Dear Friends and Family,

The holiday and vacation seasons are quickly drawing to a close. A few hurdles remain before I can throw myself back in the classroom... but for right now, I've just poured a fresh glass of pineapple-banana juice from the blender and I'm ready to catch up with all of you.

...he was on his way to Dar Es Salaam for various business- and pleasure-related events. I had a lovely Thanksgiving in Morogoro and promptly headed off to Dar for a Girls' Education focus workshop.

The workshop was a two-day event which drew a representative volunteer from each region around the country. The history: Last year, PC Tanzania had recieved a large grant with which to sponsor Girls' Education events and conferences. The Volunteers who were then in the middle of their service (who have since completed their service this December) were given a big push for Girls' Ed conferences at their mid-service conference in January of last year.

The result was excellent; almost every region in Tanzania had a large-scale conference for girls at Peace Corps schools. I described the one here in the north to you last April. Some regions had more than one.

The Country Directors wanted to keep this momentum going, but also to add more depth to it. For instance, there was no common resource used for these conferences; every region pretty much invented the wheel on its own. Moreover, while the conferences themselves were successful, they only addressed some of the issues girls are facing here in Tanzania. Our Girls' Education effort hasn't yet done much with day-to-day classroom work, or with school administration, or family, or community.

So the workshop's purpose was twofold, spread out over the two days. On the first day we talked about the conferences we'd had: mistakes made, lessons learned, successes, results, etc. We talked about how we might improve the conference format in general, and what kinds of resources would help people in various regions for planning such conferences and making sure there was some follow-up with the participants.

The second day, we talked about other factors where we might be able to have some kind of positive impact: the school, parents, community. We discussed ways that we could get these different groups more involved in their daughters' education so that they would realize the value in it. We also talked about what kind of resources might be useful for Volunteers in that respect.

We also decided on some issues that were still vague enough that we wanted input from a larger number of Volunteers -- issues like: boys' participation in workshops and events, girls' clubs, community-based funding, etc. These were set aside as topics for potential discussion at the Y2K lock-ins I mentioned last time. Each region was to discuss these issues and a coordinator would bring the results back to the Mid-Service Conference for *my* class of Volunteers, which is next week. (More on that later).

The new Volunteers were sworn in on December 2nd. The following week was the official close-of-service for the second-year Volunteers. That makes me an official "mzee" ("old guy") Volunteer. It does feel a little weird -- I don't feel like the kind of person I perceived the older volunteers to be this time last year... but here we are. I had a lovely time DJing the subsequent Swearing-In party, and of course, got thrown in the pool. But then, so did everybody else.

The next few days were a fairly typical trip to Dar for me -- getting fat after eating too much rich food and spending far too much money in the process... and sweating about thirty liters a day in the coastal climate.

I'd come to Dar not knowing how I was going to spend the rest of my vacation. I'd had a few vague thoughts in mind, but nothing concrete. Brandon (who I've mentioned before) and I had some ideas that were pointing in the same direction -- Tanga. It's a sizeable town on Tanzania's northern coast between Dar and Mombasa, Kenya.

There were a couple of new Volunteers there, at brand new sites, so Brandon and I went up to stay with them and helped them buy stuff for their empty houses. Tanga is a lovely old port town, and very quiet, as are most predominantly Muslim towns.

Late in the week we all went to the Amboni Caves, a set of huge old caves just north of town. They were several meters high in some places, with all sorts of cool stalagmites and stalactites and whatnot. Also lots of bats -- like tens of thousands. We then went down the road a piece to see some hot sulfur springs, too... they'd colored the underwater ground a bright blue-green and has the distinct odor their name implies.

The following week Brandon and I parted ways while he went up to Mombasa and I went to the island of Pemba. Pemba is the second biggest island of those comprising Zanzibar (the larger island, often called Zanzibar, is named Unguja.) Because Zanzibar and did not merge with Tanganyika to form Tanzania until 1964, they had different independence struggles against different colonial powers and hence have very different histories.

