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.
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