Everyday Life

So, these last few months haven’t been too exciting. I've been staying in my village every weekend, teaching during the week, and just living the average day-to-day. But then I realized that some of you don’t quite know what that entails, so I figured I would share what I do when I just hang out at home.

Some of you may already know, but this time of the year is rainy season, which means a day has not gone by since December that it hasn't rained.  This makes the 30 minute walk to and from the village to  buy food difficult, and I have been caught in more than my share of downpours. All this rain means that my area is stunningly green right now, with flowers and weeds alike sprouting everywhere and taking over. 

A storm rollin' in

The calm after the storm 

Typical, foggy day

The sunflowers are plentiful between the rows of corn. Beautiful

I have been doing some handy work around my house as well as the school.  Just a few weeks ago, I decided to dig a compost hole because I eat so many fruits and vegetables, that most of my waste is compostable.

Compost hole that I dug next to my house

 I also volunteered to help my school paint the chalkboard so that we could separate  170 Form III students and get them out of one classroom. I had purchased the chalkboard paint and paintbrush for another project, but I’m glad it had multiple uses.

It's blurry, but that's me painting a chalkboard

Completed paint job. Now I can teach 2 normal sized classes of 85 students each rather than a massive group of 170

After moving to Tanzania, cleaning the house and being innovative have taken on entirely new meanings.  I have to sweep and mop the concrete floors of my house every day because of the mud and dirt that I track in every day as well as the ash that blows everywhere from my jiko. When I was sick, some students stole my broom, so I had to be innovative to fix it, because I really don’t want to buy a new one. 

A little tape and stick from my busted door frame, and my broom is as good as new... almost. 

Also, since I cook over charcoal every day, the pots that I use become covered in soot and have to be scrubbed clean with steel wool every couple months.

On the left is the before, and the right is the after

 Laundry is quite the task, but I’ve come to enjoy it. I use 2 basins and a bucket to do my laundry, along with one bar of soap and a little powdered detergent.

My laundry station

My clothes may not always be the cleanest due to the water quality… in fact, sometimes I wonder if they were cleaner before I washed them.

Yep, that's what i use to wash my clothes, dishes, drink, etc. 

And of course I hang them on the clothes line to dry, but lately, because of all the rain, I have to move them inside or they get a second rinse cycle. 

Clothes on the line in my courtyard

 I’m really lucky that my diet mainly consists of fresh, organic  vegetables,  eggs, and a few fruits.

my produce baskets hand from the ceilings so the mice can't eat it

peaches, avocados, tomatoes, and eggs

my second hanging produce basket

 I cook all of my meals over a charcoal jiko, which most days can be a pain in the ass to light and get started. 

This is what I use to cook all of my meals

I make few traditional Tanzanian foods at my house, but I love Tanzanian cabbage and kachumbari. The cabbage is cooked down with tomatoes, carrots, onion and pepper. And kachumbari is the closest thing to a salad that Tanzanians eat. It’s just raw tomato, onion, bell pepper (and usually cucumber which I didn’t have) sliced very thinly and tossed together with lemon juice and some salt.

Cooked Tanzanian Cabbage

Kachumbari

But on the weekends, I have had some spare time, so I try to cook things that are a little more elaborate like quiche and pork fajitas.

But, I have to admit, since coming here, I eat things I never would have in the states. Like those pork fajitas… half of it was pork meat, the other half was pig intestine. The key to good intestine is filleting it out and frying it until it’s crispy, like a chip. It added a nice crunch in my fajita. 

Quiche

Pork meat and crunchy pig intestine fajita

There is also this idea of bugs. In America, if your food was infested with bugs, you would throw it out. And when I was in America, I would have too. But one day, I wanted to make refried beans, so I took a container to my school at lunch and filled it with already cooked beans to make my meal prep easier. When I emptied the beans out to mash them, I noticed little black specks floating around. Upon further inspection, I noticed tiny bore holes in most of the beans. I split a bean open and noticed several small beetles inside. Again, in America, I would have thrown it away and gone to get take out… but I was already too invested, so I picked the bugs out, one by one. Before cooking the beans, I had picked out approximately 40 beetles.

While cooking the beans over heat, I picked out approximately another 30 beetles. And even while I was eating, I picked out around 10.
Moral of the story: I ate bugs. I knowingly ate bug-infested food, because the odds of picking out every bug were not in my favor.  I just look at it as extra protein in my diet and move on.

This is a photo of food scraps for the compost. Each little black speck is a beetle I took out of my beans

 I have also taken up the family hobby of wine making! Although mine is not so elaborate or complex; it is made in a bucket. My batch of hibiscus wine is in the aging process now and should be ready to bottle in about 3 weeks.

Filtering after letting it ferment

Fermenting

Also, I have a best friend named Amanda who sent me a ruler that she made so that I could show the size of the creatures that I kill and the things that I encounter… so this is Amanda’s Ruler Segment (haha, segment,  I’m punny.)

That my friends, is the biggest clove of garlic I have ever seen

Your standard earthworm

A couple pieces of quartz

A millipede

Things at school have been going really well! I’ve been teaching about 180 Form III students and 130 Form III students. One day, I invited my students to come hang out in the lab after school and they could learn how to solve a number puzzle (Sudoku).
At first, around 20 students came. They helped me sharpen pencils, then took a half sheet of paper and copied the puzzle off the board. One of my very smart Form III students named Lidia came up to the front to teach the students the rules and idea behind the puzzle. They solved a few of the numbers together, and then I told them to try it on their own paper. I told them they could work in groups, and they did. They all worked on their puzzles, either together or individually and brought them to me to check after they were done. More than half of them got it correct!
 They really enjoyed doing it and told me they wanted to do it again… so I guess I’m going to start a weekly puzzle club. They are able to use problem solving skills that they don’t get to use in many other capacities in their education and they could do it without language barrier. Words can’t express how happy my first Sudoku day made me.

Students working in groups

I was very impressed with their puzzle solving skills

The puzzle they solved

Deep in thought

So proud of themselves!

Hope you enjoyed that little insight into my day-to-day living experience.