Baking bread (Kuoka Mikate)

September 7, 2013

Today, just two days before I leave my homestay for good, I fianally was able to visit my baba's (host father's) bakery and help him make some bread! I've been eating his bread most mornings since I got here. And even before being dropped off at my house for the first time I was told my baba was a baker. But I hadn't seen where he baked or even where he sold the bread until this afternoon.

It wasn't the mess of flour-coated dishes and counters I would have expected in America. It was just a giant oven and a few racks for storage. The store front (which I forgot to photograph) was a window with a rack to display the bread and not much else. Just a few various items to go with the bread. Also in the store, though, was a bed in the back. This has been another big mystery until now. My kaka (brother), George, has been my guide in the village and in learning Swahili in my homestay since day one. But until I noticed this bed in the bakery I didn't know where he slept!

The dough had already been made, put in nice shapes/molds and risen before I got there so I really didn't do much. But the giant oven was heated up and we put the bread into it with a long stick.

Baba putting the bread in the oven

It had already risen so there wasn't a lot of waiting to do after it was in. We took it out and then my little kaka, Noel, showed me how to brush oil on the top of the bread.

Noel putting oil on the bread sticks

They let me try too...

Once we were finished oiling the bread we flipped it over. I'm still not sure why... I may never know.

Then, for some reason, Noel took me to a small room between the oven area and the shop where they keep ducks (bata). He then showed me the flour that they feed the ducks. There were three of them. We stayed there for about one minute. Then we left. That's probably going to be another mystery...

And that's how I learned to bake bread!

Site Visit

September 3, 2013

This past week I have been on my site visit. I was assigned a secondary school called Itandula (ee-tawn-DOO-luh) in the Iringa region. So on Saturday morning a group of eleven trainees got on a bus at the bus stand in Korogwe to go to Iringa....about 3 hours later than scheduled. The bus system here is pretty spotty. Things run late pretty consistently and we are told to expect the unexpected (one group had their bus break down and they were stranded without AC for an hour in the desert). Our bus was pretty crowded and pretty hot most of the way, but one thing that helped ease the painful 9 hour trip was the hour and a half of it spent going through Mikumi National Park. It was later in the evening and the lighting was awesome and we saw giraffes and wildebeest and hippos and warthogs and zebra and gazelles and a big stork-like bird and.....I think that's it. After that, it cooled down a little and we finally got into Iringa town (Iringa town is the capital or Iringa region, typical in Tanzania) around 9 pm.

When we got off the bus we were greeted by a group of volunteers who had been waiting for some new friends since the last new group of volunteers arrived this past February! They were as excited to see some new faces as we were to get off the bus. Along with being there to greet us, the volunteers had reserved our hotel rooms at a place they like to stay and they ordered pizza!! You might like pizza; you might even LOVE pizza, but you really don't understand how much until you really can't have it. And to have pizza after a couple months of rice and beans (even weird Tanzanian pizza) is.... Difficult to describe.

And of course a couple beers were in order as well. I miss American beers too, maybe more than pizza even..

One of the volunteers who met us at the bus stop was Julie, who is an environment volunteer and has been living in the house that soon will be mine for the past two years. She completes her service and will head back to the US about the same time I will be swearing in as a PC Volunteer (September 12). But during site visit, she showed me the way to our village, Ikimilinzowo (heh...good luck) and introduced me to some neighbors and other villagers throughout the week. We got to the village (about 2 hours south and then 15 minutes east of Iringa town) on Sunday at around 5 o'clock. Julie had picked up some cheese (also quite rare in Tanzania) in Iringa town as well as some bread, so when we got to the house we only had to grab a few things at the small market in the village before heading back to the house and starting to cook.

My new home has no electricity and no running water and only 3 rooms. Not too uncommon for Tanzania. I knew this after site announcements as I said in that post but I don't think it set in until I was actually in it. I freaked out a little bit. We were cooking grilled cheese over a small jiko (tiny stove) by candle light and it hit me: this is the next two years of my life. What have I gotten myself into?? Just in the nick of time, my parents' call came through and I got a little comfort talking with them. I tried to hold it together so mom wouldn't worry too much, but inside I was not so cool.

