Morogoro, our home for the next 10 weeks

After 6 nights in Dar, we got on a big bus which was crammed to the gills with ourselves and luggage.   I had a seat, but it was narrow, and my seatmate Doug from Seattle needed part of it, so I sat for most of the time on a duffel which was stacked with many like it in the aisles.  As we headed west, it got higher and cooler, until at last in Morogoro,  the town where we are to stay for the next 2 months, it was like Hawaii, with tall, sculptured hills topped by coconut palms and misty views down green valleys.  The dirt is red, just like Kauai.  The mosquitos here are quite large, the size of flies.  I am not looking forward to seeing the other insects on offer.  And I am not missing a single dose of Mefloquil,  even if it makes me schizophrenic.

 

CBT

CBT stands for Community Based Training.  We are PCT’s (Peace Corps Trainees), and not really PCV’s (Peace Corps Volunteers),  yet.   In Morogoro, the whole group meets and has classes at the Christian Center for Women located on the edge of town.  It is a pleasant compound  with offices, a big Hall (which doubles as the Sanctuary, I think),  and dormitories.  But we don’t  live there.  No, the model is to have us stay with families in town,  as part of a small group of PCT’s , all of whom are staying nearby.  My group consists of all the ‘old people’ in the larger group.  That is, a couple from Florida, a retired teacher from Seattle, a former librarian from LA, and me.  We are the few, the proud, the Seniors.  We work hard to have fun, keep up and, in my case, not seem too didactic.  Naturally, I am a little concerned about being grouped this way, as I think it sends a signal, but I trust that the PC knows what they’re doing.  And, we are closet to the CCT Center and can walk there, which is nice.   I’m very glad to stay off the main roads and the dala dala’s (small buses).  One of our younger members had his pocket picked of his wallet with all his cash, his ATM card  and ID’s on the dala dala the first morning.

Be Safe

As I have said earlier, we get a lot of ‘Be Safe’.  This falls into two categories:  Be Safe from crime and road accidents, and Be Safe from diseases that can kill you or at the very least get you separated from service.  This morning we learned that 1 in 5 of us will be the victim of crime while in the service, which includes petty theft like having your pocket picked or your purse snatched, and all the way up to murder (very rare).   The Peace Corps experience has taught our trainers that the best way to avoid crime is :  don’t be a target.  Know the language, dress down, avoid dangerous situations, and above all, don’t have anything with you that you can’t afford to lose.  Poke your money way down and into separate pockets, conceal your camera, don’t carry your laptop around and use it at the Internet Café.  At  home, lock up, lock up, lock up, and always keep your neighbors on your side, which circles back to knowing the language.  The distilled wisdom seems to be that crime is mostly opportunistic where we are, and we mustn’t appear to make crime pay for our much poorer HCN’s (Host Country Nationals).

In order to avoid road accidents, we have to take safe transportation (safi transportation, in Kiswahili), and not go in private cars or in unsafe buses or lorries on the roads.  The roads are dangerous because of all the things that can go wrong due to poor design and maintenance,  cars and trucks which  go too fast and are poorly maintained, and apparently drunk driving which is endemic, at least at night.

Alcohol has a lot to do with Not Being Safe due to crime and accidents of course.

And also of course, if you are in an accident, emergency help can be hours away or non-existent.

Diseases include all those that you don’t get in America.  Typhoid, Hep’s A-F  (just kidding, there’s only A, B and C.)  Polio, rabies, malaria and meningitis.  Everyday can be a shots day in the Peace Corps, and every day IS a day to take your anti-malarials.  Water quality is a huge deal because dirty water can make you have several of the nastiest  diseases and all of the unpleasant lesser ones, which cause diarrhea, horrible diarrhea, chronic diarrhea, and vomiting.  For some reason, a diagnosis of dysentery is not given in the PC, possibly because it needs a specific  bacterial or amoebic finding, and the PCMD’s will just  treat the symptom with an escalating level of intervention (Pepto-Bismol to evacuation).   We are told to treat, boil, and filter our water,  and two out of three together is best.  The PC has provided us with a nifty ceramic filter and a contraption made from two 5-gallon paint buckets.  Just  boil water and pour thru the filter and your worries will be over, unless you eat at the restaurant with dirty water ,that is, travel, or go to a friend’s house where the water is dirty, and eat there.  Peel food, wash with bleach treated water, boil everything and cook everything hot, hot, hot to kill germs.  I have not had any problems, yet, but I’m just a beginner, and I do have a pepper belly of long standing.

