And My Village Is...

I've officially been in Africa for a month! Crazy, huh? It's hard to believe that a little over a month ago I was driving on freeways (at night even!), walking through town without having to guard my stuff for dear life, calling my friends whenever I wanted, sleeping without a mosquito net and eating food for taste instead of just for nourishment.

I don't even know where to begin. So much has happened in the last 2 weeks, so many fun times and so many challanges. And even though it's technically a 1/3 of the way through my trip, the real work has only just begun.

So let's start with 2 weeks ago:

We went back to Orientation to resume our 8-5 training schedule. Swahili became somewhat painful, and I think we've all learned more just being in our villages in the last week than we learned during our class for those last few days. Most of the second week of Orientation consisted of teaching practice, so we were placed into a few different "random" groups to test out the waters, were given a set amount of time to prepare a lesson, and then taught the rest of the class for 30 minute increments, followed by critiques. After a few teaching demos over the course of a few days, we also had an individual evaluation on Wednesday - we were given about 10 minutes warninga and then were brought in front of SIC staff members to teach a topic by ourselves without notes. That afternoon reminded me of senior exhibitions in high school where everyone who wasn't a senior would go home early (all the Tanzanians who had done the program before were exempt from this process), and the rest of us would sit around nervously in our business-casual attire waited to be told if we were good enough to graduate and move on to college. Sort of the same thing, except this was telling us whether or not we were ready to teach in front of a culture who isn't quite sure what to make of a white person talking about HIV/AIDS like it was something to be excited about...


My birthday was on the Monday of Orientation, Wiki Mbili (orientation, week 2), and people were very sweet considering the circumstances. Sure, it's not every year that you get to spend a birthday in Africa...so we lived it up...by having eggs, toast and tea for breakfast...veggies and rice for lunch, and an approximate repeat for dinner. Woohoo! But, really, they made me a poster and put in the classroom, and people said "happy birthday" to me a good 50+ times. Before bed, a few of us played Sassafrass (some of you might know this as Ocelot, or Peanut Butter - yes, I taught them the game - they thought it was was awesome, but of course weren't as skilled or strategic as you guys). Not really a memorable birthday in itself, but I'll definitely always remember how I spent the 2nd anniversary of my 21st birthday (I'm not old, ok?) in Tanzania.

There were also several other birthdays this week - 2 American volunteer, one Tanzanian teaching partner, and one sort of staff member (its complicated). So the last night Orientation, which was Wednesday, we all went out to dinner to celebrate the end of training and they sang to us, we had a cake type thing divided into 40 tiny slices, they made us posters to put around the "restaurant," and it was a nice way to spend the last night that every single SIC member will be in the same place at the same time until closing dinner in Decemeber.

On wednesday we also FINALLY found out our final teaching groups. Your teaching group sort of makes or breaks your experience. You can request to be with people, to not be with people, to be in certain villages, to not be in certain villages, to live with a Tanzanian, an American, or alone, etc, etc... So of course after the first teaching group assignments came out on Tuesday, much of the SIC cohort were not happy campers. It's pretty utterly impossible to satisfy the wants and needs of every single person at the same time. I was pretty happy with my first group, but of course after the drama that ensued over the next few days, the groups were almost entirely changed around and I ended up with an entirely different set of people that I thought originally. I'd say it's working out pretty well though.

My group, which has been assigned to MAJENGO, in the Makiba Ward, is (drumroll please....):

SHUJAA (yep, my roomate from Orientation): his maturity in many circumstances reminds me of my friends from 8th grade, but he is absolutely hilarious with his purple shirts, card games, internet phone and aviator glasses. He likes to work on his English, even though it's pretty much spot on, so mostly we're teaching him slang and abbreviations. He likes "Duh!" and making up his own abbreviations (such as "gfy" - good for you, and "you are very atm/atw," meaning attractive to men/women). I'm also teaching him Spanish (do I even remember Spanish? yes. whenever I want to not respond to a question in English my mind automatically reverts to Spanish, so I think this trip is actually better for my Spanish than my Swahili). He has been a great friend so far, and an awesome resource for our teachings. Plus his name means "Hero" in Swahili. How cool is that?

JOYCE: this is her 7th SIC program. She was late to Orientation because she was climing Mt. Kilimanjaro. She's a hardcore n100% Tanzanian, knows her stuff, lives alone in her homestay, but is one of the tiniest women I've seen here and is sooo good with the kids. Plus she's pretty hilarious, too. Favorite word: OBVIOUSLY

LAURA: Trained with the Stanford kids, but didn't go to Stanford. She is in the process of applying to nursing school, loves to laugh, and always has a positive attitude. She has health conditions which restrict a lot of her activity and eating habits, but is such a trooper for being here. We also share a love for Dane Cook.

JESSICA: Just graduated from UCLA, and is planning on applying to Nursing school also. She's very athletic/strong. We went running together through our village for about 10 minutes the other day and, first our Mamas laughed at us, then little kids proceeded to follow us and try to run with us, and a older man pointed at us and shouted "Wazungu mazoezi!" (the white people are excercising!). Anyway, Jess and I get along really well, she is very professional in the classroom, and she and Laura and really good with the kids in our homestays. We're worried they might take one of them home. Really.