After the call and a belly full of grilled cheese I went to bed with a headlamp wishing I was at the Brotel overdosing on Parks and Rec and Skinny Love.

Then the strangest and most unexpected thing happened: I woke up. The sun was up. I still had all of my limbs. And it was even kind of nice out! I don't think I've ever felt so good just from waking up. I got out of bed, still a bit surprised, and stepped outside. The sun was out and the crisp southern highlands air bit just a little, just like it does in the Northwest.

That day I went to my new school, Itandula, and met my second master and an English teacher who will be my counterpart. Both were extremely inviting and excited for me to be there. And it was very obvious that they really need me! There is only one other science teacher at the school now. They showed me around the school and let me give an introduction in Swahili to the students at the afternoon assembly. Walking home that afternoon felt so good. I survived the night, I was able to communicate with the people at my school and the weather was beautiful.

It also is really good to feel needed, which is a feeling I don't think I have experienced much until now. It really reminded me of why I am here. I came to experience a new culture and to see the world but more importantly, I came to help these kids have a chance at improving their condition, furthering their education and being "successful" (whatever that may mean for them).

The second night at site we had a visitor, Nikki, who is my closest site mate. She lives in a village about half an hour from me (so I'm told). She came over and the three of us shared life stories over candle-light and chipsi. We listened to some American music and I shared a little bit of The Harm with them as Nikki shared her drama and musical history with us.

She will make a good site mate, especially after I set up my recording studio. I think I'll call it "The Choo."

For the rest of the week I did a combination of getting used to, and checking the safety of the house, finding out more about my school, exploring the area, and meeting other villagers. It was really nice to have Julie with me as a guide and as a survivor of sorts. She is proof that one can survive in Ikimilinzowo for two years and come out in one piece.

I spent four nights at my site and then headed back up to Iringa for a night before making the long trek back to Korogwe to finish up training. In Iringa town I met back up with the other trainees from my and other nearby regions (Iringa, Mbeya, and Njombe) as well as some other volunteers. One of these volunteers was a fellow Olympia High School grad, Willie, and another was the sister of my pal Will from UP, Emily. It was a little odd seeing a familiar face so far from home but it was nice and it was no surprise. My parents invited Willie's parents over for dinner at our place a week or so before I left and I believe they have met since then to have parent talks (or whatever they do) in each other's company.

^^That's me with Emily (Will's sister)^^

After having some nice food and getting some rest in Iringa town we were as ready as anyone ever is for the 9 hour bus ride back to our training site and host families in Korogwe. More giraffes and elephants on the way back. Drinking lots of water. Windows that didn't open. No AC. Booty sweat. Ridiculous speed bumps. Blah blah blah.... All the way home. And even though it was the same stuff I had been eating for the last month and a half, it felt so good to have some authentic, home-cooked, Tanzanian rice and beans!

Oh! And I had some shirts made while I was gone! More on that later.

^^ Me and Baba matching! ^^

Site announcements!

August 21, 2013

Today was the day we have all been waiting for since we were invited to join Peace Corps Tanzania: Site Announcement Day!!!

It kind of felt like Christmas, if the gift you were really looking forward to getting was the chance to live in a rural African village to teach kids how to do math and physics and live in a small house with no electricity or running water. So....Christmas!

But they didn't start with the announcements obviously. We had regular sessions of safety/security stuff in the morning. Sessions we probably will not remember since we weren't paying attention to that. We were busy fantasizing about our dream site, or for some, worrying about our site-mare (heh... I did that).

Finally after a loooooong lunch. We all sat down outside with a map of Tanzania in front of us. Each region had a cluster of sticky notes next to it covering the headshots of PC Volunteers-to-be. As each sticky note was removed, the corresponding person would go up and smile for a few minutes as the staff read information about the site from a manilla folder. Then they would be awarded an apple and a bite sized Snickers bar as consolation if the site didn't match their dreams.

