Dear Friends,

OK -- OK -- So I have been quite delinquent in letting you know how I've been doing. I hope this hasn't caused too much pulling out of hair and gnashing of teeth for all of you. I've been meaning to -- really I have... I must say that I was away for almost three weeks after writing to you in June followed up by my hosting a July 4th bash with which to be reckoned... but that leaves a month of general laziness and classes beginning of which you are sorely uninformed. So let's go!

If you remember, dear readers, when we last left our hero, he was precariously dangling from a precipice when the 8:43 train from Santa Fe, having lost its brakes... ooops. Different me.

After I last wrote you, Moringe Sokoine had its very first Form 6 graduation. Aside from its being an event, it was relatively uneventful. A typical graduation: The graduating students sang several songs (each of which came with a little dance) in which they welcomed their friends and relatives and said goodbye and thank you to the teachers. There was a passing out of certificates and awards and a big meal for everyone.

That's the last time I eat school food immediately before taking a 9-hour bus ride.

That evening, (Saturday the 6th) immediately following graduation, I got a lift from someone who had come from Arusha, so I could get on the first bus for Morogoro to go to In-Service Training with the thirty other PCV teachers with whom I trained. I got on at 5:45 AM the next morning after some mild intestinal distress. I spent the rest of the trip fighting said distress -- and because I want to stop talking about this now, I'll go ahead and just tell you I spent the first half of the subsequent week "making the run" about three or four times an hour due to what I think was dysentery. It was unquestionably not your runs-of-the-mill bacteria.

But enough of that -- Training was lots of constructive fun. At the beginning of the week we did an evaluation of our October-November training in regards to how well it prepared us for our first term. We also had a Swahili update and a session on funding for secondary projects we might have been developing.

Each volunteer was asked to invite a "counterpart", a Tanzanian teacher they feel comfortable bringing to Peace Corps events and with whom they feel comfortable sharing things. After the aforementioned sessions, the counterparts arrived (they arrived a day later than we did). We had a few sessions about the Volunteer/Counterpart relationship.

The next day was an "Open Space" day -- people with different interests and concerned announced they would facilitate a discussion on a topic of interest. This allowed for different focus groups to share ideas about issues with which they were struggling. Among the discussion groups: "Starting a New Laboratory", "Science Clubs", "Better Nutrition", "Language Barriers", "Corporal Punishment", etc.

There was a field trip that afternoon, but I was still recovering from my little microbe, so I spent the afternoon in bed. I hear it was cool, though! The rest of the week was spent with everyone in one of three major workshops, corresponding to the three "Focus Areas" of PC Tanzania's Education program: Girls' Education, Environmental Education, and HIV/AIDS Education. We spent all of Thursday, and then Friday morning in these groups with our counterparts.

I chose Girls' Education. The goal was to create the foundation for a Girls' Education Resource Manual, with ideas for Girls' Conferences, Workshops, clubs, parents' days, etc. We had various discussions, and then broke into groups to come up with more detailed plans for each of the above ideas. Somehow (still a mystery to me) I revealed myself as having some kind of vision as to how all the information could be put together in a format that would be most helpful -- and was assigned the job of editor of the Manual! (More on that later...) Each of the three focus group presented their plans to the whole group on Friday before the closing ceremony.

Fortunately, IST wasn't all just business meetings. We ended up playing cards at the pub around the corner each evening, which developed into the IST Euchre Tournament. Fifteen teams competed over three days to produce the ultimate Euchre team -- gods among humankind, an unstoppable force, more of a single-minded card-playing machine than human... incidentally, my partner Pat and I won the tournament. It was quite funny, actually -- because he and I were the last to join the tourney; we both had vaguely thought about playing but neither of us had a partner, so...

Friday night, there was a big disco dance in which there were groovy tunes pumping out of a thumpin' stereo (rented) DJed by yours truly, Dr. Funkenstein! All the teachers, counterparts, and Peace Corps staff had a great time dancing, breaking the piñata (that's not a hipster euphemism, we really had a piñata), and presenting our outgoing PC Director of the education program with gifts and cakes as a farewell. That evening was also the night of "The Safari Challenge," a competition which shan't be fully described here, but suffice it to say it involves a participant's stomach and each and every one of the African beers available in Tanzania. It made for an entertaining evening -- especially for participants like myself.

Since I had hit IST right after graduation (which was, in turn, right after school ended) it was time for a little R&R. Dar Es Salaam is only a couple of hours away from Morogoro, and since it's got good food and fun, (and since the main PC Offices are there,) many volunteers, both from my training class and the previous year's, converged on Dar like the swallows in San Capistrano (or the buzzards in Hinckley, OH)

I spent a ridiculous amount of time (and money) that week just lazing around, watching video movies at the "American Club", hanging out at Peace Corps, eating spicy Tandoori food at outdoor grills, etc. I did, however, spend two full days at PC HQ doing some additional research on the Girls' Education Resource Manual. I was able to pull together several resources from which I wanted to draw. (As an aside, unfortunately, work has been stalled on that project because I'm waiting for someone in Washington DC to send me one of those resources in electronic format so I don't have to retype its many, many, many pages.)

