Alex Jordan Tells of Life as Peace Corps Volunteer

By ALEX JORDAN

I am a Peace Corps volunteer (PCV) in the southern highlands of Tanzania. My village, Idetero, is relatively close to the equator, but the elevation is approximately a mile high, so the climate is not tropical. Right now we are headed into the rainy season and warmer temperatures.

Tanzania is one of the most beautiful countries in the world, and is home to Mount Kilimanjaro, the Serengeti, and the Great Rift Valley. Although the government is stable, it is also one of the poorest countries in the world.

I arrived here in Idetero last December. However, my path to Tanzania began long before that. I grew up in Monticello, graduated from Jasper County High School, then headed to Athens.

During my last year at the University of Georgia with a degree in environmental health in sight, I was undecided about graduate school. I thought I needed to see the world and get more experience first, so I applied to join the Peace Corps, where I could use my training in water issues. The application process is complex, and the number of volunteers accepted is limited, but I received my appointment in July 2012.

The next couple of months were a blur of preparations for my October departure. The time flew by as I got vaccinations, assembled gear, began to learn Swahili, and visited with family and friends that I wouldn’t see for more than two years. The normal commitment to the Peace Corps is 27 months.

First Six Weeks

I have had a tremendously exciting and productive first year here. Way too much has happened to share in one article, so I will limit this one to what it was like during the first six weeks of my adventure. In future installments I will write about projects, successes, set-backs, and life in a place where I am the only English speaker, living alone in a mud brick house, without electricity or running water.

Don’t feel sorry for me, though. I have some solar chargers, the view is spectacular, my backyard is the Great Rift Valley, and my neighbors are the friendliest people in the world.

My Peace Corps Trainee (PCT) group arrived in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania on October 3, 2012. After a few days of orientation we were transported to our homestay villages. We travelled in vans, and were dropped off, one by one, as we came to the villages along the way. In our homestay we were immersed in the language and culture for six weeks.

I was assigned to a village called Kibaoni. It is the smallest and most rural of the eight Peace Corps training villages, but it is fairly typical of the villages in that part of Tanzania. The houses or huts were built of red mud bricks made by the villagers. At times it seemed that the village was run by children who were everywhere, along with chickens, goats, and ducks.

The remoteness of this village limited my access to travel but the people there were amazingly friendly and the views were spectacular. This village is in the tropical Tanga Region which is situated on the Indian Ocean.

Along the coastal areas, there is more Muslim influence due to the history of trade with Arabic cultures. (Inland, there is a greater Christian influence.)

Occasionally during my homestay, I would walk to the nearest bus route, and catch the bus to meet other PCTs and visit the coastal towns and swim in the Indian Ocean.

I lived with a very nice Muslim family who owned one of the better houses in the village. They had a generator, so we had electricity occasionally. About twice a month we could watch Tanzanian movies and Muslim music videos, which were long and poorly produced.

The family structure was somewhat fluid with refugee relatives from the Congo there at times. Mama Eneya, was the matriarch who cooked, farmed, taught me Swahili and proper Tanzanian etiquette. Baba Saudi was the patriarch of the family. He owned livestock and farmed corn, coconuts, cassava, oranges, cherzi (like a tangerine), papaya, watermelons, and pineapples.

The two teenage boys loved “50 Cent” and soccer. The two sisters enjoyed watching me cut tomatoes and sort the rocks out of the rice while they watched and giggled.

Chickens wandered in and out of the house and one of my main jobs at first was fending off the bigger ones while the women cooked. Rounding out this entourage was a really old donkey that woke me up each morning with its crazy braying, and a dog named Dolphin that was constantly vigilant for cow thieves on the loose.

When I was with my family, I learned the survival skills of cooking the available foods over charcoal or, kerosene outdoors, how to make sure I had potable water, how to wash clothes, and how to shower with a bucket.

