After six months of being a hot-commodity for being foreign, suddenly we’re like any other tourist where everyone speaks to us in English and harasses us to buy their things or take their taxi, or to let them be our tour guide.  It’s really quite annoying, but such is the condition of any huge touristy area.  In any event, we are ecstatic at the delicious food we are having, street lights!, and the phenomenal surroundings.  The island is characterized by the dominance of the Muslim religion.  Nearly all women here are covered and you can hear the call the prayer all over town.  Once you get away from Stone Town a little, you find what is “real” Tanzania with the poverty and the markets.  Stone Town is just a small portion of the island that I am sure tricks many visitors into believing that the whole island is as developed as this.  Jon and I have gone through an almost “culture-shock” by being here, even though it’s Tanzania.  Really, Zanzibar, are you Tanzanian?

Freedom, at last!

Peace Corps graciously hosts a 10 day conference for us to get some in-service training after three months at site.  We spent ten days back in Morogoro with all the volunteers that we trained with back from June until mid-August.  Surprisingly, our whole training class is still here, no one has "terminated early” and gone back to the USA.  The ten days of training provided us with opportunities to learn about how to tackle some of Tanzania’s pressing issues while being teachers in our communities.  In addition to teaching, next year I also hope to be the school librarian, run an English club, and teach sex education to the grade 9 females as an HIV-prevention method.  Jon and I live in one of the country’s highest areas of people living with HIV/AIDS.  However, ten days of training for 8 hours straight is really not that fun.  The very next day that training ended and we had our freedom back, we headed to Zanzibar to get some rest and relaxation!  After a very frustrating trip to the island, we finally arrived with the smell of fish in the air and excitement in our veins!

Mama Maasai

My favorite Mama Maasai who works in Iringa.  I bought all my Christmas presents from her because her personality is phenomenal.  The maasai are a famous tribe in Tanzania who still live as nomads and their lives are greatly centralized around the cows who provide much of their necessities in life.  They are known for drinking cow’s blood.  On a tourist level, they make and sell the best souvenirs in Tanzania!

Colorful

This lizard is awesome, enough said:

Isimila Stone Age Site

On our last day in Iringa, we went to a place called Isimila Stone Age Site which is about 15 miles outside of Iringa.  I was initially attracted to this place because it has tools that are claimed to be between 60,000 – 100,000 years old.  The tools were discovered in the 1950s by archaeologists and they are claimed to be some of the most important finds from the stone age.  However, as cool as that all sounds, these tools were greatly disappointing.  They looked like….rocks.   I am complete unsure how archaeologists are able to determine that these rocks are…tools. 
What ended up being super fascinating were the sandstone pillars which were only about 15 minutes walk from the site displaying the tools.  These natural pillars are absolutely amazing!  As we later learned, it was through erosion in this canyon that the tools were unearthed.  As such, this site is believed to have been inhabited by humans as long ago as 300,000 – 400,000 years ago!
 

Weather and fame

Jon and I woke up on Friday to another gorgeous day in Iringa.  We went to a place  for breakfast called Neema Crafts which is a wonderful not-for-profit organization.  Not only do they sell crafts as the name suggests, but there is also a café which serves excellent brewed local coffee and organic foods.  The best part of this organization is that it is a vocational training site for the young deaf and disabled people in the area.  While many disabled people in the USA have a chance to support themselves or at least get some assistance from the government, this is not the case in Tanzania.  All the crafts are made by disabled people and the restaurant is run completely by people who are deaf.  It’s an excellent organization to support and the food was divine.
Following our delicious breakfast, we continued on to do a hike to Gangilonga rock – a huge rock that overlooks Iringa.  The name of the rock means “talking stone” in the local language of the area, and it is where an old chief from the late 1890s used to meditate.  We spent much time asking for directions to get to it.  After some time, we located it and climbed to the top.  While the rock has been defaced by much graffiti, it did not take away from the peace and tranquility of our settings.  We arrived just as the call to prayer was being sung over the whole city.  The top of the rock was quiet, there were only three other girls who shared the top with us.  We spent a couple hours in the sun and just relaxing. 

