Hunter's b-day and Easter holiday

Dreamlike skies and sunsets up at Simba Farm on the slopes of West Kili have brought respite and change of scenery...



Hunter's birthday partay back on the 25th. He played and sang. We watched. We ate cake.

A new project for my water tank - in fact, my Christmas gifti from Hunter; plans are to adorn and bring life to this tank with bamboo a la Peterson


Yep - it's what you think: snakes in my bathtub. Adventure has taken on a whole new meaning in my house. Not only did I discover these 2 coming out from under my tub, but there was another little guy found later under my bed! Nightmare much?! A local family that's been here forever recommends putting screens in our drains. I say. Jason of Peace Corps Kinikele days has still got me beat with 2 cobras found under his bed. I've been told these are just house snakes. I hope so.

I'm sorry to have been so quiet on the blog of late. I've had loads of wageni (guests) on campus to host and lots going on outside of work stretching and growing me. The theme of my last few weeks has been: becoming and self-improvement, so I'll end with these...

"We cannot become what we want to be by remaining who or what we are" - Max DePree

"i want to be a gentle presence
like you
the way your touch is cooling

or maybe warming
like when the sun is new
and young

let my footsteps fall softly here
and may they say
yes, i know her
she comes from
where truth dwells"

-lisa borden (letsputthekettleon.blogspot.com)

To becoming...

Aren't my friends' kids adoooooorable?

Hallie and Steve's new babe, Bradley
Hil and Croft's new babe, Elsa a.ka. Big yawn or Sugarlips. Don't you think she yawns just like Hilary?
Elizabeth and Logan's new 'toto, Reid a.k.a. RAW or Bubs. His parents just seemed to have told him they're leaving to climb Kili again..with him.

Kilimanjaro 5 km race for PHS Running Club

2010 whoa

Here it is February 12th, 2010 and I'm nestling into what feels like my first quiet, free moment without distraction since the New Year bell rung. Where have the days gone? The last time I blogged was November with nostalgia and love for my old village. Three months have passed since then; in that time, I wrapped up my first school year of work here at Peace House Secondary, I spent nearly a month back in the US for Christmas break, we all crossed over into a new decade and am now at Peace House starting another school year with 115 new Form 1 students. Whoa.

It's nice to take a break and a deep breath.

The last few months have been wonderful and strange and joyful and sad. Yet again the roller coaster that is life...



We closed school last December having just discovered our first student pregnancy here at PHS; she was subsequently expelled as is TZ policy. Back home over Christmas, my family hung out with Hunter's family in our favorite place, the Western North Carolina mountains. We traveled the BVI's serenely on a catamaran. Hunter got robbed on our first day back in Arusha. My house girl was diagnosed with cancer our first weekend back. My brother got engaged a week later and will be married this Fall to a sweet girl named Michelle. My Dad turned 67 yesterday. The same day, one of my best friends gave birth to her first child: a beautiful, healthy baby girl named Elsa. I had my favorite life skills class yet with our Form 3 girls on managing emotions. The class ended with singing and dancing and sheer silliness. That's when you know you've taught a good class, making your students feel safe, cared for and free.

*With our new Life Skills team*

I'm supposed to be in Stonetown for the Sauti ya Busara Music Fest this weekend, something I've not missed since coming to TZ in 2005, but I opted to stick around instead. I just didn't feel right splurging when my housegirl and friend Mary's cancer status is unknown. We hope to receive the biopsy results next Wednesday. Amazing to find out there is only one hospital in all of Tanzania treating cancer. Apparently, the TZ government covers the care and implementation, but the actual radiation is up to the patient to purchase. A little different from home eh?! We are praying all the cancer is gone completely, and that a trip to Ocean Road Hospital in Dar is not in the cards for gangsta wetu, Mary. It makes me sick to my stomach that all that time I was home, reuniting with family and friends, eating and drinking, hiking and sailing, enjoying fireworks and fireplaces, Mary was suffering, staying with her pastor undergoing intense maombi or prayers, taking village potions, sweating at night, losing hope by the day as her growth grew bigger and bigger.

