Picture is of a small Masai Boma within about 10 minutes walk from our village.

TIA Modified: TIT – This is Tanzania

You’ve probably heard the acronym TIA before. People usually say it when something ridiculous happens that can’t be explained, so it’s just explained with a shrug and three letters: TIA (this is Africa).

Some volunteers at RVCV have modified it a bit to reflect our specific location on the continent: TIT. This is Tanzania.

Starting with the basics – cell phones. It seems like everyone here has a cell phone, and what’s more, there is cell service all over the place. For a country with so little infrastructure (my lack of elaboration should indicate how little there really is), the cell phone phenomenon is incredible. How can ‘everyone’ afford to have a cell phone, when practically everyone is suffering from poverty, lack of education, etc., etc? Oh well, I guess TIT.

to be cont...

Taylor and the tooth fairy

Picture is of Maria (front teeth missing), Khadija and Elizabethe who is a teacher's helper here at the village.

Notes on Becoming a Tooth Fairy (from a 23 year old volunteer, Taylor)

On Sunday night when I returned to the Serengeti house after dinner, the boys’ room was a buzz with talk of the tooth fairy. Simone had lost a tooth and had placed it under his pillow in anxious hopes that the tooth fairy would exchange it for a present. Thank goodness I had overheard other volunteers discussing tooth fairy protocol, because ‘lessons on becoming a tooth fairy’ aren’t included in the volunteer manual I received when I arrived! It wasn’t until 4:40am the following morning that I remembered I was in charge of getting the tooth fairy gift and secretly depositing it under Simone’s pillow in the middle of the night. Frantic that I’d forget and Simone would be crushed, I set my alarm for 5:50 am. (As if Simone, who is 9 years old doesn’t already have suspicions about the tooth fairy.)Seeing as this was my first time as a tooth fairy, I thought out my plan carefully. Waking up at 5:50 would give me enough time to find a tooth fairy gift, dress in some bank-robber-esque attire, and perform the exchange right around wake-up time (which would provide the perfect cover story, should I get caught in the act). The biggest challenge would be the sheer number of boys, which I thought of as ‘landmines’, in the room. All eight of them were just waiting to be woken up by the slightest noise or rise in air temperature. Not only did I need to be careful enough not to disturb Simone (did I mention he sleeps on the top bunk?) I couldn’t wake up the other 7 boys either. What a challenge!So, dressed in dark brown pants and a maroon hoodie pulled over my head (silhouetted curly hair would totally give me away), I crept barefoot into the boys’ room. I turned down the kerosene lamp - for cover of darkness. Tiptoeing across the room to Simone’s bed, I stepped up on the frame to reach the top bunk. My feet were less than 12 inches from Boaz’s face. ‘What would I do if he woke up now’ I thought. It was as if the worldwide future of the tooth fairy rest on my shoulders. Luck would have it that he was facing me, so there was no way I was getting the tooth from under his pillow. I slipped a rubber ball under Simone’s covers – the only remotely masculine toy in the ‘tooth fairy trunk’. How in the world did my mom make it through 28 teeth x 2 kids! Tooth fairy nightmare! I carefully climbed down from the bed, tiptoed out of the room and straight to my bedroom to change into different clothes. More fairy strategy - cover your tracks.Within minutes of wake up, the boys were shouting that the tooth fairy had come. Success. I spent most of breakfast hoping that no one else would lose a tooth for a while. Then, Happy came out of the bathroom with something in her hand. She proudly opened her fist, revealing a molar, while happily tilting her head back to show me its former home. Round two…

The coffee fields just outside of our gates. The coffee beans are growing fast now that the rains are in full swing. All of the hillsides surrounding our village are filled with coffee plants in all states of growth as well as maize. We tried to roast maize last weekend and it looks like corn and smells like corn, but it is definitely not the sweet corn we are used too in the states. We boiled it for 20 minutes before we put on the grill to soften it up and it still tasted like hard, chewey, nasty deer corn. :) The staff loved it though, so we donated it to them.

Believe it or not, Obama is huge here. They even have Obama Kangas (the outwear/skirts that women wear) This is a picture of a truck I saw in Karatu.