But, it’s the rainy season now and a beautiful day quickly turns to a rainy hour or two.  We noticed a drop in temperature and started to pack up our things.  Before we could even get off the top of the rock, it started to sprinkle and in no time it was down-pouring.  After a five or ten minute descent, we finally reached a house.  As fate would have it, we were invited inside by a young girl to escape the rain.  The walk back into Iringa was a good 35 minutes, so we quickly accepted the invitation.   Our friendly host named Loveness was only 15 years old and spoke wonderful English.  She showed us pictures of her family which was fascinating.  You see, her grandpa had over ten wives and 65 children!  The more we talked, the more she shared information about her family.  The next thing we know, she’s telling us about her brother who is a famous hip hop star in Tanzania.  She began showing us his music videos and telling us how he is performing the next day.  After about an hour and a half, the rain let up a bit and we tried excusing ourselves from her home.  However, as a we were fumbling over our words to politely leave, here walks in the famous brother.  Well, we couldn’t leave now!  So, we met him and he showed us some more music videos including one where he sings with Miss Tanzania and one where he sings with a famous albino woman.  I can’t say that I have ever watched a music video of someone while they were there!  It was a great experience.
We went to his show the next day and we were shocked by the number of people who had come out.  It wasn’t some tiny venue with a small following, it was a large venue filled with people singing all his songs.  I think we actually met a real hip hop star here.  It’s pretty awesome because now we are texting him and he texts us.  He’s a famous hip hop singer and we’re celebrities simply because we’re foreigners!

Iringa

Iringa is such a cute city!  It is located on top of a mountain which gives it lovely weather at this time of the year, it’s not too hot. Surrounding the city, you can see hillsides dotted with large rocks and boulders larger than houses.  The steady climb to the top of this summit city by bus displays amazing scenery, valleys, rivers, and beautiful hills.  There is a lot of shopping here from food to beautiful handcrafted items and jewelry.  I hope to get some Christmas shopping done!  
So far, the most unique thing about Iringa is a mosque that was built by Germans during colonialism.  First of all, it doesn’t look at all like a mosque that I am used to seeing.  It’s completely white with a clock tower over it.  It looks like a piece of architecture that could be found in New Orleans.  It has intricate designs.  I am very low in the knowledge of Islam, but to me, it represents nothing Muslim.  Yet, it was fascinating to see and very “awe-some” in the right way to use that term. 
The other sightseeing suggestion made by handy Lonely Planet was to go see a monument that honors those who died in an uprising from 1905-1907.  Although, I suppose it is historical, it was quite uninteresting.  The monument was simply some rocks put together with a little plaque that could not be read from the road. 
Iringa has a more touristy feel than where we live because it is a gateway city into a huge national park where people go on safari.  As a result, there are delicious restaurants that cater to the tourists allowing us to get some good (but a little pricey) meals while we’re here!   There’s also a park here.  It was nice to see a green space in the middle of a city.  Also, unlike where we live, we hear the call to prayer again which I find to be beautiful.  I used to enjoy hearing it during training, but since moving to our location, we do not hear it.
So far, I really enjoy this city and hope that my camera comes with my friend tomorrow. 

All that preparation, and yet…

We spent this entire week so far cleaning up our house.  The reason for such a clean up is because we are hoping to be gone for a few weeks total.  After seemingly endless loads of laundry, putting away stuff for school that will be unnecessary until the school year starts, scrubbing our floors, and locking away our valuables, we finally departed this morning to catch a bus to Iringa.  We are taking some time here on our way to our conference for In-service training.  After some searching, we located our quaint little guesthouse that is recommended by other Peace Corps volunteers who often visit this city.  It wasn’t until we arrived here, 5 hours later on a bus, that we realized we left our camera at our house in a place where we would not forget to take it.  After a few phone calls, I think it is likely that a friend will bring us the camera tomorrow when she meets us here, hopefully.  Really hopefully, because we’ve requested vacation time to visit Zanzibar.  It would totally suck to not have our camera in such a beautiful place as Zanzibar. 

Kwetu Pazuri

Here is a song of a very famous song in Tanzania at the moment.  It's by some choir from Rwanda and you can't go a day without hearing it at least 2-3 times!

Kwetu Pazuri Song (opens youtube in another window)

Lia loves me

I promise this will not become a cat blog.  But, here’s another picture of our kitten Lia.  She has definitely taken me to be her surrogate mother.  If I am anywhere near her, she needs to be as close to me as possible.  I can’t even take a nap without her climbing on top of me (as shown above), just to be there.  She does not have this habit with Jon at all.  We have tested her and always, she chooses me, even if we are sitting next to each other, laying next to each other, or even if Jon is closer to her.  I don’t mind since she’s so darn cute!

Church

This is the church in our village, we thought people might be interested in seeing it.  We feel guilty because we have not been attending.  Hopefully, we will get back into this habit with school being on break.  It is truly a great experience and a great way to integrate. 