Then there’s STD’s, which is not something I’m particularly worried about, although I do remember what it was like to be 25, and so can see the point of all the gory pictures of pustules, abscesses, and poor runny genitalia. Plus, when I was 25, HIV/Aids had not come to America and the world. It’s real now, and everybody is on warning.  We have at least a dozen condoms in our Med Kit, and HIV PEP (Post Exposure Prophylaxis) is available in Dar and the outlying PC medical centers (only don’t ask for it twice!)

Food

Tanzania is an agrarian society and the food is fresh, available and of limited variety.  The diet is, generally, high carb, high fat, low protein and somewhat low bulk.  Staples are white rice, prepared with lots of oil and sometimes as pilaf, peas, onions, tomatoes, sweet peppers,  greens,  cabbage, maize flour and fruit, mostly the peeled kind, watermelon, oranges, papaya and avocados.  For protein there’s beef, goat, chicken, and beans.   A typical meal is  rice or umgali, a maize flour polenta,  with a sauce made of a few cuts of beef, tomatoes, onions, etc., a cole slaw-type salad made with onions and cabbage, cut up fruit and perhaps stewed greens.   Greens is a ‘mess of greens’ as we would say in the South, made by sautéing in oil with onions, garlic, and sometimes other vegies,  and then cooking to tender with a little hot water.  Barbequed or fried chicken is another meat staple.  The diet doesn’t seem to feature many spices, a few hot peppers and the like, and anything spicey is called Indian food, or maybe Chinese food.   The regular cuisine has few herbs, no turmeric, oregano, etc., and can be VERY salty.  Mama Flora, my homestay host, is an excellent cook and we enjoy very satisfying meals.  But I can see why some PCV’s yearn for sushi, or Chinese food, or a McDonald’s  hamburger.  There is just not a lot of variety in the day-to-day menu.

We eat at a round table with a lazy susan (shades of Casa Linda).  We use forks and soup spoons.  This may or may not be the norm, as we were told that many families eat Arab-style, on the floor and with their hands.  Don’t use the left hand!  I’m just as happy not trying to scoop up a little stew with a ball of umgali.

Outings and shopping

Beer is served in heavy old-fashioned  bottles, 16 oz., and cold, which is nice.  It costs about a dollar and a quarterr, which is a lot in TZ.   I have enjoyed Kilimanjaro Beer, and Safari Beer.  Both are hoppy,  not sweet, and have a higher alcohol content than American beer. Thus, my self-imposed limit is 2 beers.  One beer not enough, 2 too many, is my drinking motto. There are many little cantinas around, and after school there will always be a PCT or 3 congregated at the nearby ones.  Often associated with a bar is a little hot food stand that serves chipsi or other snacks, but it seems to be separate operation from the bar itself.

We were given a chance to go out on our own after about 5 days.  My friend Siobhan and I took a dala dala into town.  A dala dala is a ‘people mover’, the size of a van.  There is a saying, which is true, that in Tanzania (maybe all of Africa, I don’t know) there is always room for one more person on a dala dala.  This was certainly true on Sunday;  on my ride, part of the time I was standing crucified style with my arms spread to brace myself  against the  windows of the vehicle, with my head bent up against the roof.  Surrounding me at body touching distance were my fellow passengers, and there were perhaps  30 people in a van built for 15.  Think the clown car at the circus, or the teenagers in the phone booth.  I was looking down at my purse without being able to get to it,  and if a pickpocket had been next to me, I could have seen his hand slip in there.  But nobody did, and besides, on good advice I had my money in my bra, and at best he would have gotten my water bottle and comb.

