Korogwe Week 2

Korogwe Week 2

23 Jul 2019 Jumanne (Tuesday)               Incredible-we, 51 American PC trainees (PCTs), were sent to 51 host families last Thursday evening, only under five days ago, and left Alexandria, VA, only 14 days, BUT we feel like it is a long time ago when we left American soil.

Mashindei Mtn

My group of five PCTs are in the Mashindei Mountain area, in a village of about 2500 people. The PC training program director came to visit us from Dar. He said we have the best community location. Today, it is shamban, harvest day. The secondary school we are based at sent out the students to pick corn. It so reminded me of the lickanje harvest I participated in October 2018 in Slovenia, another near half-way-around-the-world place.

Homestay farm house living room

Shamban-maize harvest-when the ear is picked, I bend the stalk.

The back porch is the center of activities

Consider the back porch the outdoor kitchen area, with charcoal stove. Host family has gas stove and refrigerator indoors.

The next level beyond the porch is the "backyard", where laundry, some dish washing, and trash burning activities all occur. The garden of many fruit trees are right there also. The farm grows ginger and onions.

Some students (percentage unknown, I will find out details when I am installed at my teaching site later in the year) are too poor to have meals when they attend class. Today, they can get a free meal in school. The school sells the corn to bring in income for the school, to buy more school supplies, etc.

Our training is complete immersion within host family and community to absorb culture and Kiswahili. I am not doing as well as other young PSTs. I know the words, but when I hear them, the processing from hearing to translation is slow, so I don’t understand.

My host family has a lovely large house, and each bedroom has its own bathroom, quite a luxury. Baba, Mama and binti (daughter) are wonderful people. Mama’s brother is high up in the Tanzanian foreign service, though Mama doesn’t speak English. I met more of her visiting family this morning; they were from Dar.

I love the spiced water the people make tea and coffee with; it is ginger and sometimes added lemon grass on top. I had been drinking my tea and coffee with ginger powder before I left, so this is added familiarity, though only a few of my fellow PSTs had experience with spiced water before.

No internet connection for laptop, and no bars, i.e., no mobile wireless service in the village for us PCTs, though we see our host families are connected with their mobiles. So we will have to wait to get into town tomorrow, when we attend classes.