I was last. That was ok with me. Because I think I got a nice site. For the next 2 years I will be teaching physics and math in a small rural village called Ikimilinzowo (I can't say it either), at a school called Itandula Secondary School. It's in the Iringa region of Tanzania which is in the south west (ish). My house has no electricity or running water. I am replacing an Environment PCV, and my school has never had a foreign volunteer before. That could be nice since there won't be any shoes to fill, but I just hope they don't have superhuman expectations for me. After all, I'm pretty new to this teaching thing still.

Along with finding out my site, I also now know who will be living near me! There are four of us from my training class in Iringa and several more just south near Njombe, not to mention the PCVs who are already there from the last training class.

This Saturday I will leave Korogwe for a weeklong site visit. More on that later.

Foooooood!!!!

August 11, 2013

I posted a little about food in my daily routine post but I thought I would elaborate.

Since I got here I have been on the Tanzania diet, which consists of a few staples and little variation. It was hard to appreciate the "melting pot" that The United States is until I got here. It's easy to take for granted that on any given day in the states I could eat a nice hearty breakfast with eggs, bacon, hash browns, pancakes and syrup, and a bowl of fresh fruit. For lunch I could drive less than 2 miles and have my choice of Italian, Mexican, or Asian cuisine. And for dinner, if I was feeling adventurous, I could pick up basically any kind of ingredients at Safeway and cook whatever dish I wanted to from wherever in the world I wanted. Or I could combine flavors from all over the world to create a new dish that nobody had ever thought of. But instead, I decided to move to Tanzania for two years.

Here, we eat rice, beans, bony beef and African spinach for lunch and dinner. Sometimes we have potatoes too. And they also really like a dish called ugali which is just water and corn flour cooked together until a play-dough-like consistency is achieved (you usually eat it with your hands and dip it in something). I haven't grown to enjoy it too much, even with the fun of playing with your food. I have been to the market several times now and they have normal ingredients that we have in the states like bell and hot peppers, onions, garlic, rice, beans, oranges, lemons, sugar, flour, salt, carrots, bananas, lentils, pineapples, potatoes, oil, etc. But I haven't found the specialty ingredients (or cheese!!!) that we can find easily back home.

I have been talking with my host family about cooking for them for a few weeks now. Maybe because of gender roles, or maybe just busy schedules, but for whatever reason it's taken a while for me to actually cook for them. Today I finally did. I decided that one of the simpler things to make would be spaghetti. Everything is cooked on a coal stove or over a fire here, so I didn't want to attempt anything too far out there. Along with this, I had heard from a fellow trainee that she had been successful in cooking brownies at her homestay, so I thought I would give that a shot too.

This morning, my kaka and I went to the market to get supplies for everything. In the states there is The Supermarket, with everything you need inside. Here there are many vendors each selling certain things that they choose to stock or grow for sale. We ended up going to seven or eight different stands to find what we needed. For the spaghetti we got: spaghetti noodles, tomatoes, garlic, onions, bell peppers, black pepper, and some meat. We asked everywhere we went but nobody knew where/if we could find oregano, basil, or any spices other than the black pepper we got. For the brownies we got: cocoa powder, flour, sugar, eggs, baking powder and oil.

We got back home and started cooking. My dada (host sister) helped me cook, but let me lead the way. The spaghetti turned out really good considering we used zero Italian spices. Luckily my host family doesn't know what it's supposed to taste like. They loved it. Also, I had them listen to American music while we ate to complete the experience. It's fun to play really explicit music and watch them bob their heads and smile.

After lunch, we started working on the brownies. They were especially fascinated with this one. My dada told me she was a big fan of chocolate so she was watching intently throughout the entire process. She even had me write down instructions for her as I went. The trick for the brownies was that the only cooking tool they have at my house is the small stove. No oven. So we put a pot in another pot and used the big pot as an oven, covering the top with coals.

The brownies were amazing for my family, but not amazing by American standards. Either way, it was nice to have some chocolate. And it's also fun to share things from home with them.

So my first cooking experience in Tanzania was a success. Hopefully I can find some more spices eventually, but for now it's just nice to change up the diet a little. I'm sure it'll be back to rice and beans tonight.

I tried to post a picture of the brownies but the upload wasn't working. Maybe I'll post it later.