Site Visit

September 13, 2014

Last week was site visit (shadow) week for the new education volunteers. They are at the end of their PST and will be swearing in as volunteers next week! In preparation for their service they all went to their respective sites to see their houses, schools, headmasters, students, banking towns, and most importantly (maybe) meet their neighboring volunteers! As the warden of Iringa region, I was put in charge of arranging some parts of their visit. Iringa got five new volunteers, so I found volunteers to help guide them around for the week as they got familiar with the area.

Since Iringa is the focal point for the southern highlands of Tanzania all new volunteers going to Iringa, Mbeya, Njombe, Ruvuma and Rukwa all stayed a night in Iringa town on the way to their respective regions. There were about 25 of them. After a fun night in Iringa, we split off and I took my shadow (Rashod) down to Makambako and then to my site. I had heard from teachers at my school that the Peace Corps house at Rashod's school was much nicer than mine. I think knowing his house was nicer helped to reduce his shock to my tiny and primitive house.

At my house we played with the kittens, cooked some food, checked out the village, and watched some TV. We also went to the school. It wasn't the most interesting time to be shadowing since we were just proctoring midterm exams, but he introduced himself to some of the teachers and got a feel for the school atmosphere and how testing goes.

On tuesday, another volunteer, Jodi, an her shadow, Ryan, came to stay the night at my house as well. We took advantage of the extra hands and made a nice dinner with meat from the village and attempted to make a chocolate cake which somehow turned out to have the texture of lasagna...weird.

We also broke into my new batch of wine (papaya) which is still a little young, but ok.

The next day I went to school and proctored a morning exam and then the four of us took off. I went with Rashod to Makambako and the others went to Ryan's site. Rashod and I met his new headmaster in town and then wandered around a little to get him familiar with the area. Later we met up with a couple other shadows from Njombe. I helped show them around and we went out that night to check out the street food and a local bar. It was a fun night and really nice to have some new people to hang out with!

After Makambako, Rashod hopped on a bus and met his headmaster on the way out to his school where he stayed the night. I went back to my site and proctored one more exam, stayed te night and headed up to meet the shadows again up in Iringa. Everyone arrived safely and after another night in town we sent them on their way back to Korogwe!

It was really cool to meet the people who will be living down here with us now and we're all excited for them to swear in and get to site! They swear in on the 17th and will be leaving for site the next day.

So the cycle continues.