For Plato, shadows of things were what we see in the world all around us, instead of the real things themselves. For Winnie the Pooh, a shadow was a close friend who never left your side. And for Peter Pan, a shadow was a pesky rebel who was constantly trying to escape to freedom. In Peace Corps lingo, a shadow might be considered all of the above.
Last week was shadow week, during which all of us Peace Corps trainees travelled to different parts of the country to stay with a current volunteer for a week. I shadowed a volunteer in the Tanga region, which is the north-east corner of the country. Me and one other trainee (we go two by two, like Noah’s ark), stayed at the volunteer’s house which was right next to the school where she teaches.
The idea behind shadow week is that one of the best ways to prepare to be a volunteer is spending time with a real volunteer and seeing what it’s really like. And I think it definitely accomplished that. I found out that my Swahili is good enough / random strangers are nice enough that using the Tanzanian transport system for long distances (as opposed to being shuttled about in PC vehicles) isn’t too scary. I got to see her teach a math class of 80 form three students (which translates to roughly junior year of high school) in a combo of Swahili and English. Several times she had to stop because the sound of the rain on the tin roof (it’s winter here) drowned out her voice. And several more times she had to pause to chase a goat out of her classroom who apparently really felt the need to learn about geometric sequences.
Monday August 8th was a holiday here - nane nane, which means eight eight. As far as I can tell, the government just went ‘Wow, that’s a cool date, let’s make it a holiday. We’ll celebrate labor or something’. We also got July 7th off for saba saba, which means (you guessed it) seven seven. It doesn’t happen every month…though I wouldn’t complain if it did. So since there was no school, we spent the entire day in the volunteer’s banking town, which is just the closest town that’s big enough to have necessities like a bank and a post office. We did some shopping, and it was really nice to just walk around a new town Oh, and we went to the spice market, which was amazing. Picture a maze of little stalls, each with a make-shift table covered in large piles of different colored spices emitting every fragrance imaginable. And the vendors...about a third of them are shouting the prices for their goods in frenzied Swahili approximately twelve times the normal speaking rate, about a third of them are haggling with customers or raking their spice piles to coax their fragrances out a bit stronger, and about a third of them have just succumbed to the afternoon heat and are dozing on hammocks or empty spice sacks. All in all, pretty cool.
So Monday we spent in town, and Tuesday through Thursday we spent in the village observing classes, watching Seinfeld, supervising the weekly rag-tag bunch of kids that comprises the coloring group (which rivaled Seinfeld in terms of entertainment value), visiting with random villagers who all seemed to want to feed me, and soaking in the stunning surrounding scenery.
Then Friday after school, we headed into the city of Tanga, which is right on the coast and has the accompanying laid-back feel of so many coastal cities. We had some amazing Indian food at this cute little restaurant that was literally built on a dock overlooking the Indian Ocean. We had to kill some time before we could order food (it's Ramadan right now, and many restaurants won't start taking orders until after sundown), so we just ordered a couple of beers, chatted and watched the sunset. Definitely a night for the win category. The next day, we walked around the city for a bit in the morning, had a great breakfast of just fresh tropical fruits, and then headed to the beach for the afternoon. The water was unbelievably warm and super clear. After a delicious picnic lunch on the beach, I taught some impromptu swim lessons to a couple of local girls in broken Swahili. We all giggled plenty at the roundabout way I had to say things in order to express my directions, but it still felt good. There’s something about swimming in the ocean that’s just both incredibly invigorating and relaxing at the same time. And it was especially great to stock up on all those good ocean-y vibes, since the next day we had to make the trip back to Morogoro and the intensity of training. The bus ride was only five hours (short by Tanzanian standards - one of the shortest ones of my training group) but with all the chaos that comes with the trip…well, let’s just say that I slept well that night.
Shadow was a great opportunity to get an idea of what my life will be like once I get to site (in less than two weeks!), while still trying to keep in mind that every site is unique and that my experience at mine will be in large part whatever I make it. Not quite the real thing, but close. It also let me really solidify friendships with a couple of other volunteers and trainees, which was especially cool since they were all people who were really different from me, while getting out of town and getting a chance to see another part of the country. Plus, it was a blast. So did I hit all three of my inspirational characters…I think so.
I had a request for a sunset photo, so here’s one of those from our dinner on the coast.
Oh and a quick note. I love it when you leave me comments. A lot. I will probably love them even more if I know who they are from as so far I’ve gotten lots of anonymous ones, and unfortunately my sleuthing skills stop just short of being able to figure it out on my own. So just add your name after your comment (you can just do it in the same little comment box, you don’t need to create a profile or anything), and double my fun.
Ok, well my final oral Swahili exam is tomorrow so perhaps I should go study for that instead of….oh, let me give you something in Swahili. Let’s up the anty a little and go with a phrase instead of just a word today - ‘ninafitini’ means I am making mischief. Fun, no?
“The beach gives a feeling, an earthy feeling, I believe in the faith that grows”
