Storming the Castle by Night

Some days I just feel like getting under my mosquito net as soon as the sun sets.  This day was one of those days.  I had found another snake in my house, a really small one, but a snake nonetheless, and I don’t trust a single one of them.  I grabbed a stick and killed it myself. Three months ago, I literally ran out of my house screaming.  I am now flaunting this as proof that I am becoming a tough Tanzanian broad.  I still need to work on hoisting a full bucket of water on my head by myself, cooking ugali, working constantly from sunup to sundown with a baby on my back like a real Tanzanian woman…okay so I have quite a ways to go before being tough like a Tanzanian lady, but I am proud of this self defense milestone.  Anyway I found the snake at dusk and at sun down, I was in my net with a book and my stick just in case they work in pairs.   About an hour later, I got a call from a friend and he was outside waiting for me to go beekeeping with him.  At last!  But wait, I said to myself, is my Swahili really still that bad that I didn’t understand that this was the plan for tonight?  No matter, I need to get out of my pajamas and into something to go beekeeping in!  Ah! All my pants are still wet from doing laundry!  Spandex and skirt will have to do. 

Off we went into the night with about four vijana (young people) and flashlights.  When we got to the trees with the beehives, they started a fire and once it made coals, they blew it out so that it would smoke and not give off much light.  One of the vijana climbed a tree to lower a hive and we all turned out our flashlights.  There was the sound of breaking branches (he was climbing a tree in the dark!) and then we could hear when reached the hive because the otherwise silent night filled with the urgent hum of bees.  I took several steps backward.  I was terrified.

Working in the dark, only occasionally using the lamps in short flashes (the bees are attracted to light), they cracked the hollow-log hive open once it hit the ground.  The hum grew even more urgent and again I took several steps backward.  They dragged the two halves just downwind of the smoking coals.  I wasn’t wearing a veil or gloves--hell, I was wearing a skirt!  African honey bees are notoriously aggressive! That’s why beekeepers open the hives at night here, doing this in the daytime is practically unthinkable.  The thought of beekeeping unprotected with these bees...I was resigned to just observe in the dim light from afar.  But after a little while, I mustered up some nerve to go a little closer, then closer, and closer until I was taking out a piece of honey comb with my bare hands.  Soon both my hands were dowsed with honey as I placed comb into the buckets.  The comb was attached in broad stretches across the length of the log.  The honey was concentrated at the periphery and the brood in the center, the same pattern as in any healthy hive.  We basically had to just dig in and grab a chunk of comb and pick all the bees off it, hoping not to get stung.  Chewing on beeswax and licking the dripping honey off my hands, I was feeling very Pooh Bear.

That night we harvested from four hives, and we harvested everything: honey, brood, pollen, keeping the honey separate from the rest.  It was really hard to take part in the destruction of a hive—the brood pattern was perfect and the hive was so healthy, and we just gutted it.  In a stroke of amazing luck, I found the queen on a segment of comb that I was de-beeing.  I called to the vijana and my friend to come see, and the first one to come over started to flick her off—he thought she was just another bee.  When I told them they were looking at the queen, they were amazed.  “I say!” they exclaimed in an adorable Anglicism.  Decades of beekeeping and they had never seen a queen!  They all wanted to hold her, and they asked all sorts of questions about her as she darted around their hands. “How many eggs does she lay? Can she fly? Can she sting? Are all of these bees her babies?”  They took special care to put her some place safe, even though we had just destroyed her hive. 

I can firmly say that that was the last time that I go beekeeping in Africa in a skirt.  Although the spandex blunted many of the stings to my butt and thighs, I definitely learned my lesson.  I was stung two times on my hand, as well, without the buffer of spandex.  For the next two days my right hand was 50% larger than my left!  The sugar high was first to wear off after the adrenaline, then the swelling, but I’m still swooning from my first beekeeping outing in Tanzania.

A few words

The past two months have been very busy!  Last month was IST, In-service Training, Peace Corps-speak for when our training class reunites for two weeks of further technical training.  We learned about grant writing, project design, technical info about malaria, HIV/AIDS, education and etc.  It took place in Morogoro, a beautiful town at the base of a mountain, and it was a busy two weeks that, for better or worse, felt a lot like summer camp.  Returning to my village was a little overwhelming…for one thing now I’m back to only partially being able to express myself in Kiswahili and passing my evenings by lamplight, but also now is when volunteers are supposed to be ready to start projects.  