I think I gained at least five pounds in that week in Dar. On at least two separate days, I ate an entire chicken (half for lunch, half for dinner -- not of the same chicken, though!) I had a great time that week. However, I was sad to discover that Dar is almost as hot and humid in June as it was in December (remember, Southern hemisphere) and it was making me a bit ill, so I was happy to get back to Monduli after a week there.

After returning to Monduli in late June, I spent the final days of the month preparing for an American Independence Day celebration at my own residence. IT proved to be quite an undertaking -- but extremely well worth it as you're about to learn... Hopefully you can guess that many of the "luxuries" we had to eat and drink were difficult and expensive to come by:

People began arriving in the morning. The morning and afternoon were spent hanging with good Ethan tunes and playing hackysack. For lunch on the cold, damp Monduli day was homemade Tomato Soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. The magic ingredient in the soup was beer. People continued to stream in as we got more decorations up, including a 4'x6' American flag, several small flags mounted on toothpicks, and a copy of the Declaration of Independence (complete with a Declaration chronology and "What happened to the signers of the D of I?"). A copy of the U.S. Constitution was available in the bathroom for your seated reading.

People kept polishing off more sandwiches and beer, so folks weren't hungry for dinner quite yet, as the sun went down (7PM). So the tunes got a-pumpin (I've got a decent boom box with Xtra Boom) and we danced and drank. Some of the environmental workers from down south had brought up some of the locally-brewed honey wine, which proceeded to get a small group of people quite interesting in no time at all. They were fun the rest of the night.

After that good fun, about midnight, folks were still gettin' down, but also gettin' hungry, so we had bean burritos with all the spices, fresh veggies, fresh guacamole, and grated cheese. The magic ingredient in the beans was beer. After the beans were gone, we used the remaining ingredients to make a big tray of quesadillas, also good dipped in guac. The grooves slowed down sometime between 2 and 3AM.

With most folks up by 9AM, the beer was well underway by 10. More folks arrived as we had a big load of pancakes with maple syrup for breakfast. The magic ingredient in the pancakes was beer. Lacking plates, the process was to tear off a hunk of pancake and dip dip dip in the syrup. The afternoon saw the group split up and go to different places; some went down the hill to throw around the football, others went to the Sunday Maasai market in my town, still others stuck around and played cards.

I went up the hill at about 2PM to get the meat from my friend Laura's refrigerator. We brought down the 14 pounds of beef and two whole chickens (the guys at the market had been kind enough to kill, behead, and pluck the chickens for me at a very reasonable fee). The preparations began -- the beef was ground, the buns (which I'd baked two days before) laid out, along with the Heinz ketchup, mustard, mayo, pickle relish, barbecue sauce, and all the veggies. Brian, at the grill (made from a rain barrel the weekend before by a friend with an arcwelder) gave us a few "specialty" patties, including a square Wendy's hamburger, and a small square White Castle "slider" with holes in it.

Some other folks, correctly thinking we didn't have enough meat, ran down to the market and got a leg of goat. It was chopped into little chunks and shish-kebabbed... into some of the tenderest meat I'd had in recent memory. The magic ingredient in the goat marinade was beer. The chicken was broken up and barbecued -- I have a picture of me consuming a drumstick with the clawed foot still attached. Another person had gotten to work on a stellar potato salad. Jill was busy over at the deep-fryer, turning out the french fries. The quote of the weekend went to Eric, who, while helping Jill distribute her wares, stood at the grill and asked each burger-taker, "Do you want fries with that?"

The evening proceeded with dancing and card-based drinking games. At about 10 PM, we went to town on the firecrackers and M-80s that Brandon had brought. This turned out to be a bit of a cultural faux pas as my headmaster narrowly diverted the police from coming to the party. The time was good, though, as the "fireworks" were accompanied by the Star Wars Main Title, some John Philip Sousa classics, and a few Scott Joplin rags. Late in the night, the deep fryer turned out some battered onion rings and cheese bits. The magic ingredient in the batter was beer. Things continued until about 4 or 5 AM that night.

About half the group left sometime in the morning, but some stayed to get some more pancakes before they left. The magic ingredient in the pancakes was again beer, but this time along with whole wheat flour, oatmeal, and cinnamon. Very tasty! We hung out most of the rest of the day playing more cards and chilling out. For dinner was spaghetti with marinara sauce, breadsticks with garlic butter, and a Caesar salad with an olive oil vinaigrette. The magic ingredient in the marinara sauce was, in fact, beer. The rest of the group dispersed the following day.

All in all, a great time for everyone, including me. Word has apparently spread quickly, as I've had people who weren't there tell me they've heard stories and were sad they missed it. It's definitely a "go" for next year, the question is: How do I improve from here?

Well, because it's been so long, there's quite a bit more to tell about the beginning of school and subsequent events, but this is quite long enough already... and I'm a little short on time, as well. So enjoy this little prose and you'll likely hear from me again quite soon!

The secret ingredient in this letter is me,
Ethan

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