Crooked Beak

It's no wonder I am a vegetarian - meet Crooked Beak, one of about fifteen chickens that come to eat our food scraps that we throw into our backyard. Every time crooked beak comes to eat my scraps, I am super happy to see him.  He obviously gets his name because his beak is crooked and it's hard for him to eat.  Jon and I think he might be a "special" chicken because he always seems to get caught in our yard when the other chickens can find their way out.  They belong to our neighbor who will probably eat them.  But, in the meantime, I am so happy to have crooked beak visit daily and make me smile.

Picnic area

We found an area that takes about 25 minutes to walk to that we have picnics or just relax outside when it's not too cold or windy.  There's a beautiful view from there of pastureland and rolling hills.  Also, we've calculated that we're actually at about 7,000 feet in our village!

This is me walking back home through the burnt-down cornfields.  We live among those houses which are houses specifically for teachers at our school.  You can get an idea of the rural nature of our area!

Chipsi Mayai

I don’t know if Tanzania has a “national dish”, but one dish you can order at just about any restaurant or that can be found in little wooden shacks on the corner of any village or city is called chipsi mayai.  It is delicious and to be honest, so many volunteers here have wondered why Americans haven’t caught onto this easy to make and delicious to eat dish.  So, here is a recipe for those of you who like to cook:
Ingredients:

1. 4 medium potatoes
   
2. 2 eggs
   
3. Oil (for frying)

Method:

1. Peel potatoes and cut into the size of steak french fries
   
2. Heat enough oil to cover the potatoes until drops of water cause “boiling”
   
3. Put potatoes in the hot oil and cook until soft, turning occasionally so they cook evenly.
   
4. Remove potatoes from oil and place in frying pan with 1 TBSP of oil.
   
5. Beat two eggs and pour over the potatoes in the frying pan
   
6. Cook them together for a few seconds and then flip using a plate (invert the frying pan over the plate and then slide the chips mayai  off the plate and back into the pan with the uncooked side down on the heat).
   
7. Press the chipsi mayai into the pan with a spatula as it cooks.  After a minute or so, flip again using the plate and press again with the spatula
   
8. Continue cooking until the egg is completely cooked.  

Most Tanzanians eat it with a tomato or chili sauce over top, you can use ketchup.  The name comes from “chipsi”, which is just basically British English for french fry with a Swahili accent and mayai means eggs in Swahili.
If you try it out, let me know!

Ng'ombe

My new profile picture is a great depiction of my life here in Tanzania!  This is me at our watering station trying to get a bucket of water.  Unfortunately, this cow must have been super thirsty because every time I tried to get water he came charging at me, licking out of my bucket.  So, I had to leave one spout running so he would drink out of it while I filled my bucket in the other spout.

Going to church

Jon and I accepted an invitation to go to a church our first weekend here.  Tanzanians are generally very religious and devoted to their faith.  It is very odd to find a Tanzanian who does not identify with some faith.  About 35% – 40% of Tanzanians are Muslim, but this population is generally along the coast.  Then, about 45% – 50% of Tanzanians are Christian.  According to the Lonely Planet Tanzania guide, the remainder of Tanzanians follow some type of ancestor worship, or worship of the land and various ritual objects.  I don’t think I’ve met a Muslim in our village since we are so far from the coast.  One of the first questions you will receive from a Tanzanian when you first meet them is, “What religion are you?”.  It’s really difficult to try to explain concepts like atheism or being agnostic, so it’s easiest just to identify as whatever religion you know the best.  So, we’ll just say we’re Christian because we can talk about that better than anything else.
Peace Corps also encourages (highly encourages) us to get integrated into our village as quickly as possible.  We thought that attending church would be an easy way to meet people, be seen, and get integrated. As far as I can tell, the church we attend is a non-denominational Christian church.  There is a Roman Catholic church down the street, but they don’t have a priest.  The first week we attended, many of the students from our high school were also there.  They took up about 1/4 of the church.  These students provide the gospel singing and dancing which is phenomenal.  I was pleased we went simply to see these students sing and dance.  There is one student who plays a drum as well.  The remainder of the church congregation are some teachers, and many people from the village. Of course, the whole service is in Swahili, so we understand very little of the message.
The first week we attended, the principal or mkuu of our school introduced us to the congregation.  We were pleased that we were able to get an introduction to many villagers so early on.  We also got to meet the pastor personally and he is very kind.  At the end of church, everyone goes outside and they auction off items.  Basically, someone will bring in items as a donation and then the church auctions them off to people to get money for the church.  The first week, people donated eggs which were bought and then given to Jon and I.  They also auctioned off pencils.
The second week we attended was slightly different than the first week. The biggest thing we noticed was the church went from one hour to 2.5 hours.  The students were having a break from school, so they were not in attendance.  There was an additional pastor and we played a game.  Basically, the church has been trying to build a larger church for the last two years.  So, this week included a game which took about one hour to do, but raised money for the new church being built.   If you chose, you could buy a card for 1,000 TSH (TSH = Tanzanian Shillings) (like 75 cents).  Then, inside your card is a prize.  You could win a piece of candy, soap, pencils, a notebook, or the grand prize of a T-shirt.  Jon and I each bought a card and oddly enough we both won a notebook which we were happy about.  Then, we did the same auction at the end, where again, the eggs were bought by someone else and given to us.
I hope that we can improve our Swahili to talk to people more.  Also, it will be interesting to see if church begins to make more sense to us as our language improves.  Overall, it’s not too bad not being able to understand anything because the singing and dancing is entertainment enough.  In fact, in the Tanzania Lonely Planet guide, it marks church singing as one of the top 10 cultural experiences!

Neighbor kids

Jon playing with the kids who come to visit us often.  They basically just like to play in mud and watch us.  We can't understand anything they are saying to us because they speak so quickly, but they definitely cheer me up when they come over to our home.  The one boy is the son of the principal of our school, the other boy is the son of the school cook, and the third boy only comes around sometimes.