Ramblings about Training

My time in Tanzania seems to have been flying by lately. I have to take my malaria medication once a week, which makes keeping track of how long I’ve been in country conveniently simple. The first two weeks or so of training it seemed that Mef day (also known as Wednesday for those of you who don’t take a brand of medication with a long confusing name that gets shortened to Mef once a week on Wednesdays like I do) or that post-Mef days (also known as Thursday and Friday, but more awesome cause it means that us trainees get to swap ridiculous stories of extremely vivid mef-induced dreams) would never come. But now it seems that my boxes of pills just fly by. And indeed, my training is almost over. This week was my last of a month of internship teaching at a local secondary school. The school had a little farewell assembly yesterday which was really nice. And apparently a month is long enough to get attached to a group of students, cause even though I was only teaching three days a week I’m definitely going to miss some of them.

And while I’m being all mushy, I might as well mention my host family – who I’ve gotten really attached to. I’ve been staying with a family that consists of a mom and dad, an eleven year old sister (Esta) and an eight year old brother (Paulo). They’re good people. Like, good in just about any way I can think of that the term ‘good’ is applicable. And now that I’ve got enough Swahili down to actually be able to understand what they’re saying, I’ve realized that they’re also absolutely hilarious. And it’s such a natural way of learning about the culture that it almost barely even feels foreign. Like I remember my last couple days in the US, I had a hard time (read: completely stressed and over-analyzed) trying to figure out what type of clothing I should pack knowing that I was going to a country that was both very hot and very conservative. Now, my standard is just to ask myself if my host brother is going to tease me, or if my host mama is going to raise an eyebrow if I leave the house wearing this. Infinitely easier for me and far more accurate. I feel very lucky to have been placed in a homestay where I feel so comfortable.

So yes, training has been overall busy but enjoyable. And now it’s almost done. This Sunday I’ll travel to the northeast corner of the country for ‘shadow’ – basically I stay with a current volunteer at their site for a week to see how things get done for real. I’m pretty excited. Then once I get back, I’m only at my homestay for one more week. After that, I’ll spend a couple days in Dar before our swearing ceremony, which is when I officially become a Peace Corps volunteer (right now, I’m just at lowly ‘trainee’ status). And then after swearing in I’ll head off to my site. For the next two years - eek!

Ok, this will have to suffice for now. There’s always so much that I want to tell you guys about, and so little time. Oh, let me give you a Swahili word (I think I’m gonna try and do one per blog entry – thoughts?) and then wrap this up. Shagala bagala means messy or untidy and is useful for describing both states of mind as well as our kitchen after the chickens complete their morning scramble through it on their way to last night’s food scraps. On an only slightly related note, we ate the rooster that was waking me up every morning. He was delicious (sorry veggie friends, but a girl needs her beauty sleep).

Oh, and for those of you who doubted that I’m actually in Africa and are secretly harboring suspicions that I’ve just decided to be extremely anti-social for two years, well here’s a picture of lions. One’s eating a giraffe they just killed while the other one guards their meal from mischievous American onlookers. Really guys, Africa.

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“Speak to me in foreign tongues, and share your secrets one by one”