In Which I Learn the Swahilis - Pre-Service Training

Well, I suppose it's about time I write a full-length update for those of you interested in my little stint here in Tanzania. It's been about three months since I departed the United States, though it certainly feels like quite a bit longer! And with somewhere between 21 and 24 months left to go, the rather surprising duration and gravity of my term of service begins to hit me. I knew what I was getting into, of course, but I wasn't quite able to fathom what two years away from home would actually feel like, in my bones. Well, it's something, I tell you.

Let my begin by providing a brief synopsis of what occurred during the 2.5 months of my pre-Service training (as a Peace Corps Trainee), and then, in another post, I'll try to paint a sort of portrait of my new home, the village of Loolera in Kiteto District, Manyara Region, Tanzania.

Leaving New York City during a February deep freeze and debarking from the plane a day later in the humid, sweltering chaos of Dar es Salaam was the rough transition our group of 36 (now 34) trainees had arriving in Tanzania. We stayed for a week at a church-run hostel just outside the metropolis, getting vaccinations, medical and security briefings, learning "survival" Swahili, tasting the street life of “Dar,” and preparing for the move to our long-term training site in Tanga District, in the northeast of the country. That first week was pretty laid back, made somewhat arduous only by the change in climate and the first wave of illnesses that beset about half of us, only days after arrival. But we had (cold) showers, western toilets, ceiling fans, and all the government red-tape one could ask for, and frankly most of us were looking forward to getting out into the village, the "real deal."

We went up to Tanga exactly one week after our arrival in Tanzania. There we stayed for ten weeks, living with host families in small villages near the "scrappy junction town" of Muheza, receiving daily lessons in Kiswahili (the national language of Tanzania), Tanzanian culture, and health/environment development work in-country. Most class days were spent in small groups of 4-6 people who were living in the same village; once or twice a week the whole class of 34 would meet up at an agricultural training center for lectures and technical training. The rest of our time was spent either with our host families or exploring the country around our training site.

Living with host families was perhaps our biggest challenge - even greater than dealing with scorpions, spiders, and bats in our drop toilets; rats in our beds; bushbabies holding dance parties on our roofs at night; and the expected gastrointestinal problems. Our families were enormously protective, treated us like children, and seemed to think that their sole purpose in life was to make sure we gained twenty pounds by the end of training. They stuffed us with piles of ugali (corn mush), beans, rice, and week-old fish. Language and communication was also difficult - they knew next to no English, and we knew next to no Swahili. Nevertheless, by the end of training I was able to converse with my host parents about topics ranging from Al-Shabaab in Kenya to the monkeys destroying the family corn patch.

Despite some of these challenges, training was overall a fantastic experience, my host family was wonderful, and I learned plenty – especially language: the Peace Corps method of "total immersion" language acquisition is painful, but effective. We had several adventures exploring Tanga City and Muheza town, climbing in the Usambara Mountains, and swimming in the Indian Ocean. Although the culture was quite conservative in terms of dress and appearance, we were surprised by the leniency and relaxed nature of a predominately Islamic culture, and by the apparent lack of animosity between the Muslim majority and Christian minority. (This makes the ongoing approach of Al-Shabaab from the north much less of a threat, though a more tragic one, should it ever take hold in Tanzania). We were also exposed to some of the more painful realities of life in rural Tanzania - the dreadful condition of the district hospital (where for some reasons about 50,000 fruit bats roosted every day), the dangers of snakebite (my neighbor's wife was killed by a snake my second week of training), the ever-present threat of malaria, and the near daily announcement of a village death.

Following a slew of technical and language assessments, we finally returned to Dar and were sworn in as Peace Corps Volunteers of the United States at the U.S. Embassy on April 24, 2014. The very next day, we all began our respective journeys to our village work-sites, scattered all throughout Tanzania – our homes for the next two years.