Email No. 5: Sunday, 22 Dec 2002

Subject: Merry, Merry Christmas

Dear Fam,

Merry Christmas to you all...........................................

Where to start? So much has gone on since swearing in. After swearing in we had a few days to ourselves in Dar, and then the four of us took the boat down from Dar to Mtwara, spent a few days at Karen's house in Mtwara, and then hopped onto a bus to Masasi. After spending the night in Masasi at Colleen's, I miracuously found that my school car was in town, saving me the trouble of trying my kiswahili out on some of the local cantor (big trucks) drivers, in order to get a ride two hours up the hill to my site. Normally, there might have be the opportunity to have taken the one bus between Masasi and Lulindi later on in the day, but I was trying to beat the Peace Corps vehicle which was coming from the other side of the hill with all of my stuff. So yeah, I hopped into the school car and the last two weeks have really been peaceful.

Most of the teachers at my site are away for the school break right now. Well, actually, it's about half, but it feels like a lot as that leaves only 5 teachers including me at the school over break. It's actually been really nice though, as the volunteer that was there before me was really integrated into the site and almost all of the teachers were her really close friends. This has made it really really easy for me to feel at home at Ndwika. At least once or twice a day one or two of the teachers will come by to visit for an hour or so.... this is if I haven't come out of my house already to just sit and hang out with them. The thing to do at Ndwika really seems to just be visiting friends and hanging out. At least an hour a day I spend sitting under the mango tree by one of the teacher's houses on one of these straw mats, just chatting and trying to keep up with the conversation. I really think that's the best thing that I could be doing though..... it's really keeping me on my toes as far as my kiswahili goes. Even though all classes are supposed to be taught in english, one of the teacher's told me that truthfully it's only about 30% of the time. This has all kinds of effects, the major one being that the students can't really be expected to understand what's being asked of them on their national exams, which, are written in english, if they never have to practice their english in the classroom. Another effect of this though is that amongst themselves the other teachers hardly ever speak english, unless it's to explain something to me that I haven't quite understood in kiswahili. Going back to my daily routine though, my favorite people to just hang out with and talk with though are the "Mama's" or wives of all of the teachers and the wife of the school driver. It's great. Everyday at 4 I know that three or four of them will be sitting outside of the school duka just talking about nothing in particular. From them I've learned the proper way to eat the smaller mangos (mangos are always in season here, and have become the fruit I love most, which, is fortunate as it's really the only fruit I can get regularly), peel peanuts, roast cashews, and that it's great to be able to laugh at myself and all of the mistakes I make.

One interesting thing about most of the teachers is that most of them are from the Mtwara region, and have come back to teach here after going to teacher's college somewhere else. Some of them chose to come back close to home, while others did not. In Tanzania, after you graduate from teacher's college, you preference your top three regions in which you want to teach. From there, the government assigns you to a school within one of these regions. Learning this has given me a little bit of an insight as to how lucky we are in the States to be able to somewhat choose where it is we want to live, work, etc. The government has their hand in a lot of sectors here that it doesn't at home.

One of the teacher's that is from a village 30 kilometers from Ndwika is also new to the school this term. He knows the area well though, and last week I convinced him to show me the back trail to the town of Newala 25 kilometers away, amongst the numerous paths that go out into the bush back behind our school. So, at 5am Monday morning, off we went, with the moon still in the sky. What ensued was a bicycle ride uphill about half the distance and then our having to haul our bicycles up the side of the Makonde Plateau on our shoulders for a good 100 meters and then biking the rest of the distance on relatively flat ground. Once in Newala, we visited with Fred, the volunteer there, for a couple of hours before heading back to Ndwika, this time by the road. The view off the top of the Plateau, looking down on Mozambique was absolutely gorgeous. I still can't really believe that I managed to bike 50km, (~30 miles) half of it in the back country and the other half on a dirt (well, rather, sand ) road. Have to say that I'm pretty proud of myself for that one. Who knows, maybe I"ll make it to Masasi next time.

Masasi, well, it's 55 km away and really my only market. The nearby village of Lulindi doesn't offer anything except for onions. It's amazing that I managed to stay away from Masasi for a full ten days though considering the market situation, but I did. (I actually managed to plan out my shopping fairly well the last time I had gone). Anyways, because of this, and the fact that our school car also hadn't gone into Masasi for about a week, when I arrived there yesterday I found that I had ~12 pieces of mail there waiting for me. All I want to say to you guys is that YOU ROCK!!! All of your little goodies and packages were VERY well received, and totally made my holidays!!! I'm even going to share some of the stuff with the other volunteers here. =0)

That's about it for now, after 6 hours of travelling this morning my brain is a little fried. If I get time before I leave I might write another group email, otherwise, it's back to the letters. I love and miss you all. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Jessica

P.S. Keep the Kool-Aid coming