I have not been able to post anything for awhile, but I have been trying to keep up by typing up some random thoughts in the evening before I forget them. Therefore, I have a whole bunch of stories or tidbits below to share with you. But it is a lot of words, so you probably shouldn't read it all unless you are my mother and just miss me THAT much! I have attempted to post pictures but did not have success, so I apologize for that. Maybe I will get lucky soon and the internet will have pity on me. I also did not have time to spell check anything so please don't hold it against me.


Night on the Town:

We went to Via Via, a bar and restaurant in downtown Arusha on Thursday evening. It is a large enclosed space with outdoor and indoor seating. We ate dinner here and then stayed to hear the band that started playing at 9. The host father of one of the other EWH-ers is in this band, which is why we decided to go. It was really nice to get out and be able to hang out with the whole group, especially since the location of my homestay keeps me slightly isolated. It is also nice to go to a bar where you can get two beers (they had a BOGO sale on Serengeti) for about 2 bucks. And my plate of spaghetti with pesto was only about $5. We left in two groups, an early and late group, and I left at 10pm with the early group since I felt guilty knowing that my host parents were probably worrying and waiting up for me. The minibus dropped me off right in front of the door, which is defnitely necessary at night. It is not far from the main road, but there are not street lights as there are at home and it gets very dark and potentially dangerous.

Food {Chakula}:

For breakfast, my host family usually makes very thin "egg pancakes" made from egg, water, milk, salt and sugar. This mixture is poured into a pan to make a thin layer. After a short while, it is flipped over in order to cook the other side. I am definitely planning on making these at home. It seems so easy and tastes so good. You can roll them up and just pick them up and eat them. There are always hard boiled eggs on the table at breakfast and also toast (with butter and pineapple jam). Sometimes we also have "sausages," which are really just plain hot dogs. And of course, we always have chai (tea) with breakfast.

I pack my lunch everyday with a mixture of breakfast items and usually a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. TCDC hosts tea-time for the entire center, employees and students, everyday at 10 am and 4 pm. Everyone takes a 30-minute break to enjoy coffee, chai, or hot chocolate. It is a wonderful concept that we all want to bring back to the US. It makes TCDC feel more like a community than a workplace or a school.

For dinner, we usually have the following:
-rice/spaghetti/ugali, sometimes more than one of these
-a creamy red stew with vegetables and beans/meat
-a sauteed mixture of chopped-up spinach and onions
-slices of avocado

The stew that we have most days is made from a creamy coconut milk. My family has this contraption that you sit on that has a sharp grater attached. Your body weight holds it down while you grate the inside of the coconut. I tried to do this without much success. Wini took over for me after she saw how inept I was. You then add hot water to the coconut. It gets mixed around a bit and then you squeeze the moisture out of the coconut and put it inside. This milky liquid is what is added to the stew. If only I could find an easier way of grating coconut, I would love to do this back home.

Jenny, my host mom's sister who is visiting, showed me how to make the stew one evening. It was surprisingly simple, since it is such a delicious dish.
-sautee onion, green pepper, and carrot
-add kidney beans
-add half of coconut cream
-boil, add rest of coconut cream
-add salt, seasoning to taste

Jenny and I also made Chapati on Sunday night, which I had only had once before and really enjoyed it. But I have decided that there is too much work involved and it does not have enough nutritional value, so I will not be making this at home. Sorry! First, you make a dough with flour, water, oil, salt and sugar. You knead this and add flour until it is the perfect consistency and your arms are too tired to keep going. Then you break the dough up into little balls. Each of these little balls is rolled into a flat circle with a rolling pin, coated with oil, rolled up like a cigarette, twisted into a cinnamon-bun looking formation and then packed down. Once you are ready to fry the chapati, you re-roll each of the dough formations into a circle and then put it into the pan with oil. I am not sure why all of rolling and twisting and then rolling again was necessary. It seemed to me that it was just extra work. Maybe they were playing a trick on me.

Any hot beverage that is served here is scalding hot. When I pour tea, I have to wait awhile in order for it to cool enough for me to be able to drink it without burning my tongue, which obviously happens a lot because I am impatient. And I sure do love the Masala tea that they serve at tea time (flashback to India), so it is hard for me to wait to enjoy its deliciousness. Also, milk is always served hot. And it is always fresh milk, probably with its full fat content. We have this occassionally at my house and I have grown to really enjoy it, especially with some drinking chocolate added to it.


