Home Life

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.

View of sun rise from my back door

View of moon rise from my back door

View of moon during the day
from my back door

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

• ·        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.
• ·        has my home-made toys to play with, and loves to sit in a packaging box-his own “house”.
• ·        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.
• ·        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.
• ·        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. 

Panther eyes

Likes to play in boxes like my new luggage

Poor little fella, when he was going
for the neutering operation

Meowing at me in his box

He likes to sit on clothes - my fresh laundry

Ah, the big triangle area of my jacket pocket that Stacy ripped apart

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.  

Catching water the old fashion way

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. 

Three butterflies graced my weeds

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

Thank goodness students came to wack the weeds
with this gadget, made in China.
Most people cannot afford a mower in Tanzania

Campus cows graze outside
my house, on the side wall

View from my front window - cows, campus dogs,  and cow herder

View from my back door -  the Mbeya mountains

Cute scene -  at my front door recently, baby goats avoiding the rain

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. 

My bedroom. Note all of your well wish
cards are up on the shelf

Book shelving area in the bedroom. I used settle-in money from Peace Corps to make three unstained bookshelves

Closet area of the bedroom

Living room - I also used the settle in money to have two couches made

The wall side of the two person couch

The front door side of the living room. Note nothing is purchased except for the couches and bookshelves.

The spare room. Everything is left
for me from the previous volunteer,
except the bookshelf

Corner of the spare room, with diagrams already on flip charts

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.

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. 

Wiring is exposed. Home-rigged.

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.

Flora and Fauna I

Some Flora and Fauna

This episode was written 22 Dec, but due to hotel wifi shut down in the wee hours in the morning, I was not able to upload to the blog site.

Trying to rush through a blog episode does not work. Spent the first two weeks in December 2019 training in Morogoro, central south Tanzania. As soon as the bus got off the highlands and mountains, we could feel the humidity. In Mbeya, 82 degree F is just nice, but 82 in Morogoro is humid and clothes stick to people. I rinsed the sweat off my shirt every day, and it was so convenient that the guest house we stayed in had laundry facilities.

I am sleep-deprived to keep up with this blog. So I am taking the easy road this late night with some pictures of plants and animals, and when I was ready to upload to the blog site, the wifi was not working. Most of them I do not know their names, and I wish there were a botanist or a Tanzanian field guide book I can consult with. Some are familiar, some are not. Some are not native to Tanzania, but they thrive here. Some are wild, some are cultivated. I will reserve the big animals for another episode.

A very interesting insect while we bus passengers were stranded at the roadside between Mbeya and Iringa.
It had a round sucker as mouth parts.

lizard or gecko or skink-I know not.
These reptiles are sometimes inside houses.
They remind me of the PBS British
TV murder mystery "Death in Paradise", where a lizard is
the detective protagonist's friend.

Tiny lizard from Mbeya.
Photo by A.M.

  

Ah, a large millipede {junguu), harmless

Chura,an insect. It's not a frog

Camel spider in Zanzibar. Photo by S.V.

My very own photo! From Korogwe

The composition of this picture looks like a painting. Blue is the wall, white is the floor. From Morogoro

Large snail on the wall of my host family's house

Pied crow, a very large bird. It's everywhere

Dead rat on the street. The feet are measure marks

Bird on window ledge of Amabilis Center conference center
and guest house laundry room in Morogoro

Bottle brush - love this tree. It is on school campus and in city landscapes

I see this in my courtyard, and it is all over the country. Cassia??

A hedge of yellow trumpet flowers and morning glory in Mbeya country side

Yellow trumpet flowers. Others are white

Agarve plant that is used for sisal. Sisal was the dominant industry in Tanzania at one time. Our Target baskets - sisal....

Plumeria - fraggrant. In Hawai, people made perfume oils out of plumeria. One of my favorite aromas.

Another hedge plant -  cactus, in Mbeya rural

Kapok tree pods in full growth -  like cotton on the tree. More below

Don't know the name of this tree. Its on campus too

It is not a cactus. Name is mtelatela

Mtelatela blossom

Latana - common in Hawaii also.
Native to Americas and Africa

confound it-it is the same picture as above-but I am having a hard time removing this one without removing all the rest below. So Iam leaving it alone. I have better things to do than struggling with asthetics and the internet connectivity.

Left-A colorful bird among the leaves of a bush in Mbeya.  Middle-Turtle at Amabilis Center. Right-

Guineafowl pair carving at New Acropol Hotel in Morogoro.  See the real bird below. It is abundant also in Ngorongoro Crater in Arusha.

Yes, your eyes see correctly. Turkeys,
natives of the Americas, are raised in Mbeya
at the Catholic Youth Center and Guest House.

Above is kapok tree flower, bare trunk, fruit - a large pod with silky seeds, like cotton

Pencil tree in Morogoro

Jicaranda tree. It is also in California      

A pair of wild guineafowl on my host family's farm--double image

Notice

I hope that the Tanzanian government will issue our work permits before June 2020. The 2018 health volunteers are leaving Jan 28, 2020 due to no work permits issued by the  Tanzanian government. The class of 2020 Health volunteers has been cancelled.