Details on many of these events are available on the Letters From Tanzania page.

Here are some snapshots from just around my house: On the inside, you might see Crambo, the frog who lives in my bathroom drain. When I first arrived, my darling kitty Kwanza (no relation to the December holiday) spent much of her time curled up in a chair, or keeping my house vermin-free. Sadly, she disappeared in 1999. In January 2000, I was able to invite two brand-new family members into the house. Jamani and Kasheshe would romp around the house like maniacs, and then we would all get to relax together. But again, Monduli's environment is not cat-friendly, and Kasheshe disappeared while she was still little. Fortunately, Jamani is still around and all grown up. As for me, you may see me in my kitchen contemplating Tanzanian cuisine, or just sitting around, wearing the Cleveland Indians hat I bought off the head of a Tanzanian.

I spend a lot of time looking out my front door. Most of the year, things are pretty dry, even when the school tractor is plowing the land in front of my house. But when it rains, everything greens up for a little while. I might see my neighbor's children picking vegetables in their garden (those are banana trees behind them). My neighbor also makes brick from time to time, and fires them on his front lawn. Around harvest time, you can see my downhill neighbors beating the beans. (The beans are dried on the plant and then you put them all on a tarp and beat the beans out of the pods!) You might also see some of the school workers cutting boards out of recently felled trees. No mills here, so they use the long double-handled saw seen here. During school time, I watch the students walking back from the dining hall after getting their afternoon food.

I should preface this section by saying, without a doubt, that there is no possible way to capture the general environment and scenery around here with a camera. Standing on my front step, looking out over 100 km of the Maasai Steppe. I've tried taking pictures, but they look so flat and dimensionless when they're developed -- though very occasionally, I get a good one. I also have very few pictures of Monduli outside my house. This is because as an American, I have to fight every day the perception that I am a rich tourist-type. Going around my hometown snapping pictures everywhere would, for the best of people, only confirm that stereotype; for the worst of people it would show them that I had things to steal.

On a typical day, I might head into town and go to the market, or the post office... passing by some adorable kids who come running out to greet me whenever I walk by. In the past, the phone company was located in the post office, where the operator had to manually juggle the 100 phones in Monduli through the six lines that actually go out of town. In 2000, the system was made totally automatic. On Sundays, I usually head to the Sunday Market where the whole of Monduli comes to buy and sell fruit, vegetables, beads, clothes, livestock, and just about anything else. (That's the Monduli mountain in the background.)

In July 2001, I went to a Maasai post-funeral (the funeral was two months before; the party was to "see the spirit off." ) An important part of the event was that they killed a bull, then cut its neck in a certain way to catch its still-fresh blood, so that we could all drink it.

My house is very close to Moringe's O-Level School, up the hill from the A-Level School at which I teach. During the morning, you'll find me in the classroom, spreading the gospel of Physics to the 'heathen masses'. After classes are over, you might find the students studying in their classroom, out playing football, or carrying water for bathing, washing clothes, etc. Our school has been putting a lot of work into the computer room, as you can see from how it looked in September 2000 compared to how it looked in April 2001.

Goodbyes are significant events here. Laura Wangsness, one of the volunteers from the American Lutheran church, finished her service and went home in 1999. This picture is from her going away party, posing with other members of the staff. In May 2000, the Form 6 class whom I'd been teaching for three terms graduated and said goodbye. Graduation is a time for the whole school to put on a festive show. Here are some Form 5 students coming from doing a Maasai dance for the attendees. The boy closest to the middle was one of my own students. At the 2001 graduation, the students I'd taught since they first entered school, graduated. We had a good time that day, with the traditional cake. For the meal, I got to sit with the members of the high table.

One of my biggest efforts here has been working to support girls' education. In April 1999, the Arusha/Kilimanjaro region Peace Corps teachers hosted a Girls' Education Conference, in which each of about ten teachers brought four students and another teacher from their respective schools. The conference took place at Machame Girls' School, about a mile up Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest point on the African continent. Here is a student from Shauritanga Secondary asking a question of the panel of professional Tanzanian women who spoke about themselves and their struggles in Tanzanian society. Here is a picture of the "Moringe Delegation."

Since that first experience, I have also sponsored other girls' education events at my school. We have had speakers for International Women's Day, debates, sing-alongs and a fashion show. Together with Maggie (the other Monduli PCV) and our Tanzanian teacher friends, we held a girls' conference for the three Monduli secondary schools. Among other activities, the girls discussed the issues facing them in small groups, and performed skits to demonstrate some of the temptations they face every day. After the conference, the girls went back and held a pep rally for the girls at their home schools.

I am well known in my letters for my travels around Tanzania. Usually I get there by buses, which are often named after people who are in the news. Of course, sometimes you get on the wrong bus and you have to help out to get it to go again.

In December 1999, I went to Tanga, a town on the coast, and Pemba, one of the Zanzibar Islands (see Letter #13). In Tanga, I went with some local volunteers to the Amboni Caves and explored a little bit. We also hiked around the local coconut farms. Notice the notches in the trunks of the coconut trees; they are so people can climb up and pick the coconuts. On Pemba, my friends and I took a bike trip around the island. When the tide was in, it blocked our path, so we piled three bikes and five people into a canoe-like boat and got a lift to another peninsula on the island. Here is another shot from that boat, while we were passing through a little mangrove on our way. At the end of the week, we got off the main island and on to a little beach where the ocean was crystal blue and the temperature was just right.