The first project I’m going to try is a permagardening project at the primary school.  After meeting with the teachers to discuss the benefits of a permagarden project, the teachers were so enthusiastic and supportive that they said, “ok this is great, we’ll start tomorrow.”  Woah woah woah…hang on a second!  My counterpart and I had to rein them in and explain that we all need a little bit of time to prepare and organize the students first.  It was exhilarating that they wanted to run with it, but woah, guys! Pole pole.

The World Food Program provides corn meal, beans and fortified millet porridge to my primary school for free, so the students have food to eat every day, but they don’t get vegetables.  They get calories, but they still lack nutrition.   Also, a few people in my village have said that vegetables just can’t grow in our soil.   I made a demonstration permagarden at my house, and vegetables indeed can grow in our soil.  So the permagarden will teach about nutrition, soil health and vegetable cultivation, and hopefully also demonstrate to others that with a few soil amendments and a bio-intensive garden design, they can grow beautiful vegetables for their families and for sale. 

I am happy to report that bees have moved into both my hives!  I haven’t been into the hives yet to see how they’re doing, but I see them coming and going, way up there in the trees.  Next month we will lower them by the cover of night and get some honey and I can’t wait!   Next month is when the rainy season ends.  The beekeeping schedule here still confuses me, considering it is the opposite to beekeeping in the US or Europe, where we harvest honey when the environment is green.  Here the honey season is when the environment starts to dry up. 

It is interesting to experience a rainy season where the rain has such an obvious impact on every day life.   For the entire month of February it didn’t rain at all.  Many farmers’ corn fell over and was ruined.  It was so sad to see the plants’ leaves start to brown, the pumpkins’ leaves collapsed like a closed umbrella (because after all what use is an umbrella with no rain?)  And when it finally did rain, in March, the farmers were in their fields almost immediately, trying to replant their ruined fields of corn with sunflowers to try and make up for the loss. 

I went to a nearby Gogo village for the Easter holiday with some friends from my village, and I got a new Kigogo name there.  In my village I am “Rain” because I arrived with the rains.  In this other village, I am matika, or “When the corn is yea-high [holding hand to hip-height]” in Kigogo.  I am fascinated by the specificity of certain words that some languages have.  As far as this suburban-raised gal knows, in English, corn is corn from the kernel to when it’s grilled on the cob.  In Kiswahili, there is a word for a fresh coconut that is mostly water and a different word for a coconut that is dried and mostly meat.   A different word for cooked and uncooked rice.  There is a name for each individual type of ant but no word for a generic ant.   And there are many different kinds of ants here.  I have only been able to commit siafu to memory, probably just because those are the ones that bite.  But these differences are becoming more important as I become increasingly conversant in Kiswahili, and as I see that ants of various kinds are just more prominent in every day life--at least one day a week a temporary river of ants courses through my house, each time in a new location.  Similarly, there are many names for aunts as well.  A paternal aunt is shangazi and a maternal aunt is mama mkubwa, also reflecting the environment here in Tanzania.

A picture series in which beehives are hung from trees.

I recently installed my two beehives! And by that I mean I oversaw the installment of my hives.  In order to do this, one must climb a tree, so I enlisted a kijana (youth) to undertake this task for me.  Most beekeepers over 30 enlist a kijana to do the more athletic aspect of beekeeping in Tanzania, but even though I am still in my (now late, ack!) 20's, I get special permission because I am a wimp.  These hives were put up in a tree that is about a 5 minute walk from my house, on the edge of the forest.

The traditional hive--a hollowed out log that will be fastened together. The bees will build "burr" comb (what beekeepers call wild comb) attached to one side of the log.  When it is time to harvest, beekeepers open the hive and cut out all of the comb, brood included.  

Top bar hive.  The sticker says "We should protect forests for our own development" And the picture has a beehive hanging from a tree.

The inside of the top bar hive.  These are just wooden slats.  The bees will build walls of comb on each of these bars.  Harvesting from a hive like this, it is easier to just take honey and leave the brood.  This is the type of hive that I am trying to promote because it is healthier for the bees and it should help increase honey production.

