Dear Friends and Family,

It's been a busy 'summer'. Of course, the word 'summer' loses a little of its romantic edge when I can see my breath in my bed in the morning, and have to wear gloves in the houes to keep my fingers from getting numb. J There's lots of news and tales of my travails around the neighborhood, so hang tight and keep reading -- you may be in for a surprise!

Yep. After I last wrote (at the end of May) I went down to Dar, a week before the In-Service Training (IST) for the group that arrived last year. I worked for a week on finishing that famous Girls' Education Resource Manual, and on helping plan for the Girls' Education workshop at IST. Normally when I'm in Dar on per diem, I have a lazy time, hitting the American Club and watching movies, and getting fancy food. Not that week! I worked 10-hour days at the office every day that week. And I was working that whole time. Editing the manual, meeting with people for the workshops, meeting with the other workshop coordinator and planning our sessions, coming up with material for my sessions, etc.

Most important of all, at the end of that week, I had my official interview for the PCVL position in Dar next year, with about 8 of the senior staff members. It's been a long wait; I interviewed way early because I was already in Dar. Most everybody else interviewed on July 17th. More on this later...

From Dar I went to IST in Morogoro. I was busy there as well, but I was also busy hanging out every night with the first-year Volunteers. J But seriously, I was either participating in or leading sessions every day. I was also Sports & Entertainment chair; this means I was responsible for all the sports equipment, and the VCR in the evening. And, needless to say, I was the DJ at the disco at the end of the week. Awwwww... yeah.

After that, it was back to Dar for more work-ish stuff. I put in a day at the office on Monday, doing write-ups for my IST stuff. Tuesday and Wednesday I was in a little seminar on Study Skills given by one of the associate directors. Thursday was a holiday, and I chilled. Friday, I finally did all the photocopying of the final version of the Girls' manual, and left it for binding. (It's now bound and distributed all over the country!)

From there, I took a little vacation. I went on Saturday to Pemba island, where I'd been in December. I am sad to say I got seasick for the first time on the trip there... I'd had a 'good time' the night before, so when I got on the boat I was not in tip-top shape. There's a particularly choppy stretch between Unguja (Zanzibar Island) and Pemba, and I lost what little breakfast I'd had. )c:

However, once we got to Pemba, we shipped off and went to a tiny little island off the shore of the main island (at low tide, you could walk to it!) and spent a couple of nights on the white sandy beaches looking over crystal blue waters. No electricity, so the stars were gorgeous, and we had nothing to do but play in the surf and snorkel around the coral reefs. Just lovely.

Monday I went back to Dar, and on Tuesday I was on my way back to Monduli. I spent Tuesday and Wednesday night in Monduli, getting caught up on things. However, on Thursday morning I turned right back around and headed out to Arusha and caught a bus for Katesh (on the road leaving Arusha from the opposite direction from Moshi.)

This trip was as different an experience as possible from the previous weeks; Dar and Morogoro are both coastal and balmy (not to mention well-developed), as is most of the trip for there to Arusha. The other side of Arusha (where I also live) is another story. Neither the short nor the long rains really came this year, and so everything has dried up. Since the harvest was bad last year, too, people don't have anything stored up. Since most people expected to harvest in August, they have enough food to last them until then. The maize is completely dead and fruitless; the beans are meager at best... and if the November-December rains come, they might get another crop in March. If there are people alive to harvest it.

For instance, here in Monduli where it's not quite as bad as it is elsewhere, from our 40-acres of maize, we were able to harvest... one bucketful of maize. That's about enough for 1/2 of one meal here at school. Normally we count on the school farm to provide us with about a month and a half worth of maize.

Anyway, my trip down to Mt. Hanang was a perfect showcase of the problems to come. Katesh/Hanang/Babati (basically southern Arusha region) is environmentally very much like Monduli, but it doesn't have the safeguards (non-agro-based income) that Monduli does to keep its head above water. Monduli is close to Arusha, and has a lot of district offices, guest houses & bars, three secondary schools, a teachers' training college, and a big military academy just out of town. All this means that there are enough people who will survive even when the crops fail, and who can support folks who are starving. The Hanang area has much less of these kinds of things, much more farmland and open cattle grazing. There's really nobody to support these folks when everything dries up.

Fortunately, my Peace Corps friends (there are no teachers down there, but a big group of environmental workers) have been able to harvest a little stuff because they were planting some experimental crops that require less water. They showed me some of their fields and crops that weren't too badly off.

I visited a few folks down on the south side of the mountain (3rd biggest in Tz). After a few days, I did something that had not been done by anyone before -- I walked from Brian's site in Dawar to Derrick's site in Ufana. The reason this is unusual is because the volunteers are arranged around the mountain like a backwards letter "C", around the N, E, and S sides of the mountain. Travel is really common on the body of the "C", because that's where the roads are... I went between the two endpoints of the "C".