Cultural Tourism:

On Saturday, the whole group went to a nearby Maasai Village for a "cultural tourism" program. We walked through a Maasai village where they do lots of farming (this Maasai tribe has settled down, traditionally they move around with their cattle to different grazing locations). There were banana trees and coffee plants growing everywhere and an abundance of beautiful flowers. I have been so surprised at how much vegetation grows in this entire region. It is not at all like the dust-coated dry season that I experienced in Malawi. It rains almost every night, but thankfully not usually during the day. The village that we toured had a beautiful waterfall that we got to experience after a precarious down-hill hike in the mud. We were then invited to go inside of a traditional Maasai home. They are large round dwellings made from cow dung and ash. There is an area sectioned off inside of each one where the cows sleep at night, both for their protection and to keep the inside warm. The father of this particular family was no longer alive, so the family was making its living off of this "cultural tourism" program and by allowing people to enter their home. After a lengthy hike through the village, we met the village chief who explained how their cultural tourism program works and its history. They keep logbooks of all of the visitors that they come, the fees that they pay and any donations that they collect. Every month, they have a village meeting that all of the adults attend (~700) in order to hear the community's income and decide how they should spend it. We were able to see a secondary school in the village that was just opened in 2007. However, they are still adding more classrooms, as there are way too many children for the current buildings. After the official "program" was over, a bunch of us chose to take a hike up a nearby hill/small mountain. It was steep but not very far and we were able to see a wonderful view of Arusha. I was very proud of myself when I was able to point out strawberry plants just by looking at the leaves (thanks to my American mother). The hike was a good warmup for a small group of us who are thinking of climbing Mount Meru next month. Meru is a mountain right next to Arusha, of which we had a wonderful view during our hike though it extended past the clouds, that is about 4,500 meters high. It takes three days to climb but does not require a lot of technical skill. You have to take an armed guide with you in order to show the way and to protect you from animals. More news on whether I will take on Mt. Meru later.


My Typical Weekday:

6:30 am - wake up, get dressed, eat breakfast, drink tea
7:05 am - leave with Haika to catch the TCDC shuttle
7:30 am - arrive at TCDC, use the computers while no one else is there yet
8:00 am - many more people arrive and the internet gets much slower, I get much more frustrated
8:30 am - start Kiswahili lessons
10:00 - 10:30 am - TEA BREAK!!
12:30 pm - lunch time
1:30 pm - lecture from Nelson, a retired engineer, on a specific medical device (uses, how it works, common problems, ways to fix it), with many random stories thrown in and usually a video that is completely off-topic
2:30 pm - start working on the lab for the day (i.e. building an LED flashlight or variable power supply, lots of practice with soldering)
4:00-4:30 pm - TEA BREAK #2!!
5:30 pm - finished with class for the day, though we often finish our lab early, a small group of us usually goes for a run after we are finished
~6:00 pm- get driven home by Kisanji, our Tanzanian coordinator, or I take a dala dala home
7:00 pm - eat dinner then sit around talking with my family, do my homework, take a shower
10:00 pm - usually asleep or getting pretty darn close to it, I am always exhausted at night

Tour of the Farm:

In the backyard of our house, we have banana trees and coffee plants growing, but I did not realize today how far back the yard spread to and the fact that it is a full-fledged farm (well, a mini farm). My host father, Adam, gave me a personal walking tour of it. It was a muddy trek since it rains quite often here, but it was definitely worth it. They grow mainly banana trees {mgomba} and coffee {kahawa} but also corn {mahindi} and beans {maharagwe}. I must say that I had never seen coffee or beans growing before I came to Tanzania, so I am happy that I finally know what the plants look like. There were several streams running through the farm that they use for irrigation. There were also lots of boldly colored flowers dotting the farm. I would guess that they were growing on about an acre of land, though it is hard to say since it wasn't a perfect square nor was it organized as American farms are.

The Hunt for Cake:

One of the other participants, Adam, unfortunately a Dookie, turned 19 on Monday, so Justin and I decided to venture into town on Sunday in search of a birthday cake. We weren't sure what to expect since birthdays obviously aren't as big of an ordeal here, but we were confident that we would find some sort of dessert that would help us celebrate Adam's birthday. Other than getting almost lost walking to the center of town (the clocktower) from the dala dala stop, the trip was a huge success. There are a few places in town that I knew sold cake, but many stores are closed on Sunday, so we actually only had one possibility. Fortunately, we found the Naaz Hotel relatively easily and, to our delight, there was cake. They had three small cakes of different colors with decorative flowers on top and one larger one that had a little bear figurine holding an "I Love You Sign." Since we were feeding 25 people, we bought all three smaller cakes for a total of 30,000 Tanzanian shillings, which is about $25 or so. We then asked some locals that we had made friends with where we could buy candles and they led us to a nearby shop where we easily found a pack of birthday candles for under $1. We were so pleased with ourselves for finding everything that we needed that the dala dala ride back home was much more pleasurable and cheerful than usual. The town was much quieter since it was Sunday and we were not harassed nearly as much as usual, so it was a great experience all around.


Kiswhaili Translations of the Day:
Hatari - danger (my host father taught me this, definitely an important word to look for on signs)
Ajabu - something incredible (can be an exclamation)
Shamba - farm
Jirani- neighbor
Nina swali. - I have a question.