In Which I Embark on a New Adventure

Hey everybody - friends, family and passersby!  Karibuni to my new page.  I have accepted an assignment to serve with United States Peace Corps as a Health Volunteer in Tanzania!  This blog will serve to document my time serving with the Peace Corps in Tanzania for the next two years, while keeping friends and family appraised of my situation while I am overseas.  

Last May, I graduated from Cornell University with a degree in Philosophy and History.  When I decided graduate school wasn't in my immediate future, I had to figure out something else to do. My Peace Corps application had been simmering on the back-burner for awhile, and finally in September I received my invitation to serve in Tanzania.  

Ah, Tanzania! The land of the Serengeti, Kilimanjaro, the Ngorongoro Crater, and the greatest lion and elephant populations on earth!  The land of the Swahili coast, with its rich, varied, and occasionally dark history of Arab traders, Islam, monsoon winds, slaving expeditions, and spice-cultivation.  The Interior, with its WWI legacy ("African Queen", anyone?), German and British colonial origins, the failed Maji Maji Rebellion, and strong history of Christian missions.  The African Great Lakes!  Africa's great communist (failed) experiment!  The peaceful heart of the continent!  Palm-studded beaches on the Indian Ocean!  Endless savannah!  The "Roof of Africa!"  Miombo Woodlands!  Medieval ruins!  Dozens of distinct ethnic groups!...  And one of the poorest, most vulnerable countries in the world, with a high HIV/AIDS prevalence, high infant mortality rate, low life expectancy, and incredibly low GDP (ppp) per capita.  

For a variety of reasons, I chose to accept the assignment.  

I'll be travelling to Philadelphia in a few days to meet up with the rest of my “stage” (group of new volunteers-in-training), after which we will deploy on February 10 to Tanzania to begin our training - the "boot camp" of the Peace Corps.  For the next three months, I’ll be undergoing intensive training in language (Kiswahili), health issues, food security, and village living.  Updates will probably be pretty sporadic, as our training is conducted in a village homestay setting (e.g., no internet) and I will have very little free time.  We'll be living in a rural part of Tanga Region (5 hours north of Dar es Salaam, the de facto capital of Tanzania), a blisteringly hot, Muslim-majority area close to the Indian Ocean - needless to say, I'm very excited!

Following the completion of training, we'll be sworn in as a full-fledged Volunteers in late-April. I’ll then be sent to “site” - the place I’ll be living and working for my two-year assignment.  This could be anywhere in Tanzania - a country bigger than Texas!  Again, my communication situation there is TBD.  But hopefully I'll be able to access the internet every week or two, so I'll be able to share some sights and sounds from my experiences.  

The details of my assignment are rather vague, so I'll spare you the ambiguous, less-than-informative Peace Corps description of the project.  Suffice to say that I'll be working to promote community health through education, focusing particularly on HIV/AIDS, malaria, and water-borne illnesses.  I'll also probably do some work on food security, especially with AIDS victims and other vulnerable persons.  I won't know much more than that until I get introduced to my final village placement (which won't be determined until mid-April).  I'm very excited to put my agriculture and health education degrees to good use!  Just kidding.  Those would've been helpful.  But I am looking forward to engaging with problems I witnessed firsthand during my stints in Uganda and issues that I studied in African history and development classes at Cornell.  I've seen the scourge of horror that the HIV virus can pour upon a community, and I've studied the superstition and stigma that so often follows the disease in Africa (and America, for that matter!).  I've witnessed the perpetual menace and deadly power of the Plasmodium parasite (malaria) and the Anopheles mosquito in African villages, and read about their transformation into the plague of the "Tropical" World.  I've developed a passionate hatred of (but undying respect for!) the tsetse fly, the vector of the dreaded "sleeping sickness."  Now, I'm eager to put these experiences and my book-learnin' to good use meeting some of these challenges in Tanzania.

I ask for your prayers as I begin this journey - I’m sure there are trials and treasures ahead.  

Thank you!

Justin Tyvoll