Day 1

Hujambo! Today was the first full day in Tanzania, which was filled with some pretty amazing experiences. There are 8 volunteers in our group, so we went through orientation together today and got know each other better before adventuring outside of the home base.

The day started off at 6:30 this morning, with Emily and I trying to figure out what time it really was because breakfast was supposed to be at 7...turns out it was at 8! The food at breakfast wasn't too bad, but the coffee was terrible...not sure if I'll survive! Food here is obviously different from the food at home, the Tanzanian people have a very well rounded diet so at every meal you have a meat, vegetable, fruit, and starch. Everyone was very hesitant at breakfast, the eggs aren't yellow, there were, boiled potatoes, and mango, watermelon, and tiny bananas. Everything is really plain in their cooking, not too many spices, no salt or pepper. In other words...it's a good thing I don't like breakfast!

After breakfast we went through introductions with the staff and other volunteers before learning some Swahili. Throughout the morning we had several opportunities to learn about the culture and the language. The first activity was a singing/dancing one...all the volunteers are white girls so dancing didn't really work out :) That was a way for us to learn Swahili numbers, which was great because it made it stick a bit better than some of the other things we did. We also paired up and went outside of the gates to find local people and try to ask them questions. My partner and I were tasked with finding the local store and learning how to say 5 items in Swahili (I've already forgotten them.) Then we went through as a group and came up with a list of things that we expected out of each other and ways to make them work. All in all our list is very reasonable and I think it will work out.

After the morning session we had lunch (which was worse than breakfast) and met the directors for our placements. Lunch consisted of curry chicken, rice (with a strange spice), salad, and mango. Emily and I are in the Presbyterian Nursery School, so we sat down with two ladies from there and tried to learn about their expectations for us and what the school was like...it was like pulling teeth. Apparently, the people here think that Mzungu or white people know everything, they literally think that we will be able to tell what level a child is at just by looking at them. These ladies that we were talking to told us that tomorrow we observe and then we will know exactly what to do! Now, I'm no teacher but I'm pretty confident that it takes awhile to figure things out. Based off of the conversation we had with the teachers from the school, I can tell that this assignment is going to be a struggle and huge learning opportunity for us.

The afternoon was filled with even more Swahili lessons and culture sharing. The staff of CCS told us about their culture and tribes, and we told them about our own customs. We learned that saying hello in Swahili means asking a person in 15 different ways how they are doing and how to properly shake hands with someone here. Through these lessons we learned that the people here don't communicate well with each other and in a sense they don't tell the truth. In Swahili and the Tanzanian culture there are no negatives in the language, which is both good and bad because the people have a harder time getting proper medical care but they also don't complain. We also learned that they tell time differently from how we tell time, their day starts when the sun rises which is always assumed to be 6 and goes 12 hours of day light and 12 hours of night time. So, essentially when it is 6 am for us, it is midnight to them. Which we were told could make it difficult to communicate time with the locals because they might tell us 7 in the morning but that is really 1 pm for us Westerners. So all in all very confusing!!

After all of this our structured day was over. Then we set out on an adventure around the area surrounding the home base. Pretty much the second we walked out of the gate we made friends with some children. These two little kids probably aged 2 and 7 came up and wanted to hold hands and walk around with us everywhere. In the culture here they really believe that it takes a village to raise a child. The people don't believe that a child just belongs to their parents, they belong to the entire community and woman is mama and every man is baba. The people around the home base are all very friendly and they talked to us about how much volunteers coming has helped to develop the community and decrease the poverty level through out the area.

So far it has been a huge culture shock to see the extremes of poverty in this region of the world. I have been completely amazed by this country in just 24 hours! No telling where this is gunna go in the next couple week, so stay tooned!