So it is: First Report

What a relief to have passed the one-week mark of being at my site, and not be evacuated!  It has been a refreshingly uneventful introduction to my new village.  For whatever reason, I did not bring as many things to my site as I should have.  I have a generously sized house with 3 rooms, but only enough things to fill ½ of one room.  My first two days were spent evicting the spider and dust bunny squatters—never before had I mopped and swept walls.  I also mopped the floor twice but it still doesn’t shine.  Since I didn’t have any charcoal for my stove, let alone any matches, my first night’s dinner was peanut M&M’s.  Finally on my own without Mama Halima, I felt like one of those poor freshman who discovers they don’t actually know how to take care of themselves in the least, they helplessly just need a mom to feed, water and clean them.  The fact that the peanut M&Ms were sent to me from my dear real mom might have underscored this feeling.  Don’t worry, I promptly got charcoal and matches the next day, and have since been managing, in my own way, to take care of myself.

My village is nestled into some low mountains Northeast of the city of Dodoma.  In a breathtaking country like Tanzania, I’m sure there are more beautiful sites than mine, but I sure do think my village is pretty.  There is a spring that is apparently full of water dependably, a blessing that is unusual for this region—many other villages have to dig in empty streambeds to get murky water.  There is also a little stream (might be better called a glade? It doesn’t really move…) that I have to cross every day to go to the village, and I am thankful for the well-constructed footbridge that (for the most part) keeps me from getting worms in my feet.  My house is part of the school’s compound, so my neighbors are primary school teachers and their families.  A little further up the road is a Catholic missionary, where several sisters and two priests live, preach, and run a health dispensary.  Behind my house sits the back of a mountain and just a wall of forest.  One of the sisters, while walking me to my house after a visit, gave me a friendly warning to be aware of the leopard that lives in those woods.   She insisted that it’s much more aggressive than a cheetah or lion (someone want to google it and prove this nun wrong?) I don’t think she realized how much she completely freaked me out with that friendly warning.  Now I both really want to see it and hope I never ever ever see it. 

The whole village actually seems to have undergone a transformation since my arrival because that is also when the rains started.  Everything is green and vibrant, all the trees have leafed out, and the fields are a rich rusty brown with moisture.  The predominant tribe here is Gogo, and some of the villagers have given me the name Mwamvula, which means “rain” in Kigogo.  I find it delightfully cheesy.  There are also Maasai and Sandawe tribes here, but they haven’t given me any Kimaasai or Kisandawe names yet. 

And beekeepers!  Many beekeepers!  There is a women’s group, as well as another coed group.  All around the village there are towering baobob and acacia trees with their expansive domes of foliage.  The beekeepers climb these trees to hang hollowed out logs up on the branches, which the bees eventually move into.  The bigger trees have several of these bee cartridges in it, well-disguised amongst the branches.  The beekeepers only seem to visit their hives when they are ready to harvest honey, and then they seem to cut out everything including the brood, basically evicting the bees.  I would really like to see this, because I have a hard time imagining destroying a hive this way.  The hollowed-out log design in itself makes it difficult to access the hive without destroying it.  These are all things that I am going to try to develop—increased knowledge about the biology of the bee, a shift towards hive maintenance instead of hive robbing, which probably means a shift towards top bar hives, all of which will result in increased honey production and more sustainable beekeeping practices.  I haven’t done any beekeeping here yet, though, this is all what I have gathered from talking to people.  Once I do get to work with the bees, I will have a much clearer idea of the situation. 

The beekeeping should be my primary focus for work, but I will also start teaching an environment class at the secondary school when the term begins in mid January.  I will teach mainly about deforestation, permagardening, soil and water conservation.  The role of an Environment Peace Corps Volunteer is a very fluid one…I don’t technically have any obligations, so for some people, I think it is easy to feel aimless.  I can decide what I want to do, how I want to spend my days, so I will only be as productive as the projects I line up and carry through.  Right now my only job is to make an assessment of the village, get awesome at Kiswahili and integrate into my new community, and the projects will come after I have accomplished these things to at least some degree.

To sign off with: my first day, as I was cleaning my house and some of my bags had been partially unpacked, my two little neighbors, 3 and 6 years old came over to see who their new neighbor was. They were fascinated by the few objects that I had out: a tin box with a Victorian painting on it, a tape player, my shampoo… I knew what a situation like this would bring but I didn’t want to kick these kids out right away when I was just sweeping.  Well they wanted to touch and play with everything and it was infuriating because I would be sweeping and turn to find that they had spilled my shampoo trying to figure out what it was.  I’d yell at them, but it went on--they unzipped a bag, pulled things out, saying what’s this? They picked up the toilet paper and asked, “what’s this?” I said it’s paper for the toilet.   They were shocked, you do what with it in the toilet?? (Tanzanians, like a lot of people in the world, use their left hand and water for their toilet needs)  I got cross with them, “NO! DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING! THESE ARE NOT FOR PLAYING.”  They would look really sorry, but then inevitably they’d continue their inspections once their curiosity got the better of them once again.  I was sweeping the walls when I heard a gasp behind me, and turned to see the little 3-year-old, horrified, holding a pair of my underwear.  She quickly dropped it and they stopped looking through my stuff.