Letter No: 1, September 22, 2002

Dear Fam!

Hi! Well, I've made it through my first four days or so in Africa, and was moved from the hotel to my host-family's home yesterday. My family is very big! Mama Stella is my mom, and Baba Laizer is my dad. They have six children (I think), two of which have grown up and moved to houses next door (Stanley and one other), a girl Stella who is 22 and getting married in 3 weeks, Richard (20) who runs a bar down the street, Dennis or Andrew (I keep mixing his name up) who is somewhere between 16-18, and Kevin (8) who has been the most help in pointing out new words to me.

I have my own room, which, I feel guilty about, as the family is so big. Right now only Stella, Kevin and Charles (Stanley's son, 3 - who runs across the dirt courtyard as he pleases) live here with Mama and Baba Stella. The kitchen, choo (toilet) and shower are all outside. The kitchen is a wood/stick structure with a tin roof where all of the cooking is done over a wood fire or kerosene or charcoal stove (fire). (Sometimes all three at once when things really get going.) This is better than some families though, which share the kitchen with their cows. Mama Stella's cows are in a shed behind our house, from which we get milk in the morning to make chai tea (it's just like ours, and they drink it all the time here, we have two chai breaks at school/training everyday.)

The choo (pronounced cho) is a hole in the ground with two raised cement blocks for your feet. They don't use paper here, but there's a bucket with water, where you wash your hand (left) afterwards. Because of this, I've decided to stick with the B.Y.O.T.P. rule ( Bring your own Toilet Paper). The same goes for bathrooms everywhere but the training site.

I took my first bucket bath this morning in the room next to the choo room. It has a smaller hole, which, the water drains out of as I stand in a bucket and pour water out of another bucket with a cup over my body. I actually found this to be one of the most refreshing showers I have ever taken. Probably has something to do with the contrast of the warmth and the cold.

I am very lucky to be in a family with someone who is both my age, and a child as well. I have Kevin to learn the language from, who has endless patience with me, and Stella to take me out to meet her friends . I went out to dinner and a disco with her and her fiancé Joseph and Martha, another PCT (Peace Corps Trainer) who lives down the road from me and is living with Mama Stella's sister. It was so much fun! We had a whole chicken and goat's ribs/meat, which was bar-b-qued. This was like going out for a really nice dinner in the U.S. It was great to be around Tanzanians my age, and see what they do. It was kind of unusual that Joseph and Stella went out together. From what they have told me, he is very different from other Tanzanian men, in that he would rather go out with her and spend time with her than go out with his male friends. Normally, men always leave the women at home, so Martha and I felt even luckier to have been invited to go out.

The familia really is trying to make me feel at home here. Today I leaned how to make Chipate, a type of tortilla-like bread and they plan on teaching me many more things so that I can "survive on my own" after I leave here and go to my site.

Training is good- just a lot of language lessons and medical/health/safety stuff right now. I'm thinking of you all, and will write again soon.

Love Jessica