The Rainy season is here and there is no doubt about it. I had quite the experience yesterday on my trip back from Karatu. This is the little town that is about 45 minutes away on a good day, on a day like yesterday it took us about one hour and 15 minutes. Part of the delay is due to the horrible condition of the roads due to wash outs and mudslides. We nearly slid off of the side of the mountain. Fortunately, we had stopped and picked up 4 male teachers, two female teachers, 3 kids, a pregnant woman, two Masai warriors, 2 chickens and a goat. SO….even if I wanted to look out of the car, I couldn’t because you couldn’t move much less see through the windshield or side windows. Tanzanian B.O. nothing like it in the world. We finally made it to the village and I am not sure I am going to be going anywhere soon, I take my life in my hands enough just by walking around with the Elephants, Black mambos and Cape Buffalo, but the muddy roads are just about to do me in! LOL

My new digs

I have moved to India's house down the hill. It is very quiet and peaceful and I am extremely lucky to be here. She turned the present room into my bedroom so I have a wall of presents covered with fabric on one wall. We are on a hill so the views are spectacular.

Cutting grass

I never realized the extent we take for granted the machines in our lives. Whether it is the pre-ground coffee you buy at the store or the little grinder you have in the kitchen to grind it fresh.

Well today I watched three Fundee’s (casual labor) cut the grass with modified machete type swords. We are on 7 acres and they are cutting the entire place by hand! It is amazing. I tried and couldn’t cut one blade of grass and the Panga (machete thing) was heavy as hell. So here are a few more pics of this great place...

Slip and Slide Saturday

Today we had a blast with the kids utilizing two tarps, a gallon of Lemon Fresh (dishwashing soap) and multiple buckets and tubs of water hauled by the kids. It was a Tanzanian version of the slip and slide. We fixed the tarps to the ground with handmade stakes, which took forever to make by the way LOL. Then all you have to do is mix the soap with the water, splash it on and add 30 kids. We then constantly threw buckets of water on them, it was more like a soapy, dirty swirlaround, not much sliding happening, but it was very cute.

A few pictures of my room and Volunteer House

Here are a few pictures of the Volunteer House where I lived for the first couple of weeks. I have now moved to India’s house and the last picture of the two boys was taken in my new room. I will take pictures of my new room and post them tomorrow.

The ceilings of all buildings are made of Sisal wood and the roof is made of corrugated tin, no insulation in between the wood and the tin, hence the bats, rats and loud noise when it rains. LOL

The manual way :)

Elias, our cook, grinding coffee by hand! He does this everyday, by the way...

Picture - Off to school and the daily business of hauling stuff

Well, the rainy season is officially here. It has rained for 4 days in a row now and it is a big, muddy swamp. The kids are great about taking off their shoes and rain boots before entering the houses, however their socks are filthy(I haven’t figured out how the mud gets to the socks, but oh well!), so I am not quite sure what good it does, but at least they do it.

The corn fields surrounding the village have really taken off, which is great. The people who planted for the “short rains” i.e. Feb and March lost all of their crops as we didn’t have the rains, but now the time of “long rains” is here and looks like it may actually happen. I basically have mud on me from head to toe every day and am at the point of taking a shower in the morning and then one again in the evening. Thank god for running water!!!

I have moved down to India’s house for the rest of the year. She has turned the “Present room” into my room with a bed, side table, lots of shelves, hanging rod (yeah!), overstuffed side chair and a desk and goat chair. I have to walk outside and down a few feet to the bathroom, but I am in heaven. It only gets a little scary at night when the hyenas are out and you can hear them, but not see them. I am totally in heaven. I told her she may never get rid of me now. My view is unobstructed of the valley and coffee fields as her house is at the bottom/back of the compound.
She even put a little chair outside of my door so I can sit and view the scenery.

We have 3 new volunteers this week and a 4th coming tomorrow. All are in their early 20’s just out of college or staying here before they go to grad school. We are fully booked for the summer and the fall is nearly full too. It should be interesting over the long run to meet so many people from so many diverse backgrounds. It is perfect now that I am no longer in the volunteer house because I can socialize when I want or go home and read/sleep.

A few more kids have Malaria. Evidently this is an unprecedented number of cases here. India seems to think it is climate change as it is happening all over Eastern Africa. Who knows, I have now been bitten at least 15 times, but so far have escaped getting Malaria. The preventive is too hard on the body to take for any length of time, and the cure is so easy and only three days, I figure I will do as the Tanzanian’s do and just treat it as no big deal.

I would love to hear from everyone when you have time. My yahoo email is tterrill1@yahoo.com