In October 2000, I made a trip to the deep south of Tanzania. While in the rural town of Tandahimba, I was privileged enough to speak at a well-attended political rally. On the way back north, fellow PCV Dan Stamp and I took a boat to Kilwa Kisiwani, an island town with ancient Portuguese and Arabian ruins, like this fortress, or this mosque.

Another interesting happening was the August 2000 visit of Bill Clinton to Tanzania. I had the privilege of being at the airport when Air Force One landed, and of being able to shake Clinton's hand when he was in a crowd. I also got to meet Stephanie Tubbs Jones, the US Congressional Representative from East Cleveland, a district in which I voted while I was in college. Her home is just a block or two away from where I lived when I was there.

When my sister Andrea came to visit in February 2000, she and I walked an hour or two out of town to the home of one of my former students. For far away, you can see the kind of landscape that forms much of my neighborhood. You can also see a cluster of round mud huts called a boma. Here is Andrea at Boniface's boma, with Boniface (left) and his brother (right). His brother is dressed in the traditional Maasai garb -- not for any special occasion; this is just how they dress. Walking around Monduli, about a quarter to a half of the men in Monduli dress this way (depending on what part of town you're in.) We also got to see a baby goat who had been born just the day before.

In June 2000, I took a trip down to the Hanang district, one of the more bush areas of the country. I visited several volunteers working in the area. One of them is working on a World Map Project, which is a common prjoject to bring to elementary schools. The picture shows a map in progress; the artist is on the far left, using the paper map as a guide. The volunteer is pointing out on the paper map his home in the United States. At another volunteer's site we went to see some rock paintings that could date back as far as 4000 years. That first one shows a giraffe. In the other one, you can see a hunt taking place. There is the outline of a large animal near the top, and below it are three hunters, with two others to the left.

I took an all-day hike from one volunteer's site to another's. These are the type of surroundings I walked through on that hike. The hike also took me past Lake Balongida, a salt lake where they harvest salt around that time of year. This picture shows the little mounds of salt that people were collecting; each one is about two feet high. That's Mount Hanang in the background. On the walk, I also saw that many people's farms and cow fields were fenced in by sisal plants, a common practice in Tanzania. I have often thought that the top of a sisal plant looks like somthing out of a Dr. Seuss book. You be the judge.

I have been on safari a couple of times to Tarangire National Park. Here's an elephant and child, and an entire elephant family. We went during elephant season, so we saw almost a hundred. We also saw baboons, vervet monkeys, lizards, giraffes, gazelles, impalas, and countless species of birds. I have also visited the Ngorongoro Crater twice, where we also saw elephants, as well as wildebeest, a field of zebras, and three of the fewer than twenty black rhino living in the world. An exciting moment was when we stopped the car and a female lion walked over to join us. However, she was just trying to get a little shade from the noonday sun.

In between terms, I take a little time to see the country and visit other volunteers. My caption for this picture is "Is there a party going on here or what?" In June of 1999, I went to Morogoro for In-Service Training. My friend Pat and I won the 15-team euchre tournament that week; here is a scene that die-hard euchre addicts will immediately recognize as "Milking the Cow." I also had the pleasure of being the D.J. for the dance party we held at the end of the week.

A popular place to relax is the Tanzanian financial capital, Dar Es Salaam. To demonstrate the difficult bush life we PCVs live, here is a shot of some PCV friends getting a pedicure there in Dar. You can also go bowling in Dar, eat some Tandoori chicken grilled out in the open (with the bones, if you like), or just hang out with four cool guys like these bozos here. Sometimes we hang out with Chuck Lisenbee, who works at the embassy and has a crazy American-style house. We bush boys often get confused at all the strange electronic gadgets at Chuck's house.

Also, my own house is also a place of festivities! Here's a shot from my 1999 birthday party, with my friends Brandon (PCV), Laura (Lutheran), and Conrad, our second-master's son and a good friend. For my birthday in 2001, however, I went to visit another PCV, Hillary Selle, whose birthday is also on April 26^th. Things can sometimes get a little crazy, like at my annual Independence Day party where we keep the American patriotic spirit alive. If you like, you can even kill your own chicken and eat your drumstick with the clawed foot still attached. Of course, that's nothing compared to what Mike Machura did with this goat…

One of the most special events I attended was the wedding of my PCV friend Joe Kubisiak to his Tanzanian fiancée Kiliofa. The day before the wedding, there was a send-off party for the bride, at which the whole village of Kongei showed up. Joe's parents and brother were able to make it as guests of honor, and the wedding itself was a classy affair. Another wedding I went to was one between two PCVs, Jeff Brown and Heather Kelly. I had the privilege of being one of the singers for the wedding processional and recessional.

During training in Arusha, I stayed with a host family. One of the first things we did as a family was to go on a trip to Namanga, a border town on the road to Kenya, for the performance of my host father's church choir. Also performing at the concert was a local Maasai Children's Choir. Here is a picture of my host father's sister-in-law with some of her relatives from the area who are in that choir, as well as a goat she'd just purchased in the chuch auction. The goat rode back to Arusha with us on the bus. Another big event with my host family was the confirmation party for my host brother, Emmanuel. He's at the table with his godparents; his grandmother and her sister are sitting to the right. One tradition at any party is for the guest of honor to feed cake to his relatives, in this case, his mother (my host mama).

Here are some Volunteers who had all interned at the same school during training reenacting their tragedies of training, during our swearing-in party. Here's a picture of me on the edge of the Indian Ocean right after being sworn in as a new Volunteer.

Maggie Stanislawski, the other PCV in Monduli, is also keeping her pictures online. You can check them out if you like.

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