Apparently the regular Tanga-Pemba ferry is out of service, so I hopped a freight ship. That makes it sound really cool, but there were a few dozen other Tanzanians on the boat, and we were actually given real tickets and stuff, instead of the under-the-table dealings I was expecting. However, the alternative (going back to Dar, spending the night, and taking an expensive shuttle to Unguja and then Pemba) would have cost over six times as much as the freighter did. Even though kids were puking on me right and left on the way back (rough seas) I still made off like a bandit. As an added bonus, there were dolphins accompanying us on our way into port in Pemba, jumping in classic arcs out of the water.

The most striking part of the trip was that it is basically a 100% Muslim island, and it's during the holy month of Ramadan, so everyone was fasting every day from about 4:30 AM to 7:00 PM. This means no eating OR drinking of any kind. Even if you're not Muslim, it's such a culturally universal issue that it's a MAJOR faux pas to eat or drink anything where anyone can see you. I was asked several times a day by locals if I was fasting or not. When I told them I wasn't because I'm not Muslim, they seemed to think that was kind of irrelevant. "You mean Christians don't fast?" asked one guy. To them, it's a cultural issue, and not a religious one.

So we did all of our daytime eating behind closed doors. This was a little harder in the middle of the week when a few of us took a big bike trip up around the northern part of the island. We biked from the town of Wete, where there are some PC teachers, straight north and beyond the northernmost town on the island. We then headed out towards a big forest where a new environmental Volunteer is being placed (he was one of us on the trip). We passed by his house which he'd still not completely moved into.

We'd heard that there was an archaeologist doing some work further down that same peninsula, so despite the fact that it was already dark, we continued down the sandy, narrow, winding path, not really sure if we were going the right direction. About three hours after dark and a after asking lots of locals where this guy was, we stumbled onto his campsite. He'd "rented out" a few mud huts from some local folks where he was staying for three weeks, way down at the end of this little peninsula.

We spent the night in the tent we'd brought, three of us in a small two-person tent (on a tropical island, no less) and getting bitten by hungry fire ants. In the morning we took a look at the site, where they were digging for pieces of pottery and other artifacts. They'd already found many that they could reliably date as being over a thousand years old.

To get back on the road and see the other stuff we wanted to see, we had two options: Go back the way we came to the main road and then onwards, or somehow get ourselves further down the shore to the last peninsula and ride up it. We'd thought we might be able to walk it through one of the mangroves, but the tide was in.

So, we got two kids to take us in a dhao, a mid-sized canoe that has been hollowed out of the trunk of a single huge tree. They're used by local fishermen who stay close to shore. So it was the three of us, our three mountain bikes, and these two kids paddling out along this bay of the Indian Ocean. It was admittedly a bit of a precarious ride, but still probably far safer then some of the bus rides I'd been on inland. After an hour or so, we'd made it to the final peninsula and got back on our bikes.

We then rode up through town where there were allegedly some old ruins of ancient mosques. We were met there by a crazy old man and his two dozen or so children. It was difficult to make out his ravings, most of which had to do with the Zanzibar separatist party (very popular on the islands) of which he was a member, and a scathing rebuke of the socialist system that had forced him to give up the rights to his farmland even though he still had to farm it for the government. As a part of his ravings, though, he showed us a few centuries-old ruins, and some ancient Pemban graves. We were generally heartened by the fact that his kids seemed to find him just as amusingly bizarre as we did.

From there we headed due north until we hit the beach on the north shore -- just kilometer after kilometer of white sands, coral reefs, and baby blue ocean as far as the eye could see. We took an obligatory dip to cool off, and then headed on our way back through the National forest on that end of the island. Then, back down to the southern part of the island where we'd originally been staying.

The next day, some of the volunteers from the island plus a couple other guests like me got on a little sailboat and went to an little-known offshore tourist island. Both of those adjectives are fortunate, because were it a non-tourist spot, our women friends would have had to remain wrapped from head to toe the whole time, even when swimming. But since it was little-known, we were the only ones on the island the whole day.

The beach was much like the one I described before: Expanses of fine white sand, crystal clear sky-blue ocean. There were some nearby reefs where we did some snorkeling, saw thousands of tropical fish, made sandcastles, got really sunburned, and all that other fun stuff.

(The cruel side of me would like to take this timely moment to remind you that most of you are surrounded by city-blackened snow and sub-freezing temperatures while reading this. Thank you.)

