July 1, 2010


Yesterday I said my goodbyes to my family and boarded the plane for Tanzania. I had three legs in my flight: Omaha-Newark-Amsterdam-Dar es Saalam. All flights were pleasant and I enjoyed talking to the interesting people I sat next to. On the Omaha-Newark flight, I got a free flash drive and company pen from a Newark business man. From Newark to Amsterdam I sat next to two Americans, a middle aged man who works with a NGO (nonprofit government organization) and the other, a college student on her way to Italy for a one month study abroad program. The last stretch of my flight I conversed with a US government international education specialist, and she was actually on her way to my region, Mtwara. It was quite a coincidence that we sat right next to each other and had the same exact destination out of all the areas in Tanzania. I helped a little by informing her about life in Mtwara and what to expect. She promised to keep in touch and maybe down the road I might get useful education materials from her to use with my students. The entire flight back took about 34 hrs. Time actually went fast, especially since I spent most of the time sleeping or watching movies that I knew I wouldn’t have the opportunity to see later on.

It was such a different feeling landing in Tanzania for the second time. I didn’t experience the anxiety and homesickness that I did the first time I landed in Tanzania. I knew to expect the thick humidity and the unrelenting pestering of Tanzanian taxi drivers after stepping outside the airport building. Unfortunately my checked luggage got lost somewhere during my flight changes. It’s kinda funny because I just expect these unlucky incidents to happen because I’m in a third world country. I’m never too surprised whenever things get stolen, lost, or broken. Jenny Beth (a Mtwara PCV from my training group) met me at the airport and we stayed at an expats’ (a working American couple living in Tanzania…aka ex patriots) house before going to Morogoro for Community Theatre training. Thankfully my checked luggage arrived the night of July 4, right before I left Dar es Salaam. JB and I celebrated Independence Day by eating ice cream next to the ocean and watching movies all night. The couple whose house we stayed at actually wasn’t around the entire weekend, so we had the whole place to ourselves. It was a pretty big deal because they had running water, western toilets, electricity, TV, a stove and even a washer and dryer. It was nice that I could slowly adjust back to Tanzania by spending time in a semi-American home.

July 8, 2010

Community theatre training here in Morogoro is going well. We performed two skits and a choir song for a girls’ secondary school nearby. Both skits were about young girls being pressured to have relations with older males, even teachers, in order to get tuition money or material things: new clothes, cell phones, etc. It’s very common for 13-15 year old girls to become pregnant because they don’t have the confidence in themselves to say “no” to male authority figures, or men in general. Once girls become pregnant, they are banned from school. Very seldom do these girls get the chance to continue with their studies later on. Other girls choose to abort their baby, although it’s extremely risky due to poor medical practices and many girls suffer from the psychological consequences long after an abortion. So the skits and song we performed focused on resisting pressure to have sex at a young age, and instead focus on their studies in order to secure a better life by receiving an education.

July 11, 2010

After one year of being in this country, it’s interesting to hear the different viewpoints from my Peace Corps peers about their role as PCVs. One of the biggest struggles Peace Corps volunteers face is finding purpose in the work we do because of the amount of time, effort, and sacrifices we make in order to live in a completely different culture and lifestyle. Often times we have to remind ourselves that two out of the three Peace Corps goals are about learning and sharing American culture with Tanzanians and Tanzanian culture with Americans. Before I left America, I remember reading somewhere in a Peace Corps article that it’s important for volunteers to keep their expectations low and their hopes high. I also heard from other volunteers that I shouldn’t be too hard on myself if I struggle to make even a dent in improving village life, or if projects don’t turn out as planned. It’s almost impossible for change to occur in a two year term when villagers have been practicing methods for decades, even centuries. Also many villagers feel they can’t afford the risk of trying a new method because they have nothing to fall back on if the new method fails. Sometimes I worry foreigners and volunteers are doing more harm than good because we expect what worked for our country to work the same in Tanzania. It’s also a poor choice when money gets handed to villagers. Often time money gets into the hands of the wrong people, or villagers don’t feel pride in what they were given if they didn’t have to contribute anything to earn it. Either way, money is often mishandled and it doesn’t go where originally designated.

A few volunteers and I spent one evening chatting about some of the challenges we faced and interesting observations about our experience so far as PCVs.

1) The happiest volunteers seem to be those who focus on making friends with the villagers and just learning and experiencing as much as possible in the village. The most stressed out volunteers are those who take on too many projects and try to force change in the village. Actually, sometimes I wonder how much “change” really is necessary to make Tanzania better. Of course poverty is not good, and a lot of problems stem from this…food shortage, lack of medical facilities, no school funding, unsanitary living conditions, etc. However, I don’t think being a highly developed country such as the USA is perfect either even though we’re so advanced. America has its own set of problems…as will any country. Tanzania has so much potential, and a lot of great resources. It just makes me sad to see how much it has changed to become more like the western world and how much of its own culture is being lost: language, customs, traditions, and art (dress, dance & music). It’s crazy to think that I might be part of the last generation to hear the Makonde people (the tribe in my region) speak their native tongue. Already a lot of languages have been lost, and little or nothing is documented on these languages.

2) We also discussed Tanzanian men. It’s hard to get over the possibility that most Tanzanian men are interested in us only because they believe we have money (which we probably do compared to them) and we’re a way for them to get into America. Just being lighter skinned makes any white woman here automatically attractive. Poverty brings people down to a pretty low level, the survival level. Therefore it’s difficult to know if we can completely trust a village man or woman here because they most likely want something out of a volunteer; especially money for clothing, school fees, medicine, etc.

3) Another big challenge living in a foreign country is failing to be completely understood by the natives, specifically my personality and who I really am. Because of the language barrier, and Tanzanians’ different outlook on life, many volunteers don’t feel like Tanzanians will ever be able to see who we are on the inside. It’s interesting because the volunteers who struggled to fit in with America’s culture, actually do really well in Tanzania. That’s because quite a few people aren’t used to feeling so accepted nor do they ever receive the amount of attention they do living here in TZ. Any foreigners, especially white people, automatically get attention because of their different appearance and the association of white skin and money. There are two things that you have to do to make Tanzanians like you. 1) Speak Swahili and local tribal language. It doesn’t really matter much about your personality. If you speak their language, and enjoy being loud and open with your thoughts and feelings, then they’ll love you. 2) Wear Tanzanian clothes and practice what the villagers do…farming, laundry by hand, cooking, etc. It baffles them that Americans can actually do manual work. Anyway, neither of those things hit the core of who I am. It’s a pretty shallow view of what Tanzanians see in me. I suppose if I stayed long enough I might be better able to express myself, but my color will always be the first thing they see and use to label me. For sure it’s definitely a good experience to feel what it’s like to be a minority. I also realize how nice it is to know I have a place where I belong, America.