Nyingi

Mambo?!  [What’s up?!]  I have been taking an unintentionally long hiatus from writing due to the lack of internet access and time to type everything that has gone on in the past week and a half.  I FINALLY GOT MY INTERNET MODEM TO WORK, SO YAY!!  BUT, this doesn’t mean that I will have internet all the time everywhere.

Anyway…if you are not ready to read this lengthy post, you are now warned.  [By the way, “nyingi” means “a lot” in Swahili.]

So I believe I left off my story while I was in the United States…

Staging in Philly was awesome!  Philly was of course a little rainy but the weather was SO NICE and COOL compared to the heat and humidity in Texas.  When I first arrived to the hotel in downtown Philly and lugged my bags to my room, I had just put my things away when my roommate arrived – the very FIRST fellow PCT (Peace Corps Trainee) I met.  Her name is Kristine, or Steen for short, and she was immediately trailed by Zach (the second PCT I met).  It was nice to meet them almost right away because I didn’t even have a chance to feel lonely or homesick.  J  To be honest, although I miss my family and friends very much, every day here has been so jam-packed that I haven’t had much time to feel homesick just yet.  I am sure that will happen at some unbeknownst point during my two years and it may even turn into a blog post.  :P

But for now, that introduction was just the first (two) of many more – 44 more PCTs, to be exact!  [In case your math skills are a little rusty, that amounts to a total of 47 PCTs, including myself.]  That night I went to dinner with 11 other PCTs at a brick oven pizza place  and then drinks at the downstairs pub with another eight or so PCTs whom I have become pretty close with.  That night, I discovered that there are two other PCTs from TEXAS, the Lone Star State!!  :D  One of them is even from Dallas (Nicole) and we even have a mutual friend, but need I remind you, we did not know each other previously.  I was starting to feel more and more comfortable with everyone as the night went on and we were even excited to meet the rest of the trainees that would arrive the next day!  All of us were already planning the next night’s dinner/drink plans, since we were all planning on staying up before we left for JFK airport at 2am anyway.

Needless to say, after that night, I knew I was going to LOVE this group, and after the following day of presentations, ice breakers, skits, and other group activities, we all became a huge family – my family.  :]  We all bonded relatively quickly during the next 24 hours, which included delirious conversations due to staying up all night, a night bus ride to New York, a 6-hour camp out at JFK airport waiting to check in for a flight at 11:15am, and two birthday celebrations on the long plane ride to Johannesburg, South Africa then another one to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania!

We finally arrived in Dar at around 6:30pm, took about an hour and a half to get out of the plane, through customs, baggage claim, and in two buses that took us to Msimbazi Center (our training center for about five days).  After we got our lifeline drug – anti-malarial pills – we took our first bucket showers and slept.  The next few days of being confined to the inside of the Msimbazi Center gate were spent doing introductions and overviews of safety and security, health, cross cultural, and language.  Oh, and more drugs (aka vaccinations).  I wish I could say all the vaccinations were done in Dar, but I cannot.  We were shot up four more times once we arrived in Morogoro, the region of our other training center.  We did get to go outside of the gate twice, once for a Dar walk-around where we walked around the city and once for a tour at the Peace Corps office.

The morning of June 13^th we left Dar and took a 3.5 hour bus ride to Morogoro to stay with our host families!!  We got to CCT (Christian Council of Tanzania), our training grounds for the next nine weeks, had lunch, and dispersed to our host family villages!  Each village has 4-6 PCTs staying there and each village has at least one secondary school, which is where our internship will be.  I am staying in Kihonda with 11 other PCTs but only five of them will be teaching at Kihonda Secondary School with me.  The other six will be teaching at Educare, another school in Kihonda.  From now until the end of training, we alternate weeks we spend going to CCT and CBT (Community-Based Training) here in Kihonda.  I am writing this during my lunch during training, so I will go into more detail on my host family and training in the next post, which should be sooner than it was between my last post and this one.

Lala Salama!  [Sleep well!]