Finally In Africa! Mambo!

Karibuni! Vipi!

I decided to write this email at home so I could collect my thoughts instead of trying to remember everything when I get the chance to go to the high school to use the internet. So as I sit here at our kitchen table, looking out at a humungous palm tree with unripe coconuts, I will try my best to relay as much as I can of my experience and thoughts thus far.

I arrived late Friday night after flying 18 hours and stepping foot on 3 continents. My first thought: it is very hot here and it is midnight. My community mates, Caroline, Nicholas, and Kate, picked the four of us up (Christen and I will be staying in Dar and Mary Beth and Talia will be going up to Moshi in Northern Tanzania, near Mt Kilimanjaro). We took two taxis home - for 7 people and luggage for two years for four people. Caroline, Talia and I sat in the back of one of the taxis with two suitcases on our laps, needless to say the views were not too good. We quickly left the paved roads and started our journey on the dirt roads. I think I can say a good 50% of the time literally felt the ground underneath my feet - the roads here are so bad. Imagine the worst potholes and holes in the road and they are even worse here. 20 minutes later we got to our house. We have a gate around our house and a guard at night - Sitoti (he is Maasai!). Our house is very simple, we have a porch (my favorite place to sit), there is a common room, a tiny kitchen with a small two burner stove and a small cupboard and a small sink and a pantry. We each have our own rooms. The bathroom is also inside. The floors are made out of a clay-like material and re always dusty because everything here is dusty. The windows have bars and screens on them. We also have a fan in each room (God bless whoever invented the fan, we had a conversation recently about which invention was better, the wheel or the fan. The fan won). Our community moved into this house a few months ago and the woman who lived here before ran a duka (a store) out of one of the outside rooms (now Nicholas' room, and kept cows in the courtyard, right next to my room. We also have papaya trees in our courtyard and a banana tree grove next to our house. Our house has electricity most of the time. My second night here we came back to the house only to find there was no electricity. So we lit candles and sat around talking for a while. The power came on during the night. I originally thought we had running water, but I was wrong. We have a water tank in our courtyard where we fill up buckets of water and bring it in to wash hands, flush the toilet, wash dishes, et cetera. We are supposed to have running water but the pressure is never high enough to go through the pipes so we just have to stick with bucket showers. Our beds and couches are made with thick pieces of foam, I am slowly getting used to everything here. We have mosquito nets over our beds, somewhat tedious because we have to tuck and untuck it every night. I think thats good for a description of where I am living.

I want to fill you in on some of the things I have been doing. Our first full day we spent walking around Mabibo, where I am living and meeting some people (quite interesting because nobody speaks English and I do not speak Swahili). Getting to see the area was very eye-opening. I had woken up that morning to a rooster crowing and was very confused. That was cleared up when we saw chickens and roosters literally everywhere and realized that it was normal. Today I also heard the cow for the first time, but there are a lot of animals around here. The roads and footpaths are filled with garbage. There is no place to throw things away, so most people either dump it on the street or burn it. It is culturally expected to greet everyone you see. So with the little Swahili I know, I can say hello! We went out to dinner that night and I tried rice and chipate - a pancake-type thing. African food is not that bad!

On Sunday we went to Mass at our parish, St. John the Baptist, in Swahili. I picked up one word - Amina (Amen)! The Mass lasted almost two hours; the music was beautiful - so lively and passionate. After Mass Nicholas and I walked over to see Gonzaga, the school that I am teaching at. The school is really simple, but adequate. It was built one year ago and it educates a lot of orphans and poorer kids from the neighborhood. Later that afternoon we were sitting in the common room and Nicholas calmly walked in and said "So we are going to take some buckets of water over to our neighbors house, it is on fire." So we all jumped up and thats what we did! They were having a party when the fire started and continued the party when it was put out!

Monday was a great day, in the morning we walked about 2 kilometers to a town called Mburahati, where the Missionaries of Charity (Mother Teresa's Sisters) have an orphanage and home for the elderly and mentally handicapped. Talk about a quick introduction to the societal issues of Tanzania! We walked down the road it was on and we came to this huge group of people waiting for distribution of clothes and other things. I had a strange feeling as we were walking in. This was the first time that my skin color really became apparent to me. Here I am, coming from the wealthiest country in the world to come of the poorest, I am Caucasian and these people are African. I have so many privileges that they do not, even based on my skin color. It is such a privilege to be able to take two years and move to another country and work there. I do not have to worry about working and making money to help me family, I do not have any dependents. I am so blessed. We arrived in the childrens section where we stayed with the 1-2 year olds for a few hours. One little boy climbed up onto my lap not long after we got there and fell asleep in my arms. I woke him up for lunch but he cried whenever I left him. These children were so precious. I only hope that they will get adopted by a family who will be able to take good care of them. We walked back at noon, and let me tell you, the equatorial sun can be brutal. Later we had our first Swahili lesson. I am slowly starting o recognize little things, but in order to communicate with anybody I will have to become fluent. We have gone to dinner at friends houses last Monday and Tuesday and tried a lot of different African food: cassava, cassava leaves, pilau (spiced rice), chapate, beans, baked bananas, et cetera. Last Monday night we went to Mama Davy’s sisters house to greet her and her baby and we sat outside on a very busy street drinking local beer and trying to communicate with the family. It was actually a very fun night because we met a lot of people and got to experience a lot of local things.

I apologize for writing so much but there is a lot that I want to share with you all! For those of you who made it to the end, thank you! I hope you can now get a tiny glimpse into my life in Africa so far. I will be going on retreat on Friday the 19th and will return a few days after Christmas. We are also going to Moshi to help our other community set up. I hope things are going well at home, pleas keep me updated on your lives!! Thank you for all of your support and prayers, you are all in mine as well. God is so good!

Kwa Heri,

Emilia