Well, it’s being shut off

This afternoon, our neighbor came by with an urgent message.  She told us, quick, fill up all your water now, someone is coming to shut off the well! Can wells be shut off?  Apparently so, if the water bill is not paid.  Who knew?  The teacher explained to us that the school is supposed to pay the water bill, but the school has no money, so they are coming to turn it off.  It was a mass race for the well, all the teachers living around us scrambled to get water before it got shut off.  Our next question of course was, when will we get water back?  The answer was: I don’t know, but the school has no money, they are trying to ask the water people for more time to get the money.  We only have 5 days that we need water for until we travel for a work-related conference.  Our decision was to fill up as much as we could to try to last 5 days, if it comes down to it.  Here’s a sampling of most of our water holders at the moment.  We saved two pots to cook with.  It’s never a dull moment here.

School’s out for the summer!

Jon and I have spent the last two weeks proctoring our students during their exams.  It is quite possibly the most boring part of teaching.  However, today, November 18 was our last day of proctoring and the last day of school until mid-January!  We are really excited to have a break and to start the school year fresh and new with lots of ideas! 

Firebird

We see three really cool birds near our home all the time.  A heron, a little yellow bird, and this little red bird.  They are so hard to get a picture of because they flutter so quickly away.  But, today, Jon was lucky and got one!

Blooming Purple

In the city that we do our banking, big shopping, and where our post office box exists, there are beautiful trees blossoming purple at the moment.  I definitely missed the stunning fall colors in the Adirondacks this season, but I can’t complain when I am blessed by such vibrant beauty all around me in purple instead of orange and red!

My favorite view

If you ride a bike about 45 minutes away from our school, you go through a whole bunch of valleys and rolling hills.  There’s one view that’s my absolute favorite.  After riding downhill for about 10 minutes on a bike, you get to the bottom of a valley.  All around you, there are rolling hills, a small stream, cattle being herded by children, and large boulders.  The view is just stunning.  This picture absolutely does not do it justice.  Whenever we get there, we stop for at least 5-10 minutes just taking in the view.

A visitor

I was out doing laundry when a little visitor showed up.  Jon and I have seen it once and we’ve never seen anything like it since!

28 today

Today is my 28th birthday.  It’s true, the older you get, the more it just feels like another day.  I taught at 8:00 and the rest of the day was free.  The only thing that really made it feel like my birthday is that Jon had the grade 10 students sing happy birthday to me.  It was really sweet.  Tanzanians don’t celebrate birthdays in the same way that we do.  So, even though the other teachers found out it was my birthday when they heard the 10th graders sing to me, it’s not a huge deal.  I just relaxed and read Harry Potter, really.  28 sounds old.  Jon and I were reminiscing and it’s crazy to think that we met when I was 21.  Who knew 7 years later that we would be celebrating my birthday in Peace Corps in Tanzania?!  It also doesn’t really feel like my birthday because it’s nice out!  It’s been about 85 and sunny.  My birthday makes me think of snow, cold, and the imminent winter headed our way.  So, even just the warm weather throws me off!  Anyway, I’ll wake up tomorrow, 28, for another year, and the days will keep on going!

Happy Birthday to me!

Even though my birthday is on November 3, we celebrated the weekend before.  Jon had planned a weekend where he cooked delicious food and I relaxed all day long.  We made lots of pizza and Jon finally got our solar shower working which has made me so happy!  The weather is finally hot enough during the days (about 85) that we can leave our solar shower out and it makes it nice and hot by about 3:30.  It’s the first hot shower I’ve had since we left America in June.  My bathing frequency has gone from about 3 times a week to 6.  It’s amazing!

The pizza turned out phenomenal, too.  The cheese which we had to buy in the amount of 2 lbs costs more than a day’s worth of pay for us.  Then, we also bought very expensive olives and mushrooms as well.  The pizza, made completely from scratch and cooked in a dutch oven (see below) was such a nice change from the typical rice, grains, and beans that we normally eat.


Overall, I did have a nice birthday weekend as Jon did most of our household chores (but, I still helped out because it’s a lot of work doing it all on your own!).  The weather was nice, too windy to ride our bikes, but warm!

Free potatoes

The other day we went on a walk into the village that is about 45 minutes away from us.  We normally ride our bikes there now, but the wind was so strong!  Actually, we were worried that our fence was going to blow down.  So, we walked.  This village is where we buy minutes for our phone, get eggs, and buy vegetables.  We are starting to integrate into the village and get known there.  The guy who we buy eggs from is just so kind to us.  This time when we visited him, he gave us twenty pounds of potatoes for free!  We’ve noticed as we began to visit him weekly whether it’s to get eggs, buy a soda, or buy chipsi mayai from him, he will use a random word of English here and there – his way of trying to connect with us, as well.  In fact, we teach his daughter at our school, too.  Anyway, it was just so kind, we didn’t even know what to say to him.  It’s so heartwarming to live in a place where people are far worse off than us and they are so generous, still.  Jon carried the 20 lb sack of potatoes back to our house.  So, we’ll definitely be eating potatoes from quite some time!