My momma always said: life isn't fair. She was right. But we can try to make it a little more fair for a few.

Travels back to my old stomping grounds

Manga, not "the Peach State," but a land of peaches nonetheless...

Bibi yangu wa Manga, Mama Claud

Babu yangu wa Manga, Kowzen

My old neighbors, Joyce's family. One of my favorites in Manga

Mtitu "Black" and Joseph Nyenzi

Mtitu "Black" and Fabian being silly

The finished Mahongole Girls Dorm

Manga students showing off their new digs

Girls enjoying their new sleeping and study quarters

Oliva and Lillian, two of my students from CHASAWAYA Vocational Center for girls



Makambako's heroes...aka the Posta ladies. Nani ni shujaaaaaa?!

Happenings

Our students playing water polo for the first time in ISM's pool. ISM, the same International School that hosted us for Track & Field last month (more later on that), also invited us yesterday for an afternoon of swimming/water polo in the shallow end, ultimate frisbee and dodgeball. All 30 of our students selected to go had perma-grins. Water polo in the shallow end was the perfect way to reduce real fears amongst our students of water and of swimming. It's like football in the water, their teachers explained. Yes, just like football....only a little different.

Angelo and I, the fearless Social Workers, not afraid to jump in the pool too.

Kalolo playing dodgeball, a new game for him.

Shawna, the coordinator at ISM, and I, relieved that the first of four events went swimmingly. We hope to come once a quarter for activities like this, to use their facilities until we can build our own over the next several years.

Our accomplished teachers, boasting their certificates after our recent Teacher Training over September break. Elimu oyay! Thanks Dr. Marty.

Peace House students at their very first Track & Field event. It was a momentous day. Lots of students placed in the top three for their event, kids who had never done the high jump before in their life, for example, won the high jump, and many of our students who were viscerally afraid to sign up, performed really well and I hope, felt accomplished. They certainly deserved to.

Peace House runner Haikeli who ended up winning her age group in her race, the 1500 meter. I was most proud of her this day. I could almost drink the ounzes of self-esteem she gained that day, that moment.

Leaving for the big adventure in my car...which, if you've been reading my previous blogs, turned quickly into misadventure :(. Hunter and brother Peter are sporting their best first-day-of-school expressions. Turns out they had reason to be apprehensive!
Hunter, sitting in my "salon" on my porch,after his best haircut yet. Thanks to Anne for the professional haircutting kit. My salon business is out the roof now. Kudos nyingi to Pamela Levine, fellow PCV haircutter extraordinaire, who really taught me everything I know today in regards to the art of cutting hair. And it is an art.
Hunter always complains that I post too many embarassing pictures of him on my blog. I don't know what he's talking about. Anyway, these are his latest spider bites. Yes, you can say it: GROSS. Welcome to Africa living. You never know what's inside the mosquito net as you sleep.
Hunter and my co-worker from last year, Boniface, teaming up for a mean match of 3-legged race at a Rotary event last month. Peter Luis, wherever you are, that shirt is brilliant! Thanks again for your solid consulting. Keep up the good work.

In honor of Joe Chow, PCV - Tanzania

I feel compelled to share this email as a member of the big and beautiful family known as Peace Corps, specifically Peace Corps Tanzania. It was written by my friend and fellow PCV (Peace Corps Volunteer), Leiha:

I just came back to Moshi this afternoon, got off the bus and hugged a new friend goodbye, for now. Her name is Leah, nice name huh? She's a short term volunteer here in Moshi. Normally I wouldn't cross paths with short term vols in Moshi town but today we just so happened to have met on the bus this afternoon coming from Dar. We caught up with each other at the lunch/rest stop. While chit-chatting a bit she made a comment about how someone once told her, "Don't wait til you're 65 to start living the life you wanted to try out." That's when I told her of a friend of mine who lived his life with such an intensity that there was nothing left to do but stand back and admire him.

My friend Joe Chow passed away last Tuesday. A fellow Education PCV, he was on school break and while visiting another friend of ours, fell while descending from a rock climb in Mbinga, Tanzania. I myself have climbed this same rock. It's not an easy climb, but do-able. His death was an accident in every sense of the word, nothing could have been changed, it happened. The reality of this is still hard to swallow.