What this meant was a hike straight across the bush... I mean bush, nothing but scrub and mud huts of grazing communities. It took me a little less than nine hours; a hike of about 35-40 kilometers (22-25 miles). This included a detour to Lake Balongida, a salt lake at the base of the mountain near Dawar, where they are currently harvesting salt. Yep, when the lake dries out, you can just go down there and collect it by the bucketful, which is what they were doing. I've got some great pictures (they'll be up on the web site in a week or so!) The trip also involved a climb up the great East African Rift you might hear about... and this in no small feat! That thing is steep and high and everything you don't want in the middle of an all-day hike. Moreover, much of the climb was just over rubble, making it hard to get up carefully.

At the top of the rift was where I really got into the rough... there were really no direct paths or trails to where I was going, so I just kind of struck off across the grasslands, in the general direction of where I was told the village was. I followed some cattle trails in some places, followed the edge of wheat fields in others, cut through some thorn bushes in others. Eventually I met up with the main trail to Ufana... which ended up being longer than I was expecting. To tell the truth, about 7 hours into the hike, I was saying, "OK, I'm ready to find this place now!"

Since I had never been there, I had no concept of how far or exactly where Ufana or Derrick's house was. I just knew the village name, and of course, his name. This is all you need to know to find the environmental volunteers -- they're usually the only white person in a 10-mile radius. If you get to their village and ask for the white guy, they'll be able to point you in the right direction.

This was the case as I neared Ufana. When I was still 4 or 5 hours away, people more or less pointed me in the right direction. That is, when I could find someone who could speak Swahili -- I mostly had to rely on primary school kids, because the old folks only speak Kiiraq, the local tribal language. When I ddn't have another option, I just pointed somewhere and said "Ufana?" If I was in luck, the answer would be "Eehhhh!" (the universal yes).

As I got closer to Ufana and told people I was going there, they said, "Oh, you're going to visit the mzungu (white guy) there?" Much to Derrick's delight when I told him, an equal number of people actually said, "Oh, you're going to see the bwana shamba (Big Farmer Guy) there?"

Anyway, I eventually made it, and Derrick and I had a nice day or two, playing guitar and harvesting some of his maize (Ufana is between two big hills, which means it gets and retains a little more moisture than its plains neighbors.) We also went to see some (allegedly) 4000-year-old rock paintings nearby. I'll have pictures up soon on the web (I did get someone to give me web space -- see below.)

Then I took another little non-trivial jaunt, from Derrick's, back down the north end of the rift. That end is one of the rift's highest and steepest points; it's about a one kilometer vertical drop at about a 60 degree angle. I did this little descent at the end of a four-hour hike from Ufana... and since the hike took longer than Derrick said it would, I had been approaching the rift as the sun was sinking lower in the sky. Since I didn't know how much further it was, I'd been running (with my pack on my back) for about half an hour before I got to the rift.

I got to the edge just at dusk, when the light was significantly beginning to fade -- and here at the equator the sun goes down fast. Since I was more or less legless after the jog, it took me about 40 minutes to make the descent without killing myself. By the time I got to the bottom it was pitch dark (no moon) and I was keeping my ears open for hyenas.

Fortunately, I found some folks who knew where P.J. lived (the volunteer whom I was visiting next) and they walked me there in about 20 minutes. Needless to say, I was ready to take a load off by then. I was also very happy that I got a lift back to Monduli the next day with some of his NGO friends, rather than getting on the normally crowded, dusty, smelly bus. The lift also took an hour and a half instead of the bus's usual four or five.

So, that got me back to Monduli on a Wednesday evening... and I was expecting people to start arriving Saturday or Sunday for my second annual Independence Day party. So the next few days saw a couple trips to Arusha and lots of running around Monduli and carrying 25 people's worth of food for three or four days up the mountain or around town on my back. I've had more fun doing other things...

Ashley and Brian showed up Saturday, and by Sunday more folks were in the groove. Most people showed up Monday and left either Wednesday or Thursday morning. I won't go into much detail on the festivities, but I will say that I managed to throw as yet the only keg party ever held in-country. Crates of glass bottles are the universal medium here, but I'd seen beer on tap at a tourist restaurant in Arusha. So a few months before the party, I followed the paper trail back to one of the brewing companies' Arusha office.

More important than cold Tusker Lager on tap, however, was the food -- Grilled Cheese and tomato soup once again greeted people, followed by midnight burritos on the first night. The BBQ grill was graced with the presence of 20 kg of the little PIGGIE that never made it to market, slathered with KC Barbecue sauce. Burgers and shish kebabs and BBQ chicken, potato salad and pasta salad, and other treats made for a lovely afternoon. The last day we had chili 'n' cornbread along with the APPLE PIE. Considering apples have to come in from South Africa, it was a bit of a challenge... but well worth the extra expense. With non-stop music, food, and little treats from America (Mom had just sent a care package with M&Ms, mini-Butterfingers, etc.) it was a lovely party.

