Hello friends,

I have just returned from my future home in Monduli and want to tell you all about it. This email (and future emails) won't be quite as long as the last one. I'll be pacing myself from now on. J

The town of Monduli is, again, about 45k outside of Arusha, on these roads, that means a 1.5 hour bus ride. The town is at the foot of Mount Monduli, a little mountain in the same range as Kilimanjaro and Meru. The town is at the base, my school is a little further up, and my house is a little further up yet. Once you're up by my house, you can look out the front door over about 100 miles of the Maasai Steppe. On a clear day, you can just see forever to the south.

The roads are lined with Jacaranda trees, which have beautiful lavender flowers this time of year. In town, I can buy most of the fruits, veggies, grains, and beans I want -- even peanut butter! (A delicacy here). There is also a weekly market where hundreds people from the countryside come in and sell clothes, shoes, huge bags of beans or rice, all for rock-bottom prices.

The town is right on the edge (nay, well into) the Maasai land. In fact, if you ignore the students and teachers at the three schools in town, I'd guess that about 80% of the townie population has Kiswahili as their second language, their first being Kimaasai. So I'll be learning all the Maasai greetings and formalities in addition to the Swahili I've been learning.

About 500 students, both Ordinary and Advanced Level. I'll be teaching A-Level physics for both Form 5 and Form 6. (I will explain "Forms" in a later mailing about the Tanzanian Educational system. ) I have about 20-25 kids in each class, a good number and a comfortable size. The kids are all very eager to learn -- though it's hard to use the word "kids" when some of them are in fact 26 or 27 years old. I have begun to grow a beard so they don't suspect I'm 3-4 years younger than some of them.

The staff is really incredible. So much respect is given to the students, which is particularly important at a boarding school. The students and student government are allowed to make most of their own decisions, and the Headmaster almost always supports them, even when he doesn't completely agree with them. In America, this may be considered mildly admirable, but here this is astounding. In my internship here in Arusha, I observed lots of corporal punishment, and students had absolutely no say in what happened to them. At Moringe, corporal punishment is rarely used. It's quite a relief.

I'll be living in a relatively small house with another American volunteer (non-Peace Corps) from the Lutheran Church. He'll be teaching math. I'm a little concerned, because we usually only have running water for about two hours a day, which we'll put into a tank and try to make last the rest of the day. Bathing, cooking, drinking, and toilet flushing water for two folks? That ain't much. We do have a sit-down toilet, which is quite a relief. We also have an electric stove and oven, which puts us in the lap of luxury.

Even still, there's another Lutheran volunteer up the hill who not only has the toilet and the oven, but a refrigerator and hot running water as well! Hence, I will be able to even keep some goodies around for a few days if they need to be kept cold. I just have to walk up the mountain to get them.

I'll be moving to my site about December 7th, which basically means starting now, letters should be sent to my new address, which again, is:

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

Of course, you can email me, too -- it may or may not get to me faster depending on how often I go into town -- but it's certainly cheaper and easier for y'all. I look forward to hearing from all of you, and if you have any questions at all, please ask; your request could be the subject of my next message!

Uhuru na Umoja,
Ethan

Return to Letters from Tanzania