The traditional hive, fastened shut with wire.  There are several holes for potential entrances, the one on the end and a few on the side.  

A kijana  (youth) climbed the tree to install my beehives.  They are installed in trees because there are many critters in the forest who also think that honey is delicious.  Monkeys are known perpetrators, and honey badgers are particularly notorious (for not giving a... : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r7wHMg5Yjg)

Kosma securing the top bar hive to a branch and hoisting it into the tree.

Securing the top bar hive to the tree.

Kosma getting the traditional hive ready to be hoisted up into the tree.

The kijana installing the traditional hive, the top bar hive installed.

So now that my beehives are installed, I just wait for bees to move in.  If you build it, they will come.  Unfortunately, bees are more likely to swarm if there is rain, and we haven't had a good rain in more than a month, so it might take a little while for the bees to move in.  Considering that the hives are installed in a tree and also that African honey bees are notoriously aggressive, this makes performing hive maintenance a bit more of an ordeal.  Which is probably why not a lot of people do perform hive maintenance.  Most beekeepers access their hives only to take honey and only at night.

People often ask me about the Africanized honey bee--the "killer bees."  Africanized bees are a hybrid of European honey bees and bees that are coincidentally from Tanzania that were accidentally released in Brazil.  They are more aggressive than African bees, but African bees are still very aggressive.  In fact, sadly, a man was reportedly killed by bees in Tanzania just last month. 

The big months for harvesting honey begin next month until August.  There will be more pictures and more news soon hopefully, once the girls find their way over to their new homes.

Chamwino Running Club and Bad Cats

As I have mentioned before, house visits make up most of my days of late, and there are two customs relating to the house visit that I find particularly charming: pokea and sindikiza.  To pokea is to receive someone, and in this context, it means relieving someone of whatever they are carrying.  They will receive a sack of groceries if you happened to have hit the veggie stand before visiting a friend, or just your notebook if it’s all you’re carrying.  Most helpfully, often if I’m walking to my house carrying a lot of stuff, someone will pokea me and help me all the way home.  To sindikiza is to accompany a visitor part of the way.  At the end of a visit, a host will gather whatever they pokea’ed you and escort you on your way home.  When they have decided they have sindikiza’ed you enough, they will hand off your things—groceries, notebook, what-have-you, and wish you well on your way.  Some people will just walk some 20 feet, and some people will send a child to do the sindikiza’ing for them.  Some people have sindikiza’d me almost all the way home, as a very kind gesture of friendship. Then I feel the need to sindikiza them since they’ve gone so far from their home, and I can imagine this going on and on and neither of us ever gets home.

Most mornings I have taken to jogging into the fields along a dirt path.  Not too many people live out that way, but I often pass a few people going to their fields or to a neighboring village.  The other day I passed a Gogo man of about 40 years who was walking, dressed in the typical Gogo fashion: red plaid cloak draped about him, wooden staff in hand, sandals made out of repurposed old car tires.  After a morning greeting, he asked me where I was going, and I breathlessly replied, “Not too far!”  He said, “You’re doing exercise?”  I said, “Yes,” and he said, “I see.”  And without any other words, car tire sandals and all, he ran to catch up with me and he sindikiza’ed me on my jog.  He sindikiza’ed me for more than 15 minutes until I had to turn around to go home.  A few days later on another jog, I was on my way home when I passed a few schoolgirls carrying buckets and school things.  One of them also wordlessly decided to run with me, and the others joined.  Along the way, each schoolgirl that we passed joined us as if there was some tacit obligation, and by the time we got to the school, I had a pack of 15 girls sindikiza’ing me.

Finally I got another cat! It is a nice kitten that sits on my lap and purrs and it hasn’t run away yet.  I am very grateful for these things, but I am sort of disappointed that it hasn’t really been doing its job.  I’m still finding mice droppings in the corners, and in an even graver lapse in felinity, the cat failed to alert me to the 3-foot snake in my kitchen last week.  The cat was sleeping in the other room when I came across the black snake slithering amongst my coffee mugs and cans of oatmeal (still no furniture).  I ran, terrified, out my front door to get a neighbor, but when the neighbor came with his wooden staff to kill it, it was nowhere to be found.  After an extensive search, I left my house still terrified, and not long after, students said they saw the snake leave my courtyard, and at which point they ID’d it as the spitting cobra.  I kept on thinking of the turn of phrase people use when you’re looking and looking for something and it’s right in front of you—“If it was a snake you’d be dead by now.” 