As you can imagine, after all that go-go-go, I was ready for a little break. I took it, possibly to excess. For the next two weeks, I pretty much just laid around the house, oversleeping (I'd managed to pick up a nasty cold as a result of all the festivities), reading, catching up on email, returning stuff I'd borrowed for the party, and restoring the house after the onslaught of 25 boarders.

I also entered a rather introspective phase that I'm still somewhat on the tail end of... I found myself doing what I usually do when I reach a cathartic period in my life, which is reflecting on the distant past, like high school and college (I'm over three years out now!) I caught up with some journaling, contacted some friends with whom I hadn't communicated in a long time, etc.

I was also thinking about my time here. I mentioned last time that I'd applied for the job next year in Dar es Salaam. Well, whether I got the position or not, it was going to be my last term teaching. I began to wonder if I should have chosen to extend here in Monduli instead of as Volunteer Leader. After all, I've spent a lot of time becoming culturally integrated here and learning about people and building relationships... but the truth is, I haven't really done much with it. I haven't gone the next step with the trust I have with people to try something a little more "on the edge" that might help some people. It's like a pianist who has studied all the theory and practiced all the scales and exercises, and then never gets to actually play a sonata.

On Tuesday morning I got a surprise visit from a Peace Corps car. It just happened that one of the Education Directors was in Arusha and Monduli checking out secondary schools for possible Volunteers for next year. He told me that one of the Country Directors wanted to talk to me over the 2-way radio. I soon found out that the other candidate had been chosen for PCVL.

I was certainly disappointed, but not upset -- after all, about a dozen people were involved in the decision, which they said had been very tough. I trust that whatever decision they made was the right one. However, I was a little thrown off kilter since I had thought I had a pretty high probability of getting the position.

Joel (the Country Director) started mentioning other extension posibilities with me. I was a bit surprised by this, because I had been led to believe that the door was already closed on all extensions, leadership or otherwise, because we had been told that all the decisions would be made at the same time. I asked what the possibility of extending in Monduli was -- he said considering my strong service thus far as a Volunteer, it was a very good possibility.

So the next day I went to Arusha and met with the Education Director who was in town checking out the schools. He and I talked about the pros and cons, it became apparent that there is a really huge potential for me to do some real good here considering the groundwork I've already laid. He then told me that he had been authorized by the Country Director to make the decision.

In other words, I will be living in Monduli in 2001!

In case I haven't been in contact with you much, here's a few of the reasons I thought an extension might be positive for everyone involved: I already described to you how I feel like I've invested a lot of time here laying my 'groundwork'. The foundation is in place and extremely solid, but I haven't actually built a house yet. To continue the analogy: I've even started putting up some 'walls' with the Girls' Club and with a few similar activities. There's even a strong possibility that we will have a working computer room sometime this term. So I feel like I'll really produce something beautiful if I throw myself into it. Many volunteers throw themselves into big projects that only meet with limited success because they haven't made the kind of personal connections that I have.

Additionally, I will have more time this term and next year for such projects because I have all my lesson notes done. Moreover, as if all this weren't enough, Dr. Msinjili (my headmaster) has made it clear all along that he really wants me to stay, and feels like he'll have plenty of projects to keep me busy.

On the personal side, there are of course so many more things I'd like to do and see during my time here. I'd like to work more on my Swahili and Maasai, and to deepen my relationships with my fellow teachers. I'd also like to see different parts of the country that I haven't yet visited. The extra year will give me enough time to do all these things without feeling rushed, or without taking me away from the school too much.

Well, even though I will be here another year, one of the fringe benefits of the extension is that I get a 30-day vacation back to the states with airfare paid. So I'll be home probably mid-December to mid January. If you happen to know where you're going to be and when during that season, drop me a note and maybe you'll get a visit!

Well, it's time to get to bed; I have to teach first period tomorrow. Saturday also promises an adventure -- the advent of a few direct-dial phones in Monduli has enabled what I never thought possible, an internet cafe here in Monduli! Saturday I plan on going down (it's at the local computer tech school) to see if it's for real. If you get this message on Saturday, it means it worked!

Due to some inconveniences that I won't go into here, I'm changing my postal mailing address; I'll now be using my school's mailbox:

Mail sent to the old box will get to me, though not quite as fast.

Take care, everyone. Remember as you're sweating your way through the end of the month, I'm here rubbing my hands together to keep them from getting numb!

Mpaka siku nyingine,
(Until another day,)
Ethan

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