Chili Sauce

This stuff here is amazing!  In an earlier post, I gave the recipe for chipsi mayai.  This is the sauce that they put on top of it.  However, we also put it on home fries, Mexican food, and well, Jon pretty much puts it on top of everything.  We already plan to pack a few bottles to go home with us in a few years!

Yogurt!

We are blessed because the place where our post office and bank is has a DAIRY store!  It is incredibly unique and unheard of to have a store dedicated simply to dairy products.  We have started bringing large water bottles and having them filled and bringing it home with us.  At first, we just put fruit into the yogurt (you can only buy it plain), but then we discovered that adding mixed fruit jam to it is just like a “fruit on the bottom” yogurt you can buy in America.  It makes it sweet and flavorful!  Since we don’t have a refrigerator, we have to eat it within a day or two which is not a problem.  In the colder months of May, June, July, and August – we definitely will be able to keep the yogurt in our house for a lot longer.  The whole business is some type of non-profit organization run through a British organization.  However, I don’t know many details about it.  It is definitely one of the highlights of living in our region.

Hand-washing station

Since we don’t have running water, we’ve created a “hand-washing station” to help keep us clean.  It’s a real pain washing hands without any type of running water.  You just need two buckets and a spicket.  Again, we’ve propped our station up on a few other buckets so we don’t have to bend down to wash our hands too much.  We keep soap up on top of it and the bucket under the spicket catches the dirty water and sometimes we use it as water to flush our toilet or simply just toss it outside. 

Our favorite bottle of wine

Although we’re both usually red wine drinkers, we have grown very fond of this South African wine – The Beach House- that is available at the wine shop in the town near us.  It’s not terribly sweet and is always a little chilled since the climate here is cooler.  It’s expensive for us – costing us more than a day’s worth of pay, but it is very tasty.  And besides, wine bottles serve two purposes – holding our wine and holding our candles!
                                 

Sanitizing water

Every week, Jon sanitizes water for us since it’s unsafe to drink the water out of the well.  This is usually a Sunday task for him as it involves many trips to our well and the time to sanitize the water.  I hate carrying buckets of water because for every 3/4 of a bucket I can manage to carry, Jon can carry two full buckets.  Also, he really  enjoys doing the charcoal grill.  Although, both water carrying and charcoal grill usage is traditionally a woman’s job in Tanzania, Jon doesn’t mind doing either and I do other things instead.
The first step after bringing the water from the well is to bring it to a boil over our charcoal stove.  It should boil for 3-5 minutes to kill anything that is living in the water.

After bringing it to a boil, we allow it to cool for about an hour.  Then, we bring it to our water sanitizing station.  It requires two buckets, two lids to the buckets, one water filter (provided by Peace Corps), and a water spicket that can be purchased at the market.  We placed our contraption on top of another bucket simply to raise it higher for ease of getting water since Jon is so tall.

Then, once the water is cooled, you place the hot water in the top bucket.  Inside of the top bucket is a “candle” filter which is simply a long, circular ceramic piece that the water filters through.  This filter catches any larger things that could be in our water, such as dirt or small bacterium that is naked to the eye.  We clean our candle filter every 6 weeks otherwise it becomes too dirty to filter the water.  You can tell when it needs cleaning because the filter and the bucket become slimy.  The filter is cleaned simply by boiling it.

Once you place the water into the top bucket with the filter, it takes at least 24 hours for it to slowly filter and drip into the second bucket which is under it.  You can hear the slow drips throughout the day so you know it is filtering properly. 

Finally, when it is finished filtering through into the second bucket, you can turn the spicket and have a clean, tasty glass of water!  Jon and I go through just about one bucket of sanitized water per week.  But, that is because there are two of us.  I am sure most people who are living on their own in Peace Corps only go through half of what we do.  We know some volunteers who simply buy bottled water for everything, but this method is far cheaper.

Jon & Sara vs. Team Panya

As of October 26, the score is 6 points to the rats and 3 points to us.  But, we’re going to get the last laugh once Lia is big enough to hunt!

The faces of Tanzania!

Peace Corps Tanzania is making a promotional video to encourage other schools or villages to consider a Peace Corps volunteer.  Jon and I were selected to be interviewed!  Today, we were stars at our school.  We were each asked several questions and then they did quick shots of us teaching in our classes.  The company said the video should be completed around January.  If we can get a copy, I will be sure to post it here.  They are interviewing about 7 volunteers total.  I was very excited to help with promotional material!