Aside from the aforementioned child vomiting, the ride back from Pemba was largely uneventful. It was good to get back on the mainland and have a beer (not available on Pemba,) and during the daytime, no less! The next day I headed back to sweet, cool Monduli, where I took a hot bucket bath (just used cold water on the sweltering coast) and slept under multiple blankets for the first time in three weeks.

I mostly just lazed around the house for a few days, catching up with this and that, running errands and whatnot. I also took some time to rearrange the house. (You may recall that Mark and Julie went home and will soon be married, and moving into Laura's old house on the hill when they return... in short, I'm living alone again!)

For Christmas, I went to a PC school on the other side of Kilimanjaro. For those of you who've been with me since the beginning, this was the same school where I went about a year ago to do some computer repair. The computers are chugging along well, as are the two new volunteers that have replaced the one who was there last year.

About ten of us celebrated the holiday together with a gift exchange and some Christmas music from our youth (A Charlie Brown Christmas, The Muppets & John Denver Christmas Album, An ABBA Christmas, Jim Reeves Christmas, you name it) and some holiday cheer. On the 24th, we took a hike around the school area, in the foothills of Africa's highest mountain. Christmas Day we were invited over to the school's headmaster's house for a feast of Tanzanian proportions. All in all, things were just lovely.

A quick trip back to Monduli after Christmas, and then back to Arusha to await the long-dreaded eve of reckoning. I can only hope this message gets to you all in the smoking remains of what was once a proud civilization, brought to its knees by a technology it could not control...

But seriously, we were cooped up in a fairly decent apartment-style hotel in Arusha. It had a kitchen and hot running water and even a shower! I'd brought my stereo and some kitchen things from my house to make the few days there a little more luxurious.

After hours of music and dancing, "champagne" flowed at midnight and then we went out onto the streets of Arusha to look at all the maniacs driving up and down the street and the police cars not doing much to stop them. I'm still undecided whether or not drunken Americans walking down the street arm-in-arm singing "Mungu Ibariki Tanzania" (the Tanzanian National Anthem) was positive or negative PR for us.

The next day (The First!), along with the standard moaning and groaning that follows a good New Years' Party, we actually did something quite positive -- we went to a local art exhibition entitled "Through a Woman's Eyes", an exhibition of Tanzanian women's art. We were able to make some connections and get some contacts for our Girls' Education projects -- maybe some potential speakers at conferences!

On the 2nd, we had a mini-regional meeting in which we discussed regional-based plans for the upcoming year. The older Volunteers had some exchange with the new folks about things like AIDS education projects, Girls' Education, and fighting cynicism. On the 3rd (Monday) we wrapped it all up and dispersed to our sites once more.

As social as I am, I must say that I'm getting a little sick of being on the road and hanging out with other Americans... despite how my letters read, that's not exactly what I came here for. I'm all set to dig my heels in and get back into the school swing of things, but...

Next week is the mid-service conference for all the volunteers who trained in my class. The actual conference is only two days, but surrounding it for each volunteer is a series of short appointments; Medical & Dental checkups, plus meetings with the Country Directors and the Education Project Directors. We'll review the past year, high points, low points, successes, failures, etc. We'll also have some opportunities to exchange information and experiences with each other as Volunteers, and try to make action plans for the upcoming year.

Sounds like a lot of craziness, huh? Looking over this and my past letters, it must seem to you that all I do is sightsee and go to Peace Corps parties and events. I do, in fact, spend the bulk of my time doing my work here in Monduli -- it's just not very impressive to write about.

If you only wrote a letter to your friends less than once a month, would you talk about your day-to-day stuff at your job? Especially you teachers out there -- would you tell me what happens in class all day? Or would you be more likely to tell me about having seen a friend, or having gone to a big meeting, or a Christmas get-together? Add that to the fact that sometimes the only time I get to set aside to write a long letter like this is during my vacation, and you begin to see why it comes out the way it does.

NA NINYI, JE?
(And how about all of you?)

I know many of you send out Christmas/New Years' letters and the like. If my address here in Monduli wasn't on your mailing list this year, I would love it if you were to drop me an email (or a real letter) letting me know how things have been for you this past year. Thrills, chills, spills, etc. -- hey, you don't get to live vicariously in Africa through me for nothin', ya know!

Heri La Mwaka Mpya!
(Happiness for the New Year!)
Ethan

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