That night and every night since, I slept with my wooden staff, and now I enter every room with my head first to survey before stepping.  Even so, I am often tricked by things like backpack straps, shoelaces.  Just this morning, my heart did a cartwheel when I walked into the kitchen to find a serpentine white line curving across the floor like a sine wave, like a perfect negative of that haunting black cobra.  Upon investigation, at the end of the twisting trail I found a half-empty bag of salt with little rodent teeth marks.  I don’t know what a mouse would want with a bag of salt, but it’s just more proof that that cat is not doing its job.

Mice and Honey

Last week I gave myself a haircut, my first haircut in ten years that wasn’t given to me by my sister.  Since I have yet to see a mirror, I still don’t know how it looks but I am sure that my blind attempt at a coiffe would make sister balk.  Beyond not having a mirror, my house is still very unfurnished.  I have some orders in at the carpenter’s that are already tardy, but I have low expectations for any timeliness in this country anyway.  I also still have a mouse problem.

I got a cat after one week here.  I walked across the village and chatted with some old Gogo ladies, and after about 10 minutes one of the ladies slipped into another room in the hut and came out with a hissing and mewling sack.  It was about a 10 minutes walk home and once in the house, the cat timidly made its way out of the bag (there is a pun here somewhere but I’m not up to it right now.)  It seemed distressed at the lack of furniture to hide behind, but it quickly found a nook between my bed frame and mattress.  I fetched it some fresh cow’s milk that it didn’t touch, and I eventually went to bed with the kitten hiding behind the mattress.  I woke up in the morning and lit the stove for tea, came back inside and the cat was nowhere to be found.  I’m not that surprised that the cat would run away, it was a pretty old kitten, but I am dumbfounded as to how the cat escaped.  The door from my house to my courtyard was open for all of 2 minutes as I lit the stove, and even so I should have seen a cat darting out.  And the only way out of my courtyard is the drain in the shower.  The cat could have fit through it, but it is a pretty long tube, and I’m convinced this kind of jailbreak would have required some calculated premeditation.  Now three weeks later, I still wake up to the sound of the mouse eating giant millipedes behind my desk, and I still expect any day to see this cat come sauntering out of its hiding.  If I ever do, I will call it Houdini.

I’m trying to learn basic Kigogo and Kisandawe, the two main languages that are spoken here.  Of course everyone speaks Kiswahili as well, but it really tickles people if I greet them in their tribal language.  Kisandawe is truly a click language, and I can really crack people up when I attempt to make those impossible sounds. 

A lot of my job right now is to wander around the village and talk with new people.  This often means going up to a house and saying “Hodi! Hodi!” I don’t knock, I just say these words and if people are about, they say, “Karibu!” to welcome me in.  If they are cooking, they will invite me to eat.  If it isn’t mealtime, they will likely send a kid out to buy a soda for me.  Or, if I am visiting a beekeeper, they will bring me a bowl of honey.  The first time this happened, I didn’t really know what to do—about ½ a liter of honey and a spoon!  That’s gluttonous, but if I only take a few spoonfuls, not only might it be rude, but the precious stuff might go to waste.  Well, after a few bites, I wasn’t worried about any of that because I knew I could easily eat the whole bowl.  I had been told that my Peace Corps service would change me forever; I had no idea it would just be Type II Diabetes.

A particularly industrious beekeeper had me taste the honey from nyuki wadogo, little bees, which I think are some species of dwarf honey bee. The plastic water bottle hissed releasing pressure as the beekeeper opened it, which would normally be a red flag alerting me to Something I Shouldn’t Eat, but being a profligate lover of honey, I sallied forth.  It had a texture and buttery sweetness like warm caramel, a slightly tart taste like an apple, and it was curiously bubbly with carbonation.  It might have been slightly alcoholic.  It was delicious.