Stores tend to be small and specialized.  They are called Dukas.  To go to the store is to ana dukini.  Shoes here,  small electronics  there, a store for paper supplies and a store for kitchenwares.  The floor space seems exceedingly small and the place is crammed with stuff, but it is not accessible, it's behind a counter and sometimes behind a metal grate, so you have to ask for everything and have it handed to you.  The ‘supermarkets’ are scarcely bigger than a 7-11 at home, though they feature a variety not found in other stores.  I found Pears Soap, which made me very happy, and American deodorant and toothpaste.  There are many many food vendors who set up on the curbs with a bushel or less of 1 or two kinds of produce.  Yams and tomatoes here, onions and garlic there.  There are many many  cooked food vendors, too, offering barbequed corn, chicken, juice,  beef on a stick, chapatti, etc.  All this results in busy, if not teeming, streets.  People like to be out and about and talking with their neighbors.  They don’t sit at home by themselves.  I haven’t seen many people making things while they sell, which I have done in other countries.  In fact, so far I haven’t seen much for sale that is hand-made or merely decorative, except for kanga.  But I haven’t been out much except for this time.

There is also a large central market called a Sokoni, but I haven't been there yet.

Shule  (School)

We go to school 6 days a week from 8 to 5 with 2, 15-minute breaks and an hour for lunch.  Subjects are Be Safe, Getting Along in the Culture, How to Teach in Tanzania and language.  The language is a challenge:  The Peace Corps wants us to be able to travel, shop and ‘get along’ culturally in Kiswahili  when we go to our permanent sites in August.  This means the pace of learning is pretty fast, especially for me whose retention is not what it used to be.   It’s not a real complicated language, at least in comparison to English, with its 3 exceptions to every rule and heavy idiomatic use.  And nouns are not declined.  But verbs follow a necessisarily complicated conjugation form.  The nouns and pronouns are not gender-separated, which has an interesting and sometimes challenging side effect in the native Kiswahili speakers who teach us in English:  you never quite know to whom or what they are referring because they use he and she indiscriminately, and almost never the pronoun ‘it’.  

Another problem with me, and with others who came to Tanzania already knowing another language, is that my brain refuses to divulge the Kiswahili word after the English one as I try to speak, even if I have studied and know it (at that time, retention IS a problem).  It always comes up with the Spanish one first.  This is annoying, but I have never spoken so much Spanish in my head.  It’s like my old brain is saying, “You can have 2 languages in here, but not three.  For now I’m choosing that you have  English and Spanish.”   But with much effort I can pry out a short declarative Kiswahili sentence in the present tense if given enough time and encouragement.

The main campus itself is nestled under a small mountain with the pleasing name of Uluguru. All the land on this side of Morogoro sweeps gently up to the foothills of this mountain, and are planted, mostly in corn. There is chai and lunch served everyday pretty much on a schedule, and  the ladies room features a toilet.  There is filtered water readily available, and chickens peck about everywhere.  We saw a baboon on campus yesterday, my first African wildlife.
We also have break out days, and go to shule for language training  just with our CBT mates in the front yard of a house in our neighborhood, Kola Hill.   I think the original plan was to be in a small room that fronts on the road running in front of the house, there are 2, and the other is manned by a guy who cleans and repairs shoes.  (More on the commercial nature of home life in another post).  But the little room was too  hot and we elected to move outside into the yard.  It's buggy, and about once a day 1 of us is birdcrapped on by the big ravens/crows that populate the trees above.  But I absolutely love our language trainer, and after a week or with him in a small group am getting into the study of a new language, if not the actual speaking or reading of it. 

Shule will go on for a few more weeks, then we will begin practice teaching in the Kola HIll Secondary School across the road.