Home Sweet Home?

I made it! Three weeks, one staph infection, 40 hours of cramped bus riding, 112 hours in presentation style lecture, and I am back in my humble Tanzanian abode. That description of my last three weeks is way too cut and dry so let me dive a little deeper.

After grading my 800 ish exams, cooking dinner with my fellow Tanzanian teachers (they chose pasta Bolognese… a story in and of itself), cleaning my house, and packing up everything I might need for my three weeks of travel…

I went to sleep.

I woke up bright and early the next morning and boarded a small bus/large van (depending on how you look at it) for a 6 hour bus ride to Dar es Salaam. The next morning I got on a real bus and took the ten-hour trip to Arusha. After a short taxi ride from the bus stand, I was greeted by an eye-sore of a hotel with…. SHOWERS!!!! I can’t tell you how exciting it was to take a hot shower (I’m currently limited to bucket baths) and eat cereal for breakfast. I spent the next five days enjoying some of the luxuries of the western world that I had forgotten about and trying to absorb as much information as I could from the transportation conference. I met some fantastic people and I feel like I’ve gotten a little bit up to speed on the kinds of issues Africa is facing right now. I’m still unsure of what exactly to focus my research on but I do feel like I have a little more direction now.

The downside to this conference was that I spent Thanksgiving surrounded by hundreds of people that had no idea of what Thanksgiving was. I missed my family terribly and I made the mistake of, at 8 PM, imagining what I would be doing at a typical Thanksgiving at the Ranch (my grandparent’s house). The family would have finished both dinner and all the clam dip in the house (minus Grama’s hidden stash) and everyone would be sitting around drinking coffee and eating dessert. Some people might be playing cards, some might be doing dishes, but everyone (I think) would be enjoying pleasant conversation after a wonderful meal. These images made me sad at the time as I was by myself in a white hotel room with no food to feast on and no way of speaking with any loved ones from home. In hindsight, however, it just shows how much I truly have to be thankful for. Maybe more like a true Thanksgiving? To every friend and family member out there, I love you and am truly grateful for you. As of late, I have been reminded time and time again.

Following the conference, I got on another bus to Morogoro. This one took eleven hours as it broke down before we left and got a flat tire half way through the trip. In addition to all of this, I had my first encounter with a baby peeing on my lap. In Tanzania, if even part of your lap is open and you’re sitting next to a Mama, you will probably end up holding her baby for some portion of the trip. The Mama that I was sitting next to had to go to the bathroom during our tea-break stop, so she handed me her baby and walked off the bus. Turns out the baby needed a bathroom break as well. FYI, Tanzanian babies don’t wear diapers. In these instances, all you can really do is laugh about it and text someone that will laugh with you.

At the end of a long day, I arrived at our training site, took a shower, and headed to the bar where everyone had gathered. I can’t even describe how amazing it felt to be greeted by all of my fellow PST classmates. Thirty-some volunteers that arrived in country with me 5 months earlier cheered as I walked up and gave them all hugs. This was by far my favorite part of training. Seeing so many familiar faces that were as happy to see me as I was them made my heart feel like it was going to burst. We sat around catching up until it was time to head back for dinner.

Thank goodness I was riding high on the excitement of seeing everyone because it was shortly after this that I noticed the infection in my leg. After an insanely swollen ankle, some feverish nights, and some antibiotics, I’m all better. The rest of the two weeks consisted of lectures, presentations, and discussions about how the first three months at site went and how to be better volunteers, etc. etc. A typical training that one might have with any job except that it was two weeks long. Something not so typical that happened half way through training, though, was… drum roll, please… IST Prom Elfu Mbili na Kumi na Moja (2011)!!!!!

Our group decided to recreate an event started by some previous volunteers at their IST last year. Everyone got dressed up (or as dressed up as one can get in Tanzania without running water and limited clothing options), went to the local, most American restaurant/bar we know of, ate pizza and hamburgers, and danced the night away. The event was made complete with awkward prom pictures and a prom king and queen. It could not possibly have gone any better and when the restaurant closed, we continued the dancing at a club in town.

Following IST, a good friend of mine and I stayed in Morogoro for an extra day to visit with each other and eat junk food (something we ordinarily can’t do in the village). We started our MORNING off with ice cream and cake (Grampa, I told her about your “pancakes/brownies for breakfast” theory and we assumed that it goes the same for cake) and continued on with absolutely nothing healthy (minus a cucumber and a watermelon) while we watched some good chick-flicks. Don’t worry, we took pictures and I will post as soon as I get them. It was nice to have an American “Girl’s Day” in Tanzania. I headed to Dar the next day and was greeted by four beautiful packages from my parents and my Grandma Marge (THANK YOU!). After that, I met up with a bunch of other volunteers for an African soccer game and a subway sandwich (complete with mustard and lettuce) before making my way home.

You would think that at this point I would be just about home free but the rainy season is picking up and a trip that should have taken about 6 hours stretched into 11 as the road was not even close to solid. Bus after bus kept getting stuck in the mud and we had to keep waiting for them to get dug out. Eventually I made it, though and I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to see all of the familiar faces in the village.

I walked into my house knowing it would be a mess (this is Tanzania) but still hoping my efforts to get it as clean as possible before I left would not have been a waste. Well, maybe it wasn’t a waste but if it wasn’t, I don’t ever want to know what it WOULD have looked like. There was a dead mouse on my kitchen floor and a cockroach living in my refrigerator (the biggest I’d ever seen). In addition to this, someone had taken it upon themselves to help me out by turning off my electricity since I wasn’t home. Awesome. I’m still working on getting everything back in order but it’s extremely overwhelming and every time I feel like I’ve made a dent, something else happens.

For example…

Last night, while I was laying in bed, I heard some rustling in my cupboard. I’ve given up on hoping it is something other than a rodent and now just try to go to sleep knowing that there’s nothing I can do about it except to expect a mess in the morning . Sure enough, the medical kit provided by Peace Corps has been ransacked. He went for the dehydration salts, condoms, fungal cream, and miscellaneous pills. To top it off, he ate a bag of my strawberry cough drops that I brought from the states. My friend and I decided he was having a date night… he found the closest thing he could to chocolate covered strawberries (cough drops), he thought he was going to get lucky (condoms), but realized he drank too much (dehydration salts), and don’t ask about the fungal cream. What a mess… Who would have thought that this is what I signed up for when I decided to join the Peace Corps? Anyone still want to visit? If you do, please bring an exterminator… I’m at a loss for what to do. My cat is NOT helping!

For now I think that gets you pretty much up to date. It’s getting really hot, I’ve been reading, cleaning, and I’ve started learning how to play the guitar (cliché, I know). As soon as I get everything in order, I will head out for Christmas and then return to start teaching again in January.

One more thing:

My Christmas list for this year:

1. To see my family and friends back home

2. For my skin to look normal again

3. To stop itching

Santa would have to do some big things to get any of those things to happen i.e. wiping out the entire mosquito population or bringing me a private jet equipped with a pilot which I don’t think will fit in his sleigh. Oh well, I don’t have a fireplace anyway. For now I’ll just have to say I love and miss you all and am wishing you the very best. Happy Holidays, I hope they are absolutely wonderful!