Jumamosi, Februari, 2020
Gorgeous sunrise, moon rise, moon set because my backdoor and courtyard faces southeast.
My front door faces a pine grove-view is blocked, but once in while, there are great sunset colors.
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| View of sun rise from my back door |
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| View of moon rise from my back door |
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View of moon during the day
from my back door |
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| View of sunset from my front door |
In the
morning, most of the time, I have three spoonfuls of oatmeal-without hot water
to soften it. Too lazy to boil water, just eat it as is, more fiber…
I do not
wash my coffee mug, just as I did when I was working in the office. Besides, I
have the excuse that water is so precious during the dry season that sometimes
we have to buy water for all our needs!
When I
have oranges, I eat the pips too for fiber. I also buy tomatoes. The first few
weeks in October 2019 I found some creature bit into one of my tomatoes. Well, that
did it. I had to resort to poison to kill the mouse. After another month, a
second mouse died in my dirty water for the toilet flush. That did it too---I
got a cute, cute little black kitty with “panther eyes”. Some of you readers
have already have met him, Stacy….
I have
kitty now for about 2.5 months. He really grows on me right after about a month.
He
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loudly meows to get fed in the morning. He loves
hard candy lollipops, and like sweet coffee. He sits on the kitchen window sill
where it is sunny in the morning, and watches courtyard activities, which is
not much in the dry season. But there are butterflies and other critters during
the rainy season because the yard become a forest of unwanted plants.
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has my home-made toys to play with, and loves to
sit in a packaging box-his own “house”.
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loves to play inside some enclosed environment,
like the long box, or my new suitcase I bought to bring more textbooks back to
the school after my December 2019 training.
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sometimes jumps on my bed sheets with his brown
paw prints because he just went to do his business in the kitty litter. The
litter is just soil that I change weekly.
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And of course, I sometimes have trouble finding
him in the dark house—he is black, like Sashi, my USA dog.
I do tie Stacy
with rope if I open the back door to let more light in when I’m home. I catch
him sunning himself on the steps. So cute…
but naughty - he tear the pocket of my light jacket to get a small piece
of beef fat and blood vessel - I forgot to gave him that treat from our school lunch,
and went back to work.
Being day
to day with Stacy, I did not notice he has grown from a tiny cat to a bigger
cat. He is still small, but my headmaster saw Stacy past Thursday and said he
has grown.
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| Panther eyes |
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| Likes to play in boxes like my new luggage |
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Poor little fella, when he was going
for the neutering operation |
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| Meowing at me in his box |
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| He likes to sit on clothes - my fresh laundry |
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| Ah, the big triangle area of my jacket pocket that Stacy ripped apart |
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| Caught him when he was making a face |
Oh,
sometimes, I call Stacy Sashi, my dog in USA.
Rainy
season
started
in late November. Before the rains, I planted my tomato seeds, some left over
cucumber sees, some unknown veggie seeds, carrot seeds, peas. Hopefully, they
will all grow into veggies I can eat. Now that it has been approximately 1.5 months
since germination of my planted seeds, only some tomatoes and peas and
cucumbers came up.
When I came home from December 2019 training in Morogoro, wow,
the backyard is full of weeds, and in January, tall weeds, my knee height, may
possibly hide snakes. Nah, no snakes, but better not take any chance. Stacy
likes to run down the steps to the backyard jungle and chew on some leaves. It
seems daunting to weed. I tried bits and pieces here and there, but still a lot
of weeds.
By good timing, a few weeks ago in January, some teacher told some
students to do something to my courtyard, so now it looks “cut”, but still a
lot of unwanted stuff out there.
At each
house, a metal tube system is the water catchment “system” to collect rain
water.
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| Catching water the old fashion way |
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| Water catchment system at a house |
Weed=any
growth that a person does not want.
So if
there is a rose in your garden of zinnias, and you don’t want that rose to be
there, the rose is a WEED. This concept is confirmed by Peace Corps’ premier
nutrition and gardening teacher, Clement, who is in high demand and gives
advice to nonprofit organizations for vegetable gardens.
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| Three butterflies graced my weeds |
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When I returned from Morogoro
after two weeks of the start of the rainy season, my courtyard looked terrible, full of overgrown weeds, the tall vegetation |
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Thank goodness students came to wack the weeds
with this gadget, made in China.
Most people cannot afford a mower in Tanzania |
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Campus cows graze outside
my house, on the side wall |
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| View from my front window - cows, campus dogs, and cow herder |
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| View from my back door - the Mbeya mountains |
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| Cute scene - at my front door recently, baby goats avoiding the rain |
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| Not cute - dead bed bugs. The Peace Corps Medical Office approved of fumigation. I had to stay in banking town for three days. At the same time, I developed this muscle spasm/inflammation of intercostal muscles, the muscles surrounding the rib cage. Costachondritis is caused by stress and imbalanced diet. Some rowers (athletes) have this inflammation The office only treated the symptoms. Now I do not have the intense pain that makes me wake up at night |
More on
rainy season and its impact on travel in a later episode.
I set my
alarm clock for 6:05 am, but sometimes I snooze for another 15-30 min before I
start my day. A short walk across pine tree grove to the school buildings, sit
in the teachers’ staff room, work if I don’t have classes. Work or hang around
till 5:30 pm or so, depending on how much work I have – not only preparing
lesson plans, but lately in the last few months, review topics and sample exam
questions for the students to practice, and write final exam questions for
biology and chemistry for form 1 students. In the new 2020 year, I have to
write scheme of work also for each subject and class.
Teacher
readers, you know what I mean by lesson plans and scheme of work. Each scheme
of work took me two days to do, very tedious. And we do not have forms, all
handwritten out on giant paper. The scheme of work is dictated by the Ministry
of Education syllabus for each subject. How many periods for each topic, and
sub topics, etc. It is a tool for planning all the classes for the year. Lesson
plan is for each topic is a detailed teaching and learning activities for a class
period.
I have 4 rooms, living room, bedroom, spare room (guest room), kitchen.
Also refer to episode titled "My House" the November 2019, ‘The house I live in’, for the view of the kitchen.
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My bedroom. Note all of your well wish
cards are up on the shelf |
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| Book shelving area in the bedroom. I used settle-in money from Peace Corps to make three unstained bookshelves |
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| Closet area of the bedroom |
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| Living room - I also used the settle in money to have two couches made |
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| The wall side of the two person couch |
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| The front door side of the living room. Note nothing is purchased except for the couches and bookshelves. |
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The spare room. Everything is left
for me from the previous volunteer,
except the bookshelf
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| Corner of the spare room, with diagrams already on flip charts |
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The back door view where I also
use the settle-in money to install the solar system on the stool.
The settle-in money was not enough to cover bookshelves, couches and solar.
The door on the left is the bedroom door.
The giraffe painting is my own purchase
from my recent December holiday. |
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| Looks good, right?, Fresh corn. But they are chewy, harder, and not so sweet. One volunteer says it is like field corn,. USA corn is sweet, (after all, it is called sweet corn), but it is probably genetically modified. |
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| Wiring is exposed. Home-rigged. |
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My friends, the staples I eat. I love Milo - tastes like whoppers. Stacy loves it too, and Nutella. Tomato sauce can come in small packet. Coffee, tea bags, oat meal, powder milk. I buy fresh produce occasionally, when I have access to a market.
The pineapples are in season, and they are delicious, sweeter than the ones in USA.
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