very slow start

Wow, thanks for reading these updates! Snail mail and emails are keeping the wag in my tail (and Kayas, as well) and I feel so blessed to know y'all back home are interested in what's happening here!

Kaya is growing like wildfire. I am loving having her as my housemate and it is fun since she is a fast learner and (thankfully for all of us) I don't have to struggle with my dreadful kiswahili to teach her. Actually, she is picking up on several languages, recognizing "i love you" in english, kiswahili, spanish, and the physical affection of her mother! She knows "njoo" or come, and "kaa" or sit like no other tanzanian puppy I know. (Meghann, you would be proud.) I could use some tips on house training and definitely see the potential for future lesson plans: where did my sandals go, anyway? and the often game of tug-of-war with my skirt.

Life here is feeling so normal that I anticipate and even look forward (sometimes) to daily occurences that I used to think about as being out of the ordinary from what I have been used to, from cold showers to expecting my sandals to fill up with sand as I depart from my house...

I "bore down" and decided to get moving on community assessment so as to be ready for Peace Corps IST or inservice training, where the volunteers that I trained with will discuss the needs of our communities and our next strategies to start our work in health education and any secondary projects that are calling our name. In my efforts to understand the needs of my surrounding community I have been visiting the six elementary schools, the secondary school and the local health clinic to introduce myself and distribute simple questionnaires asking about current and hopeful health endeavors. I expected for this to take several days and be fairly painless... then I realized I am in Tanzania where I am having to work around everyone else's schedules, including the agenda of teachers and principals and not only articulate but also try to understand responses in a language that I don't really know.

Being accustomed to school schedules and expectations from the USA when I was a kid I figured that most teachers come to class everyday (at least they are expected to) and even come sick because they are so motivated to do a job well done and at least seem to enjoy teaching (which honestly now that I think about it could have been a product of my own bliss as a student and not actually been the case at all.) I found out through this process of community assessment the system here in Tanzania is not quite so ideal. Teachers are underpaid and underappreciated (not so different from the USA but just exasserbated) and are often going to extracurricular seminars or workshops where they receive per diem pay worth what they usually receive in a week. They also just don't show up for work and have no excuse or prior communication with a suporvisor and often see no retribution for their absence. Thus absence from school is a dilemma making it difficult to get anything done in a timely manner.

So after weeks of riding my bike in the africa heat in a skirt through sand I finally got back all of the questionnaires and was really excited to go to one of my three supervisors, the mwalimu mkuu, or principal, of one of the elementary schools, to show him actual proof of my labor. I hadn't I realized how much work these questionnaires had been or how stressed I was about people in my village (and even people in the neighboring town Newala!) asking me if I had started work yet... But it all came to a climax in Mwalimu Mmole's office at that moment.

Feeling successful and productive, I walked into his small, square cement office and reached to shake his hand in confidence and of course greet him for over a minute as is the Tanzanian custom, wanting to make sure that his condition is good before jumping prematurely into conversation concerning work. He instead after a brief introduction of greetings, tells me with a big smile on his face but a serious tone in his voice that he has been wondering where I have been for so long and that everyone is asking why I haven't been doing any work. I laugh nervously at his comment, not knowing what to say, and proceed to sit down and tell him my efforts at community assessment and my goals, one of which is to organize a Training of teachers, a seminar that naturally all the schools said they would anticipate with joy (I mean, heck, we pay them here to come get extra training, which is opposite in the USA where we pay to get extra training.)

Mmole proceeds to rip up my efforts and ideas to little bits of confetti with his disapproval. Not only has he just told me that "no one" approves of my laziness (or at least that is how my sensitive ears took his first comment) but he also proceeds to tell me about his expectations for me which were totally different from my own expectations and which were especially frustrating to hear after I had already been at site for almost three months!

I contained myself and held back the tears, that is until the point when I told him about a frustrating teaching moment that I saw as being the epidemy of defeat: I was attempting to lecture in Kiswahili about Syphillis to the WHOLE secondary school (130+ young adults) outside, under a mango tree that was firing her weapons of falling fruit on us. I was not prepared with visual aids and was only equipped with a book in english with three pages on the subject. I stood up in Mmole's office to give him a visual of the humility I felt (which came to a climax once more at this moment in Mmole's office) as I was standing with all the students sitting on the ground in front of me with mostly undivided attention to discuss a taboo subject in a language I was butchering by explaining around words like chansor (what does that even mean in english?) and then asking for conformation of comprehension and getting blank stares. The tears came when I confessed to Mmole that I had to give up, turn around to the panel of capable bilingual teachers (that by the way could have been doing this lecture as good if not better than I if they just had the book from which I was teaching) and begged one of them to stand up there to translate for me because I had realized not one of the students was understanding anything I was saying...

Just when you start feeling like it really can't get much worse, my stress over disappointing others is escalated again as I am recollecting the story to a dear friend, Mayombo, who I am expecting to have his usual friendly reaction of understanding laughter. You need to know that Mayombo is someone that I hold up with very high regard; he is an HCN or Host Country National (the Peace Corps lingo for a Tanzanian), a well-educated engineer that can articulate in English better than I and a very confident manager. Instead of understanding laughter that I needed to help me to laugh at the situation (which is not that big of a deal but which was a ridiculously sensitive subject, can you tell?), Mayombo proceeds to instead, in a reprimanding manner, ask me in disbelief if I really cried to Mmole and then tells me that crying in this situation is not a good reaction. Mayombo tells me the painful truth that as an adult in my position I shouldn't break down in tears especially to my supervisor and tells me that my emotional instability is not a good thing.

So, this is my condition going to IST: I am supposed to have completed a solid community assessment and feel like I have a pretty good idea of what my community wants and needs (which I thought I knew but now am feeling like I have been exhausting myself doing unproductive busy work) and I am an emotional wreck, I think because of stress, but whatever it is I must gain control of myself. All this and I am feeling like my kiswahili is worse than ever.

In the midst of feeling unsuccessful, I am attempting to stay positive by reminding myself why I am here, which ironically is not comforting since the answer is a question: Why am I here? In risk of echoing Tait (as she so very eloquently listed the three "official" reasons for peace corps service in her blog as well), we are here to show the world the ups and downs of the USA through peaceful interaction, to show my world back home what is Tanzania (thanks for coming for this lesson at this moment) and to share my own technical expertise through health education with the aim of improving the standard of living. Due to my perfectionist tendencies (thank you mom and dad) I find myself struggling to take the first steps in deciding my priorities due to fear of unsustainability. Two years right now seems like such a brief glimpse in time, I don't know how I am going to get anything done that will have a significant impact throughout the future. This is, of course, the struggle of my existence. It just seems to be concentrated here in Tanzania.

So now I am off to IST and will be sure to report after I return from this adventure to Dar Es Salaam. Hopefully I will return with a bit of encouragment and positive motivation! As our friend Paul Harvey says, Good day.