Geography Field Trip

Yesterday, October 24, Jon and I were invited on to join a Geography field trip with the 10th grade students.  The Geography teacher was bringing the students to our surrounding environment to teach them about the various formations. 
We set out with about 100 of the grade ten students and were joined by additional chaperones such as the school nurse, the Swahili teacher, and the history teacher.  The path we took was familiar to Jon and I as we have ridden our bikes through most of these paths.  However, where we normally go right, we forked to the left.  After about 30 minutes walking, we stopped at the first site.  The geography teacher explained swamps, soil nutrients, and erosion with the little river we were sitting by.  Soon, we were all leaping over said river to continue onto the trip.  We stopped at the next site, where the teacher begins asking how many different types of soil are there?  Shortly after, a girl ran away from the group, starting taking her shoes off and rolling up her pants and crying. She was hitting at her legs.  The school nurse and I ran over to her to see what was going on.  All I could understand was something about insects. I let the school nurse take over.  But, not even twenty seconds after I had taken my place back with the group did I notice that something appeared to be biting me underneath my skirt and shirt!  I then knew what she was crying about.   
I contemplated just ignoring it, but it was so painful!  I had a dilemma, the only way to see what was biting me was to either lift my skirt or lift my shirt in front of all my students.  I tried killing whatever it was through my clothes, but the attacks were more frequent.  I finally lifted by shirt and saw a small bug.  I was worried they were ticks!  I ran down to where Jon was standing with a bunch of students and I said, Jon, I think I have ticks!  He said, crap, show me!  In which I replied, I can’t they are under my clothes, I can’t lift my clothes in front of the students!
We rushed over to hide behind a bush.  I lift my shirt and sure enough there were ants all over my body biting me!  Every three seconds, I felt a new bite. The thing is these ants weren’t biting, they were burrowing into my skin.  Jon could not keep up with getting them off of me.  After some time, it seemed maybe I had it under control and we went back to join the group.  Not even a minute later, I realized I was wrong.  We rushed back to the bush and I took my skirt off at the risk of the students coming in just the right view of seeing me!  I didn’t care.  The skin-burrowing ants had it in for me.  We picked all of them off my skirt and meanwhile continued to kill them under my shirt.  They even got in my underwear and tried burrowing my butt!  The students had all moved on to the next site and so we took our time to make sure they were all off me. 
Eventually, we caught up to the group.  I told the geography and Swahili teacher, along with the school nurse what happened to me.  The school nurse and Swahili teacher literally fell over laughing.  They fell to their knees, then to the ground where they held their stomachs and rolled all over the ground laughing at me.  What were the chances that I was one of two people who got attacked by the burrowing ants?
Our last spot was near a little pond.  Despite the burrowing ants, we were really glad we helped chaperone because we now know how to get to this little pond.  It is beautiful there with the sound of running water.  We are excited to go back and have a little picnic!

Students around the pond listening to their Geography teacher

Our school nurse, who wanted a funny picture with me.  She’s only about 20 and has the most fashionable clothes at our school. 

Head Boy & Head Girl

On Wednesday of this past week, our school held elections to vote in next year’s student leaders – one girl and one boy.  There were two boys competing – one boy from 9th grade and one boy from 10th grade.  Then, there were two girls competing – both from 10th grade.  All three of the 10th graders were students I had been teaching in 10th grade.  They are all excellent students and natural leaders in their class.  The students spent about one hour rallying for the other students to vote for their selected candidate.  They took boards of wood from the forest and used chalk to write their friend’s slogan on it.  Then, they walked around the school ground chanting names.
In the end, it was the 9th grade boy who won and a landslide for one of the girls to win.   When the teacher announced the winner, there was no cheering, no applause, nothing, very anti-climatic. 

Lia

We did it.  We got a kitten.  Her name is Lia, which means “to cry” in Swahili.  It’s pronounced like Leah.  Her name is indicative of her actions which is simply to cry, cry, cry all the time.  She is finally sleeping through the night.  We’re hoping this behavior ends in two weeks.  She’s still missing her mama cat and is scared to do too much on her own.  We’re waiting for her natural cat curiosity to peak.  We’re also waiting for her to get bigger so she can be a full fledged rat killer!

Sending a package home

So, I wanted to test sending a package to a friend in preparations for sending a Christmas package.  I am not quite how I will be able to send a package unless it’s huge because there won’t be enough room to put stamps on it: