Letter No: 14. July 15th, 2003

Hey Fam!

So, I'm back at Ndwika after a month and a half of traveling around Tanzania and Peace Corps conferences. It feels so good to be home and not living out of a bag. The last month was definitely awesome, but it's nice to be home, and that Ndwika really feels like home as well.

The end of May we had our term exams which were both rewarding and frustrating. My Form 1's averaged 54%, which sounds terrible, but is actually pretty good considering that 21% is passing here, and passing, not much more seems to be all Tanzanian students care about. I was also proud of the 15 A's in that lot. It's amazing how grateful I am for the small yet huge successes like that or like the girls who completely failed their midterms but bounced back for the final. It's so tough, as there's no motivation really to learn, nor can most of the girls even understand the language they're taught in. I found out over break that in Kenya they start teaching students only in English in Primary School. No wonder their English is so much better! On the other hand, you run into problem of students not knowing a single language completely. It's a tough call either way you go.

So after exams my counterpart, Mr. Abdallah and I headed off to Morogoro for Peace Corps Training. All of the 1st year volunteers were there with there counterparts and we had to choose one of three tracts (HIV/AIDS, gender development/female empowerment, or environmental education). We chose HIV/AIDS as it tied in really well to what we'd been trying to do with the school's Peer Leader Group. A lot of it was information we'd already been taught numerous times, but the biology was really interesting as was the sessions on mother to child transmissions, which is a big concern here because of the combine affects of malnutrition and children being breast fed for too long. I came away from the conference with lots of ideas and a new interest to get involved with things beyond the classroom.

From the conference I took off for about a week with a bunch of other volunteers. That was an awesome break from everything with the added treat of Pizza and Ice cream! I actually think I ate that everyday I was there. I have definitely been missing dairy products. One of the great things about Dar too is our membership to the American Club, where we can get away from everything for a few hours swimming in the pool or watching movies. It's definitely a good thing Dar's three days journey from my site though, which means one visit every six months or so, otherwise I would be too tempted by all of that worldliness.

From Dar I got the 3 day long train ride to Mwanza with Kim, our PCVL, and Natalia and Kelly, two other PCV's. This was an awesome way to travel across the country, literally. The changes in terrain were amazing. Day 1 we traveled out of the mountains and through the rain forest. Day 2 we went through the high desert of Dodoma and Day 3 we clambored through these huge rock formations into Mwanza and Lake Victoria.

You can buy literally anything you want while sitting on a bus or train in Tanzania. Teenagers (Not in school mind you) are selling all kinds of food such as corn on the cob, cookies, hard boiled eggs, fruit, dried fish, samosas(like egg rolls somehow), fried chicken/meat, any kind of nuts you can think of, water and juices just to name a few. Oh yes chai(tea) and chapati(a breakfast sweet tortilla thing) too. Forgot your toothbrush? No problem, Soap? Toothpaste? A lock for your bag? How about a lock for your door? (No kidding - these are really fancy heavy duty french locks) Forgot to pack completely? We can outfit you with clothes while you relax (haha) in your seat - literally. I used to get annoyed with everything being shoved in my face every time the bus stopped, but now I actually look forward to it if I'm hungry, or make a joke out of it (telling them thanks for the zawadi (Gift).

It's scary how many people there are trying to sell you stuff though. All of those kids not in school makes me shudder, but also sheds some light into the entire situation. Parents send their kids to the bus stand to try and make $1.50 instead of spending $2- on sending them to school. You would think the benefits of education would outweigh the quick buck now, but because getting into even secondary school is so competitive it really isn't. Something like 1% of all students who enter primary school even get a chance to go to any school after secondary school, and only 2% of that 1% will be going to college. The odds are really discouraging. Also, there is a huge number of kids who are been orphaned by AIDS, have no one to live with - let alone help them to pay their school fees.

During all of my travelling I noticed for the first time how different the Deep South is from the rest of the country. There were little things like transportation running smoothly and on tarmac roads, and not cramming people into the aisles, and then bigger things like the disparity of wealth. I guess that the smaller things were actually a reflection of people just having more money in general. Don't get me wrong the entire country is poor, but most of the country really seems quite progressive to me after being in the south. The funny thing is I found myself missing the so-called backwardness of the south - I think the people make up for the lack of luxuries. Mtwara and Lindi regions have suffered drought this year which makes things even tougher though. We'll just have to see how it goes.

Something else I noticed about the lake region in general is that more females seem to be doing jobs done by boys or young men down here, like sewing clothes, selling things at the bus stand and running dukas (shops). I'm not certain what it all means but it sure was interesting to note.

After spending a few days in Mwanza town, the second biggest city in the country, which is so green and beautiful; Joe, the volunteer from Enbeckenyera in the deep south, and I traveled up to Musoma, to see Nick another PCV. Musoma is also right on Lake Victoria, beautifully green and surrounded by huge boulders. We went out to the Nyrere Museum there on day. Nyrere, Tanzania's first president is from a village 40km from there and they've put together a neat little museum. One of his sons still lives in his house, which was built right into the huge boulders, and as he was a friend of Nick's friend, Chacha we got to go inside and peruse his library. It actually was a bit strange and I felt a bit invasive, but it was also interesting.

