At the Five-month Mark

It seems like it has been sometime since I last commented on the blog, though the last couple f months have sort of rolled by here in Mtwara. We’ve had quite a few visitors that have kept us busy recently, including the Peace Corps county director and both the environment and health program directors, each of whom visited separately for a day. We also had two other volunteers stay with us recently, Katie and Tyler, as the first of hopefully many guests to our home. It was great to have each of them stay with use for a few days; Merritt and I enjoyed getting to show them around our town, and just hearing about life in their villages made us realize how fortunate we are with our own placement.

Katie, for example, was living in a small village outside Msasi, where she said food was quite hard to come by, with fresh vegetables and fruit only really available in the nearest town, a half day’s journey away. Katie was actually staying with us on account of having to move sites, to a new village outside Iringa, in the central part of the country. Moving sites mid-service is by no means normal in the Peace Corps, but for Katie, she didn’t have much of a choice – it turns out that she’s allergic to a chemical in part of cashew shells, similar to that of poison ivy, which she was being exposed to from all the smoke in her village produced during cashew processing. Cashews are a big business here in the Mtwara Region, in large part because getting the nut out of the shell is such a labor intensive process. When harvested, the softball-sized cashew shell is roasted in large bunches in a bonfire, after which the shell is cracked open and the single nut collected, where it can then undergo further processing and sorting. For Katie, who has no reaction to the cashew nuts themselves, and who ate lots of them without any problem, it took quite some time to piece together what was causing large rashes to break out all over here body. She spent sometime at the German missionary hospital in Ndanda, which is apparently the best in the region, but she eventually had to self-diagnose her allergy, with the help of an uncle back in the States who had luck Googling the problem.

The week after Katie left for her new site, Tyler, a volunteer who comes from near Oshkosh, Wisconsin and is a little younger than Merritt and I, came to stay for a couple of days of R&R from village life. Tyler’s Kiswahili is getting very good, and he is integrating well into his small community of five-hundred villagers. Tyler is the first Peace Corps volunteer at his site, and so has proven to be a real novelty in his new community. Being the first to a new site can be challenge for a volunteer, but it’s also helpful to be able to define Tanzanian’s first impression of Americans and mzungu in general.

After hearing from our guests about how challenging and different life can be in the village, I felt like I didn’t have much to share on the blog, from what is our nearly Western-style life. Just having running water and fairly reliable electricity makes a big difference in one’s everyday life, not to mention the routine that comes with an everyday job. Also, our access to news from the outside world through the internet and to be able to email friends and family on a regular basis changes the entire Peace Corps experience.

More recently, however, I have been thinking about how our life here in Mtwara, including our assignments working for the national government, providers a different but equally interesting experience of life here in Tanzania. Just being able to compare our everyday life here in Tanzania with the latest news from back in the States creates a strange lens through which to view the people of this country. For example on October 31 Tanzanians voted in what proved to be relatively uncontentious and peaceful national elections. A couple of days later, we followed along with the election results from America, after hearing for months about what sounded like a particularly acrimonious and ugly campaign season. Several Tanzanians I have spoken with about national politics have said that people in this county feel like they have little at stake in national elections – that whatever the outcome, the government isn’t likely to make any kind of real difference in their difficult lives. While such an assessment might typically seem discouraging for an American to hear, in the wake of our own national elections, a little apathy doesn’t seem like the worst thing.

Living in town has also allowed me to continue my legal work from Colorado, and despite some challenges to trying to do this from so far away, I have actually found it can be quiet convenient to be ten hours ahead of the world in which you work. I send out emails that arrive before 7 a.m., and that’s if I wait to send them until the very end of the day – otherwise it looks like I am up in the wee hours of the night, thinking up specific questions about reservoir capacities and other random water-related information. (When I email people for work, I usually don’t attempt to explain where I am writing from.)

But whatever life we are able to lead in America through the internet and the occasional phone call, it’s still second to our life here in Mtwara, where even with water and electric service, there’s no escaping the fact that, as Merritt wrote about, this is Africa. Merritt was right when she said that sometimes life here suddenly catches you by surprise. At the market especially, you’ll see some scene, like a street salesman negotiating with a burka-clad women over the price of kitchen knife, or a butcher plucking a freshly decapitated chicken, and you’ll find yourself doubting what you really just saw.