The past week, being in Dar for his memorial, has been a blur of emotion and everything else. We were supposed to meet up and raft the Nile after he completed his service this November, we even talked about attempting another marathon together. I have many wonderful memories with Joe throughout our 2 years here in Tanzania. When Leah shared that story with me today at lunch, I felt an obligation to tell her I knew someone that didn't wait.

Joe lived his life with such a crazy intensity, a complete signature of his personality, that I'm finding myself not so much mourning the loss of the rest of his life, but standing back in admiration for all he did while he was here, alive. Yes, I miss him. I don't know when the reality of his absence will really settle in, or if it ever will. But isn't it our obligation as friends to take those we lose with us in life?

I never thought that the last time I saw him, waving through the window of the bus, I wouldn't meet up with him again in our lifetime. We never truly know, do we? But that's just it. We all will pass on one day. I just hope that in the meantime, we all live our lives to the fullest, happiest, most enriched we can. Life is a beautiful blessing, a gift we share and enjoy together. I am blessed to have been enriched by Joe's friendship in my life.

Thanks for reading this.
Leiha (PCV in the Pare Mountains)

Peace House student shots by the one, the only CJ Miller

Car saga continued

Yes friends, it gets worse. The saga continues.

On our much-anticipated safari over our school breaks, Hunter, his brother Peter (a.k.a. Yesu to all Tanzanian children who caught a glimpse of this long-haired man of a man), and myself, departed for a journey to a farmhouse on Kilimanjaro my friend Simon owns in Mbahe village. Gals and Logan know what I'm talking about! Gorgeous it would be...

...but getting there was first on our list. So, we gleefully left Peace House and were subsequently stuck in a traffic jam for roughly an hour: not an auspicious start. We finally reached Moshi and dropped my friend Christian off after some chai at my favorite spot, boasting the best ginger tea around. Gear change was a struggle to say the least. Stressful was the drive, I tell you. When we hit Marangu town, our car was smoking and unable to move up any grade of a hill. We opened the hood and - as it goes if you stop anywhere in Tanzania with car troubles - men came running from seemingly out of nowhere to see what was a matter.

A silver-headed, collected man by the name of Godfrey immediately emerged as my "chosen one" who could confidently solve our problems, which were many: lack of water in the engine, a hole in a pipe connecting to the radiator and an apparent leak in the radiator itself. After some major water flushing, knifework, refitting and reattachment of pipes and application of some lubricant, healing came - both of the car and of my mambo mengi-sense of being overwhelmed.

Graciously he offered to drive us to Simon's (he was classmates with Simon back in the day at shule ya msingi). Brilliant I thought, utterly relieved to not have to drive anymore and have to fight the screeching of gear change. No brainer - let's go! Twendeni...

Slowly, patiently, God (an appropriate shortening of his name) drove us up the hills to Simon's farmhouse perched way up high where the birds soar. Climbing in first gear the whole way, we inched closer and closer; meanwhile, Tait was furiously texting Simon back in Moshi for a fundi to come and check out what was ailing my little car's power. I was already dreading the ride back.

Somehow, we made it. And Simon's fundi did too the next day. Injector pump speed governor problem, we inquired? That's what God had sensed the day prior. This new expert, Dismas, figured it was the lack of brake/clutch fluid which caused such gear change battles. We promptly tracked down some fluid in Mbahe and thus slept peacefully, not dreaming of gear screeching dancing in our heads.

After enjoying two days in this beautiful village, hiking to Kili's Marangu gate, much bird watching, waterfall hopping, guitar playing with porters and hot showering, it was time to go. Again. We prayed we would have better karma this time; the glass is always half full for optimists, for better or for worse...

Well, worse it was! I wouldn't have believed it if you had told me, but we left at 2 pm and did not return to Peace House until 10:30 pm after being forced to ditch the car, jump on a dala, then a public bus and later a lifti with our school driver/angel, Osca, to finally reach home exhausted and wiped. What a day.

