Hello, America!

This is Ethan Field writing to you from sunny Arusha, site of the Peace Corps Tanzania Training Center. I have been here for a little over one month, and am finally beginning to settle in to the language and culture. Somewhat. J This email is a bit long because there are so many things I have to share, so feel free to read it in chunks. The chunk about my new address is at the bottom if you want to skip to there. Hang on!

Many people think my poor white skin is frying down here... this is only partly true. The bare sun is pretty fierce, but the air itself is not very hot. Arusha is over a mile above sea level, so the breeze is fairly cool, and aside from the dust everywhere, relatively fresh. It was worse in Ohio when I left. Same temperature, much less humidity. (It is much more humid on the coast of Tanzania, though.)

The sun rises here every morning around 6 or 6:30. It sets at the same time in the evening. Every day, all year --after all, I'm at about 3 degrees South latitude. However, I am told that the hot season (December-February) is a bit hotter than the cool season (June-August). There is a short rain in November and a longer one in Feb-March)

Very dusty and dry everywhere. In a month, though, I will be knee deep in mud. I'll give you all further reports as time goes on. Only the main roads (about five of them in Arusha) are paved, and even the paved ones are riddled with pot holes such that on the nice ones you can go about 50 kph (30 mph) and on the bad ones you might be able to run faster than most buses can go.

Right now I live about 10k from the training site, which is a bit of a hike, so I take the Daladala. The daladala is like a stretch minivan or microbus that typically has seats for about 12 people. It's pretty typical that about 20 people will be stuffed into one; in fact, most drivers won't even leave until there are at least 15. We take this over the aforementioned roads, so there's a lot of crashing around and the occasional flipping over (this has not yet happened to me).

Though people drive on the left side of the street here (former British colony) there is really no concept of "lanes" in town. They just sort of drive wherever they can and when someone is in their way, they pass them in any way they can. Often the dirt on the side of the road is in better condition than the road itself and so it will be used.

That would be "no", and I haven't seen any of those yet. They're more over in the lakes region. However, this past Sunday I went on a day trip with some other volunteers to Tarangire National Park, where I saw almost a hundred elephants, a few giraffes, hundreds of zebra, dozens of baboons and other monkeys, impalas, gazelles, water buffalo, wild boar, and all kinds of crazy birds.

Understand, also, that we're not talking about being on the other side of a fence, here. We had to wait ten minutes for a herd of zebra to cross the road at one point. At another, we passed about 5 meters from a family of elephants. After we passed, mama elephant made it quite clear that she didn't like us so close to her baby and gave us a good trumpeting. I've got plenty of good pictures.

I'm staying with a host family here, which has its good and bad sides. On the one hand, I have my meals made for me, and my clothes washed, by the family. On the other hand, if I'm not home by supper (8PM) people start worrying. Also, there's not a whole lot of privacy living in a four bedroom house with a family of eight -- especially when I have a room all to myself.

Some of my Peace Corps colleagues have actual toilets and showers in their host homes; not so with mine. We've got a separate stall for bathing (a little shed with a door and a hole for the water to go out) where you bring your own hot water in a bucket and use a bowl to pour it over yourself -- I'll be bathing this way for the next two years! J Also in the same little shed, the "choo" (rhymes with blow) is located. It's basically a hole in the ground with bricks on either side to put your feet on while you squat and do your business. It's definitely different.

Contrary to popular belief, there is toilet paper in Tanzania, it's just that most folks use their hands and a bucket of water. I am told by the Peace Corps people who prefer this method that it gets you cleaner, but I'm still not completely sold on it. So, I just get used to carrying my own roll with me everywhere (which I can by at any corner shack)

Mzungu is the general kiswahili word for white person. It can have negative connotations, but doesn't always. For instance, a group of little children running at me shouting "Mzungu!" are probably just very excited to see me. On the other hand, after I start speaking the language, they usually stop saying that word around me.

It is very interesting being in a place where I am obviously an outsider. There is no way for me to pretend I'm a local, and people generally assume I don't know any of the language (since most of the folks who come through Arusha are tourists on their way to Kilimanjaro or the Serengeti.)

For this reason, the locals will stare at me everywhere I go. I was bothered by this for a short time until I realized that whenever I see a Mzungu that I don't know, I tend to stare at them and wonder what they're doing. After I realized that, I wasn't as bothered. Most of the rest of the time this can be cured by assertive greeting; if someone continues to stare at me, I greet them in kiswahili, and that usually softens them up and we exchange greetings, which are very important in Africa.

For all of you who were concerned about me getting my shots, thank you, I've had more than enough now. I've been immunized for tetanus, rabies, hepatitis, typhoid, and a host of other diseases that are much less prevalent in the USA because of these very vaccines. (Many of these involved more than one shot over several days). I am also taking a weekly pill to suppress malaria. It doesn't prevent it, just slows it down enough so that if I get it, I have plenty of time to take the stuff that will wipe it out of my system.

There are about 50 people in my training class, a little more than half are teachers, a little less than half are environmental workers. Education Training has worked like this so far: The first week we met at the site Monday through Saturday. The next week we began observing at local schools (I was at Arusha Meru Secondary) Monday-Thursday and were at the Training site on Friday and Saturday. This continued for four weeks, except that in our second week we began teaching the classes.