The epitome of this experience occurred recently when at the Mtwara fish market, amidst all the flies and the mats of fresh sardines, Merritt and I came upon a man hacking up part of some large animal. People gathered in a crowd, and someone informed us that it was a “nyangumi,” which was not any type of fish that I know of. Later, when we got home, we looked it up in our dictionary, confirming what we had suspected; the man had been cutting up part of a small whale. I have no idea if the whale was actually caught, or if it was a dead animal that was being salvaged.

Despite these kinds of encounters, being so close in contact with the home, it’s sometimes too easy to think about what life would be like back in the States. But Merritt and I are committed to the idea that Peace Corps affords the opportunity to really live in a foreign county, as opposed to just traveling through it, and that that integration process takes time – probably about two years. So we try to ignore thoughts or returning, with the reality being that some days are difficult enough to make us really entertain the idea. Most Peace Corps volunteers seem to have such moments, and in that respect, our experience is similar to the average volunteer’s.

At the five-month mark, it’s amazing to reflect on all that we’ve already seen and experienced. Yet it’s also impossible not to feel like our work here is just getting started and we have still so much ahead of us in this journey. Still, we’ve learned to take one day at a time, and to take the difficult times in stride with the better moments. And thus the days, weeks, and now months roll on here, in what has become our Tanzanian life.

Sokoni Pictures

The view from our front yard. Moss and I are leaving our house to head to the soko so we can make a yummy dinner of wali na nazi (coconut rice), matemble (our favorite greens), and jodari (tuna).

Along the way we see some of the neighborhood watoto playing behind their house.


Our Sokoni. Since it is only a two minute walk from our house we come here most days of the week to get fresh food for dinner.

Azizi, our samaki man! He's great and can't get over how much fish we eat...he doesn't know we feed Kali his fresh jodari too. Each piece of fish costs 500 shilingi or about 33 cents.

Shikamooni...it's our matembele ladies. They are always so happy to see us. Each bunch of matembele cost 100 shilingi or around 6 cents.

Watoto at the soko

The Big Sokoni. This soko is located in town, which is a 10 minute bike ride away from our house. We only come here once a week to buy any items that we need for our house or to stock up on certain things that we can't get at our local soko, like pasta or bread.

Dried fish...ugh! When Moss and I were living in Mkayageni our mama used to cook dried fish for us and I have to say that it's disgusting... chewy and super salty! Now Moss and I stick to the fresh fish.

This picture and all of the following are at the big soko in town.

Wanawake buying mhogo (cassava).

Pineapple season just started and the pineapples here are amazing! They are as sweet as candy so of course I love them!

Moss buying a pineapple for 2000 shilingi or $1.33.

More matunda (fruit)

The fruit at this stand is called fensi or jack fruit. We actually have a fensi tree in our front yard. The fruit is so interesting in texture and flavor. It is chewy and has a foam-like consistency, and the flavor reminds me of an Airhead. For those of you that don't know about Airheads, they are a chewy taffy-like candy that you can buy in just about any convenience store in the states. For those of you that know about Airheads and have tried them before, fensi taste just like the mystery flavor Airhead.

Peanuts, get your peanuts! Peanuts here are dirt cheap, but we tend to buy more cashews which are pretty pricey... well I say pricey but I guess that's a relative term. Cashews cost 5000 shiligi or a little over 3 dollars, but to spend 5000 shiligi on any one item in the market now seems expensive. I get embarrassed and apologize to the store owner when I pull out a 10,000 shiligi bill or the equivalent of $6.66. It's funny how quickly ones perception of things change.

A clothing store in Mtwara. When you walk inside there are hundreds of different types of fabric of various colors and designs lining the walls. You can buy the fabric and get a dress made for 12000 shilingi or $8.00.

Obviously not the soko. It's Kali with her new favorite toy (thanks mom). I just wanted to give you all an update and let you know that she is back to her crazy, rambunctious self. Because she healed so quickly, we don't think she broke her arm or dislocated her shoulder after all.