In short (b/c it's too painful to fully elucidate), the car failed 3 times:
1. No clutch connection. Problem: oil hadn't flushed through entire system down to transition. Solution: flush with oil and remove air in connection.
2. No accelerator connection. Problem: Hunter seemed to have snapped the cable somehow. Solution: Find a bike fundi to bring a new cable OR better yet, call my original fundi who was - bahati nzuri - at a funeral in Moshi to come and bring a brand new cable and connect it himself! We went with the latter.
3. Fuel filter failed. Problem: Still a mystery. Solution: Have 5+ guys make a fuel filter out of a plastic petrol container using pure ubunifu, adding diesel and plastic tubes feeding in and out of the engine to literally create a faux filter to get you home until you can buy a replacement.

And this my friends - with faux filter atop our hood strapped in with bungee cords - is how we hobbled back to the outskirts of Moshi town, going about 5 km/hr. It must have been a hilariously RIDICULOUS sight from a distance.

Now to make matters more complicated, I had a guest to welcome back at Peace House the same evening flying in on KLM. I had to move. Quickly. And it was already getting dark. So, we jumped out and demanded that my fundi, Peter, fix everything - and I mean everything this time - and drive it back to Arusha whole. It was his turn to carry the burden.

We jumped out into a dala dala that brought us to a big bus, which in the dark, delivered us into the hands of Osca. At 10:30, having dropped our bags down at my house, I sprinted into our guest house to find our mgeni rasmi, teacher trainer/psychologist from the States, enjoying a glass of wine with our kind Director, pinch-hitting for me. Tomorrow: Teacher training to begin at 8 am! Phew! Barely made it.

What good can we possibly see in a mess like this: the beauty of Tanzanian people, always willing to help (but sure, for compensation for their help) when you're in a jam and for the inherent sense of community for survival here. For that, I went to bed thankful, and for the fact that I was with friends - and guys, better - when this all went down. For my car shidas, on the other hand, I've had it. I'll wait for Peter to return everything he promised to fix to be truly fixed this time (since I've already paid him to do so), and then I'll be looking for a new fundi.

Sigh.

Ndiyo maisha as the saying goes: "this is life." Or is it? If this is life, why do I live here, our Director asked me poignantly.

A valid question. I'll have to reflect more on that one, but my initial response is that life is more fun and satisfying when it's challenging...when it hurts... when it stings...when it overjoys...when you feel so high your heart feels like it's going to burst out of your chest...when it feels REAL. Sometimes when I'm back in the US, life seems too easy, too comfortable.

But here, life is always very low and very high. Real.

T.I.A.

TIA - "This is Africa." That's been the theme of my last couple days, and you PCVs and RPCVs out there know exactly what that means: low points. The roller coaster has plummeted again! Despite the high highs of living here, there are, of course, the lows.

That beauty of a car I posted pics of last time is proving to be a real pain in my side. Every rose has it's thorn I'm learning, even with cars...especially in Tanzania.

I have been through more loops that you can fathom trying my level best to first, procure a name change on my registration card (The owner never gave me the original registration card, so I had to track her down in Zimbabwe. Literally. Otherwise, my new best friend (MER!!), the Tanzania Revenue Authority a.k.a. TRA, was threatening to charge me a whopping $500 to have a new one made. That's not bribery at all. Nope).

Then, following the name change saga (BTW: The owner kindly traveled back to Arusha to drop it off for me), I learned I also have to purchase what's called a "Motor Vehicle License" - no big deal, a mere $100 to be on the road. Okay. Okay.

After surfacing post the TRA drama, I felt like all was hunky dory. I had made my way through the darkness, some minor stalls and fixes by my fundi after his major engine overhaul, and the light was on the horizon. I was awaiting my fixed-up car on Saturday (yesterday), bubbling with excitement for my Mid-term break travels the next day (today in theory) with Hunter and his brother Peter visiting from the US....until my fundi (car mechanic) called yesterday evening to report the following in Swahili:

"Furaha am very sorry 4 what had happen. Nilipomaliza kazi wakati nimekwenda kubadilisha nguo mwanafunzi wangu mmoja amejaribu kuwasha gari pasipo mimi kujua na akaingiza gia vibaya gear ya reverse ikafyatuka nimejaribu kuvalisha kwa nje imeshindikana kwa hiyo sina namna zaidi kuitoa tena na kuvisha. So pliz usinisubiri tena nami siwezi kukurudishia gari ambalo halina reverse."