Secondary school classes are taught in English (not just Peace Corps, all secondary classes in Tanzania), about which there is some controversy. It is the decision of the Ministry of Education, though, and we work within their guidelines. Part of the issue is that if you want to make any real money in Tz, you have to speak English because most of the money comes from Mzungus. It's a complicated issue.

Contrary to another popular belief, Peace Corps is NOT about Americans coming in and imposing our American values on "the poor heathens". We are not representatives of the US Department of State or Defense. As a matter of fact, people who have had any affiliation with a US intelligence agency are strictly forbidden from joining Peace Corps. A quick fluffy official background:

Mission of the Peace Corps:
To promote world peace and friendship (I'm not kidding, this is the verbatim mission of the Peace Corps Act as approved by Congress in 1961)

The Three Goals of Peace Corps:
1) To provide skilled labor to countries in need
2) To promote a better understanding of Americans by the people of the world.
3) To promote better understanding of the people of the world by Americans.
(You are experiencing #3 right now -- I have also added:)
4) To promote a better understanding of Peace Corps by Americans.

As far as I can gather, the intention is to take good American people with skills, train them heavily, and then to try and make Tanzanians out of them. They want me to be as close as possible to a native Tanzanian, but one who has the education that I've gotten in the United States, and the skills I've learned in Peace Corps training.

In addition to our regular jobs, each volunteer is expected to become involved in Community Development activities. It is true that the "old school" of Peace Corps Community development (back in the day of Dad and Aunt Lynn) was considered "need based" community development: Entering a community, trying to determine its needs, and helping the local people meet those needs. This often involved volunteers imposing their idea of what the community "needed" on them.

The "new school" is called "Asset Based" development (informally known as the "glass half full" method) where a volunteer takes a very long time to observe the community carefully, and sees what things it does well or likes to do, and encourages that through idea-sharing. Do the students like to play football (what we call soccer)? Organize a football team for the school, and make sure the students are the ones in charge of it. Do the women of the village love to sew? Find a woman who might be interested in running a group who repairs school uniforms.

The idea is that rather than coming up with the "solutions" myself, and imposing my own idea of what my village needs, I will wait and see what the village wants to do and help guide their leaders through it, and encourage new leaders out of the group by harnessing their passion for what they are interested in. This way, there is sufficient leadership in the community to solve their own problems, which only they will be able to determine accurately. When I leave, they should be able to continue on without missing a beat.

It is true that it is impossible for me to be here without some of my "American Values" or at least my "Ethan Values" being shared or becoming apparent. However, as one person in a village of several hundred, it would be impossible for me to impose anything on my community. My ideas will be just one more crazy idea from outside, they'll take them or leave them as they wish. If I were in the US and a Tanzanian came to my school to teach for two years, I don't think he or she would be very likely to radically alter the values of my community. But I might drop an idea here or there that might stick in some way (for instance, if I choose to employ methods of disciplining my students than corporal punishment, fewer teachers may beat their students in the future. Maybe, Maybe not. Who can say?)

The thing I have liked most about the training is that our trainers have stressed the subjectivity and ambiguity of everything. They leave almost all decisions up to the judgement of the volunteers. "It's your choice" is the most common answer to a question about any quandary a volunteer has. A sample of such:

The impossible is possible. Admittedly, I haven't met any native UUs, but it turns out that (at least) two other volunteers who are currently serving are UU. One I discovered that I had met at Con Con in 1992. The other I hadn't met, but she is from Cincinnati and knows Daren Fowler and other OVD UUs that I've met. For further irony, this one from Cincinnati is the PCV who I will be replacing in December, which brings me to....

Last week, I learned the location of my permanent site (i.e., where I will be from 12/98 to 12/00) As it turns out, I am going the shortest distance from Arusha of any volunteer. I will be in Monduli, which is about 45k (1.5 hours by bus) from Arusha, situated here in the northern part of Tanzania, right in between the mountains in the East (Kilimanjaro and Meru) and the Parks to the West (Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater). Each of these is less than a half a day's trip from here. (Some volunteers are 3 or 4 days trip from Arusha, and in the rainy season will not be able to leave their town at all. The Odden family will be happy to learn the this year, for the first time, there will be two volunteers on Ukerewe island in Lake Victoria)

This weekend (7 November) I will be going to visit my site for one week; I will supply you with more specific details about it when I have returned. What I do have now is the address I will be using. Any letters you send to me after about 15 November should be sent to:

Mwalimu Ethan Field
P.O. Box 98
Monduli, Arusha
TANZANIA
East Africa

The title "Mwalimu" before my name means "teacher" and apparently helps the mail get there a little faster. The "Arusha" is necessary because that is the name of the region I'm in. Those of you who have my training address; it will still work but will take much longer to get to me.

Well, there is still much I have to tell about the weather, my school, the Tanzanian school system in general, the kiswahili language, etc., but I fear this is much too long already, and I will have more time to better describe things later. For now, I thank you all for your continued support, and look forward to hearing from you soon!

Uhuru na Umoja,
Ethan

Return to Letters from Tanzania