After that, I went back to the middle of the country to Iringa to visit my friend Martha. Talk about a change of climate - it was so cold there that I had to wear two sweatshirts and sleep with two blankets. I thought Africa was supposed to be hot!! Iringa is a fun town though. You can even get milk and chocolate there! Martha's boyfriend is Kenyan, which led to interesting conversations about Kenya, Tanzania, and world politics. Martha was the person I got the closest to during training and if I hadn't had to leave to meet the guys to climb Kilimanjaro after four days, I probably would have stayed longer. The 2nd through the 7th of July I climbed Kilimanjaro with five guys from Peace Corps. and one of the guys friends from the U.S. I was a little nervous at first about being able to keep up with all of them, but it didn't really turn out to be a problem till the last hour or two of the climb. Except for the first day, the guide made us go really slowly to help adjust for the altitude. Day one we walked 18 kilometers through the rain-forest. We were luckier than most as we didn't get rained on at all. It sure was muddy though. You'll see the pictures.

Day two consisted of an easy five hours rising 980 meters or so higher that we camped the day before to sleep above the clouds. That was when we got our first real views of the mountain, and also met a PCV from Kenya on vacation with his younger brother. They actually ended up hiking with us for most of the rest of the week. What was awesome as well was that evening at camp we had our first views of Mt. Meru, the third highest in Tanzania, fifth in Africa. At the base of Mt. Meru is Arusha where I had my training.

Day three we woke up and hiked up to a height of 4700 meters, where we had lunch and did some rock climbing. We got some awesome views of Arrow Glacier when we did that (again it will make sense when you see the pictures), and then hiked down to 3900 meters where we camped for the night.

Day four was the beginning of the longest feeling day I can ever really remember. We hiked most of the day across scree, which wasn't too bad as we weren't really attempting to gain any altitude, and then climbed up and around the mountain. Actually most of day three and four were spent traveling around to the other side of the side of Kili. We hiked for about six hours that day and attempted to go to bed after an early dinner at about six or seven p.m. It was so cold though that our normal method of heating up the tents by piling the seven of us into one tent to play cards before splitting up, didn't work and we ended up doubling and tripling up. I think I finally fell asleep around eight p.m. only to be woken up at eleven p.m. We piled on every layer of clothing we had and took of on our final ascent. On the summit day, you start at midnight then hike for six hours by flashlight for two reasons - 1. So you can actually walk on the scree which is frozen at this point and 2. So you can reach the summit as close to sunrise as possible and can see the sun rising over Gillman's point. Even though I was dog tired at this time, I could totally appreciate the most beautiful sunrise I have ever seen, at 6:30 that morning.

Those six hours on the scree were not a lot of fun though. Talking about it with the guys afterwards, we all decided we were better off not having been able to see the top and realize how far we actually had not gone in each hour we stopped to check our watches. Our Kenyan friends joined/caught up with us at about 3 a.m. singing and high-spirited, and I really do think that if any of the guys had the energy they would have strangled them. We were really cold and tired but determined. I was also really proud of myself for keeping up with the boys till this point.

I really got frustrated with myself though when at about 4:30 a.m. fatigue started to set in and that slowed me down from the guys - not altitude sickness. I actually didn't get altitude sickness at all, beyond headaches till the way back down. So at this point, I slowed down behind the guys, and two of the guides fell back with me. I think they were worried I wasn't going to make it as one of them tried to take my poles and push me up. I I yelled at him ( in Swahili thank-you) to leave me alone and that I would make it, just give me time, he got a big tip for putting up with that. At this point the boys had passed another group ahead of us with a girl who was collapsing, saying she couldn't go any further - somehow they thought that was me. But it wasn't - at about 5:30 a.m. I caught up with the boys at Stella's Point.

The last part was supposed to be 45 minutes up to Uhuru Peak, but it ended up being a little more than an hour. During this last bit was THE most beautiful sunrise I have ever seen. One of the guys, Charlie, stayed back with me and we arrived about 15 minutes after the rest. We took pictures at the top, but didn't stay up there too long because of the cold. It took me 3 hours to get down the hill (We half ran, half skied down the scree), but it felt much longer as this was when I actually ended up getting sick. We arrived back to camp around 10-10:30 and were able to rest/sleep for about an hour and half, eat lunch and at 1p.m. we took off again down the mountain to our new camp for the night three hours later.

Day 6 was easy, after an awesome night's rest we hiked two and half more hours down the mountain to meet our car. We did get rained on through this part of the rain forest though, which made us even happier that hadn't happened on the way up.

I can't wait to show you guys all the pictures. I definitely could have been in better shape though, but I feel good about doing it.

After the Kili climb, the week hanging out at the American club in Dar was great just to relax. Now I'm back at site and really excited about teaching again. The girls seem glad to see me too.

Love to you all,

Jessica

P.S. My new cell phone number is: 011-255-748-488-691. Masasi now has cell phone service, and I go there about every other weekend for shopping.