 Last week I made an attempt to climb the tallest mountain in my beautiful skyline.  (I told everyone I wanted to go in order to see the surroundings but really I just wanted to try and catch a glimpse of the chewi a.k.a. leopard) Unfortunately we departed too late in the afternoon, so we didn’t make it all the way to the top.  News of my excursion spread, as all news does in the village: like wildfire.  Now when some people ask me about my plans, they’ll say, “Are you free Thursday?  Or are you going to go climb another mountain?” 

When I go to visit houses, I try to ask them survey questions about what problems they are facing and what sort of work they would like to see in their village.  This is an important yet frustrating exercise because their suggestions are very valid, but often too big for me to help with, which I think this is a common struggle at the start for Peace Corps volunteers.  For instance, many people want me to help their group get a tractor, or access the international honey market while circumventing the price-slashing middleman in Dar es Salaam.  Some of the other things they suggest are very feasible, like setting up beekeeping workshops, creating other income generating projects, and etc.  Nonetheless, I am trying to do research on all these ideas so that I can tell them just how realistic the possibilities are. 

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.

Rainy Days

Last night brought a huge rain with thunderclaps and lightning--a mild storm that wouldn’t get a weathered Midwestern gal too excited.  But this Midwestern gal had never before weathered a 3-hour storm under a tin roof.  From 2am to 5:30 am it sounded like there was a damned Metra train passing over my bed!  This evening it is pouring again, and the rain sets everyone in motion collecting the water.  Apparently Mama and my sisters did this last night, too, but I couldn’t hear the activity over the racket of the rain:  Outside the back door hangs a gutter that empties into a plastic bucket.  As the buckets fill up, we fire-line them into the house, emptying them into a large drum.  Once that is full, we fill the buckets (most Tanzanian homes have many, many buckets) and once those are full we fill up pots, and once those are full and we can’t find anything else to fill with water, we watch the rain.  When you typically carry all your water on your head from the well, the gallons flowing freely from the gutter across the ground and no empty buckets to catch them can be a poignant sight.  I was called to my bath this evening during the downpour and Mama Halima made me take an umbrella for the walk to the shower, my bathwater being a bucket of freshly harvested rainwater. 

Only a few days ago, I returned to my host family in Tanga from a trip to the southern highlands where for one week I shadowed a volunteer at her site.  It was beautiful in the small village just north of Njombe, with weather in the 70s, gorgeous amaryllis blooming alongside footpaths, and a confusing coexistence of pine trees and avocado trees.  It was a welcome respite from the heat and the demanding training schedule. 

The highlight of the week in Njombe was our excursion to the “traditional forest,” an ample patch of native forest in the middle of acres of white teak tree farms.  We walked 45 minutes to meet a man who would guide us through the forest.  We waited an hour for him, and when it was suggested that we just go in without him, the volunteer’s Tanzanian friend from the village said, “oh no, no, no.  We can’t go in without him.   The spirits will choke us, because they don’t know us.”  She said there were miracles that happen in the forest. Ohhhh, well no one had told me it was a magical forest!  Well a miracle did in fact occur—the guide showed up after all!  And he was wonderful.  Upon entering the forest, we had to remove our shoes and we walked to the trees where decedents from three families perform rituals and make sacrifices to honor and appease the dead.  The huge tree was wrapped in black fabric, draped in black and white beads, and there were three-legged stools and various traditional tools gathered around it.  He went on to point out the trees that had previously been used for worship.  They were all massive and fallen on the ground—they have been using this forest for worship for over 800 years.  Leaving the forest, we saw the black chickens that are reportedly endemic to this traditional forest; also they are magic.

Then he took us to some caves where people “a long long long time ago” hid during wars.  It was an impressive network of chambers with spring water running through it.  It was pretty fun scrambling through the caves until I realized that the rocks were so soft and cushy because they were covered in bat guano. 

So… my site will be in the Dodoma region!  It is in Central Tanzania, Northeast of Tanzania’s capitol, Dodoma.  This is a semi-arid region, and many communities here struggle with water issues.  I’ve heard that there’s actually a river in my village, so I don’t really know what to expect.  I am very excited that there is a women’s beekeeping group with which I will hopefully be working!  Can’t wait to report back on what my village is like.

Swearing in is in one week, and now I have to say sad farewells to Mama Halima and the rest of the family.