Awesome.

Roughly translated, he says, "Tait, I'm very sorry to tell you when I had just finished fixing your car and went to change clothes, one of my students (i.e. mechanic friends) tried to drive it though I was unaware and blew out the reverse. I can't fix it now so don't wait for me as I am unable to return a car to you today that has no reverse."

The best part: he turned off his phone after sending this message, so I couldn't call him back to find out more details. Clearly, too embarrassed and ashamed to answer to me, he forced me to do something very mature: to tattle tale on him to his brother, my buddy Bernard, with whom I used to work last year (my original connection to this fundi). Bernard eventually got through to someone at his house that was then able to ask Peter what was going on. Current status: still unclear.

One of the most challenging aspects about this culture for me is that it's extremely difficult to discern when someone's telling the truth and when they're lying. The fundi himself could've blown out the reverse for all I know and is instead telling me it was his student who did it. Who and what am I to believe??

Bernard, his older brother, promises me the car will be ready on Tuesday morning at the latest. He texted from a funeral today assuring me he had assigned another additional fundi to the task to speed things up. However, the car was originally promised back in August. I'll believe it when I see it!

I wonder where the fine line is between expecting good out of people and expecting too much? I tend to fall in the latter bracket and end up being disappointed. Note to self: I need to keep my expectations lower!

Our students are back home with guardians, hopefully all salama until the 24th! Upon their return, we'll be participating in our first ever Track & Field Event at a local International school with a track. Just imagine what the javelin will be like for our Maasai students :)...

Also, had a GREAT time reconnecting with Bright Tate and her buddies from PC-Malawi. We cooked an epic breakfast the morning they left for Kili. Go CMW go!
And last but not least, with Ibby and her sweet Baba, Bill, on their way to the big hunt.
My "SMISH" award of this month goes to this lil munchkin, Eric.

My first wheels purchased on the Motherland

To greater freedom...

Daniel

I feel compelled to write on yet another reason why I remain - four years later - in love with this country. Our school cook, Daniel, an older gentleman probably in his 50s, approached me yesterday before he climbed into the school van, which takes our staff home every evening. This warm father of three told me smilingly that he had a gift for me tomorrow from his family. I say ‘smilingly’ because this man is all smile. He does everything smilingly, exuding true joy and love every second of the day from every pore. He refuses to shake a hand when he greets; a hug is required and that’s not typical in this culture. Maybe he’s been taken by the hugging culture with all the American huggers frequenting Peace House.

I had completely forgotten about this until today as the day was coming to a close and the staff started wandering towards the van. I call it “the 4 pm exodus.” All of a sudden, there was Daniel at my office door, holding a black grocery bag. He closed it calmly with his hand so I couldn’t look inside, smiled (of course) and gave me a big hug. “Here is what my family wanted to give to you…FREE…it’s yours. For you.” He could not stop smiling. He was beaming in fact. I couldn’t wait to look and see what surprise awaited me.

Inside the bag were the following: a fresh bunch of grapes wrapped in newspaper, a bag of cake muffins, a half kilo of peanuts and…a perfectly ripe avocado. My favorite. Actually, he’d selected many of my favorite items in TZ. How sweet is that?! For no reason. Out of the blue. A bag of goodies. Just because.

It brought me back to Manga, my old Peace Corps village, when my favorite neighbors, Mama Joyce and her five children, would drop a bucket full of sweet potatoes at my doorstep. And they barely had enough to eat themselves. But they would always share. For no reason. Out of the blue. A bucket of goodies. Just because.

These people love unconditionally. These people give beyond their means. And most every day, they make me feel so fortunate to be here, among them, grasping what it truly means to be a human being, relating as family.

Oh Daniel. I will be sleeping sweetly tonight because of your kindness. Thank you. Asante sana baba yangu. How did you know I needed that? He always knows.