Karibu Njombe!

Week two at site is upon me. I never thought that I would be huddled under two thick blankets and wearing wool socks when I found out that I would be going to Tanzania with the Peace Corps. So it goes here in Njombe…Njombe is located in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania. My Dad said there was not that much information about it online so I will throw in a few tid bits of my observations.  From what I see, the economy here seems to be based primarily upon the lumber and tea industry. On the forty-minute drive to my village, there are a couple commercial farms of the aforementioned. With the cooler weather, the prevalence of dairy products is much higher here as well. In town, there is a dairy duka (store) that sells yogurt, milk, and a variety of cheeses. I have yet to take advantage of these things, primarily because lack of refrigeration/electricity poses a few problems. With the stomach issues I have been having here, I need not risk food spoilage on my watch.

Speaking of food, I have been experimenting a little bit in my “kitchen” here. To mix up my diet a little bit, I have been putting a few twists on some foods that I like to eat back home. I’ll share my version of Pad Thai with you. My brother, Elliot, has been volunteering in Thailand for the last 5 months, so this one was made with him in mind. So, anyway…I have spaghetti here, so this serves as my noodles. I do not have any peanuts, but was lucky to have some cashews on hand that a friend gave me before coming to site. Toast these up and they substitute just fine for my purposes. After toasting the cashews, I chop up some onion, carrots, and a little bit of cabbage for crunch. Fry all this together and the dish is almost complete. Next, I add a little bit of oil, along with a couple scoops of peanut butter, one or two tablespoons of sugar, a pinch of salt, and a couple dashes of soy sauce. Mix it all together and you have something that resembles Pad Thai. Okay, lets be honest, it does not taste that much like it, but it is a nice change from ugali and beans.

Cooking some grub. 

Ugali and beans is the traditional food here. Tanzanians love to eat ugali—lots of it. It is consumed so readily because corn is the staple crop here. Once harvest season comes, the corn is ground into flour. Add some water and heat to the flour and boom—you have ugali. When I first arrived in country, ugali did not sit too well on my taste buds. After living here for almost three months though, I am surprised at how much it is growing on me.  I guess I am slowly becoming more Tanzanian. Nonetheless, I still have yet to escape the cravings for some of my American favorites.

I am lucky that my school provides its teachers with two meals a day during the normal school week. Chai (breakfast) occurs around 10am. I usually munch down on a couple mandazi (fried bread that kind of tastes like a donut) and a couple mugs of hot tea. This is pretty standard for a Tanzanian breakfast. At 3pm, school winds down and lunch is served. This meal consists of ugali, beans, and cooked greens. Once a week, rice is served in place of ugali and on Mondays we get some sort of meat thrown into the mix.

 Lets take a look inside my house:

Outside from the front.

Living room.

Kitchen

Another view of the kitchen.

In the courtyard

Courtyard

Another view

My odd toilet.

After school, I usually go home and tend to some chores around the house. This past week, I got a few students to help me start prepping my plot of land for a garden. Rainy season is approaching  and I want to be prepared to plant. I brought along with me some seeds from America, but I also plan to plant some local crops as well. The students that have been helping me have been having a lot of fun as well.  I showed them my baseball glove and taught them a little bit about the sport.  Along with teaching them baseball, I showed them the intricacies of the hacky sack.  They picked up on both things quite quickly.

The road that I walk down on the way home from school.

First step in prepping my garden--slash the grass.

Some of my students helping me burn the the plot.

Ready for digging.

A view in my banking town--Njombe.

This weekend I am in town for a gathering with other Peace Corps Volunteers. Like I previously mentioned, town is about a forty-minute drive from my village. Every morning, around 7:00am, a bus and a couple vans drive past my school. Our school is a pickup site for these vehicles and it only costs 3,000 TSH (~$2) to take the bus into town.  The dirt roads weave in and out of the hills and pass a number of small villages on the way.

Today, another teacher invited me to visit a recording studio that he records his gospel music at. We went and I was surprised at the setup they had. It was kind of rudimentary, but the sound was very good. They plopped a guitar in my lap, put on a couple tunes, and I played right along. I’m not sure what they thought of my bluesy licks on top of the gospel songs, but they seemed to be enjoying themselves. For me, finding a recording studio was one of the biggest surprises yet. I expected I would find a music scene in Dar es Salaam, but never did I think there would be in this part of Tanzania. I am happily surprised and will more than likely be utilizing this studio when my brothers come to visit. The Lake Effect needs to record a track over this way. It will be a nice touch to the next album.

That’s all I have for now. Keep writing me letters and I’ll keep sending them your way as well! Karibu tena!