I learned the proper way to eat ugali, the national food of Tanzania. It is made of cornmeal, not too unfamiliar to a southern boy, but the way it is prepared is nothing like our corn bread. It is eaten more as a ball of dough dipped into the greens that are served with it.

During the day I would walk several miles to a central village where Peace Corps Trainees from other surrounding villages gathered to be taught Kiswahili by a really good teacher named Khalid whose goal was to save up enough money for graduate school in the United States.

Because of that and the fact that absolutely no one in our villages spoke English, I think my small group was probably the most advanced in our Swahili by the time we left our homestay assignments. Passing the Kiswahili exams was a requirement in order to be sworn in as a member of the Peace Corps.

Here is a little more information about the national language. Swahili is a cool language incorporating elements of Bantu and Arabic. At times though it seems that aspects of it must have been created just to make me look and sound stupid. As in most languages, there are words that sound similar but mean very different things. For example: Kunywa= to drink; kunya = to defecate. Pakashume means wildcat, but can also mean prostitute. Va as a noun means flower; as a verb it means murder. Kuja= to come; kufa=to die; fikiri= to think; firiki= to die.

I’ve used all of these in very embarrassing ways that you can probably imagine. My kakas and dadas (brothers and sisters) thought it was hilarious when I described my dad’s picture of a bobcat as a prostitute. (I brought some of Phillip Jordan’s photographs of American wildlife with me to share in Tanzania).

Then they were very worried when they would ask me a question and I would respond, “I am dying” rather than “I am thinking.” Oh, and one day I gave my kaka a bandana and told him that he could wear it like Rambo, but he had never heard of Rambo. He thought I said “mrembo” which means a gorgeous young woman. It was a little awkward…

Swahili is fun though. It is very easy to rhyme in Swahili. I had fun writing raps for a couple of my essays. During my homestay I also learned a little bit of Kihehe which is the tribal language of the Wahehe tribe, predominant in the area of Iringa where I now live and work.

Luckily, my Mama Eneya was from Iringa and she helped me. She got a huge kick out of the fact that I knew any of it. She also made me sing the Tanzanian national anthem in Swahili everyday.

Tanzania is known for its wildlife, and over the past year I have seen many species, but my first encounter with African wildlife was with the bush babies. These small nocturnal primates were the most visible and audible wildlife around the village. They climb fruit trees, drink fermented juice and then jump from tree to tree making a sound like a crying baby (hence the name).

There were also quite a few baboons around the farms, and the farmers’ dogs would sometimes fight them off. Snakes and spiders were also plentiful. Spiders are revered as wise-old animals in Tanzania, like owls in the U.S.

It is ironic that in Tanzania owls are seen as witches. Because of this, children like to torment them. An owl had its roost right above the table in the run-down village office building where we held our Kiswahili lessons. Every morning we would disturb it. When it would fly away, it had to dodge the rocks thrown by small children intent on destroying the “witch”.

Another day, a black mamba was killed and chopped into pieces in a nearby village. One young fellow thought that the resident PCT needed to be educated about the appearance of this dangerous reptile. He took it upon himself to cart the pieces to my friend’s homestay and reassemble them outside the door of his house.

Here is my “top ten” list of other things I learned or did during those first weeks:

•I learned to make malaria cream from soap and the leaves from neem trees. It is supposed to have repellant, germicidal, and fungicidal properties.

•I planted an awesome perma-garden of black-eyed peas and pig-weed.

•Everyone rides crazy Chinese motorcycles with stickers of tigers, guns, and/or soccer teams on them.

•Everyone wears awesome throwback shirts from the U.S.

• My Baba had three Atlanta Braves tee shirts, but doesn’t know who the Braves are.

•I played with a soccer team against the MATI college soccer team and only lost 2-1.

•All village vs. village soccer matches end in brawls, even the kid’s games.

•In the village if you want beer you have to hang out with this elderly woman in her living room and drink warm “safari” beer.

•There is no such thing as a limit to the number of passengers (human or animal) on a dali-dali (bus).

•“Showering” in the dark while gazing up at the stars in the African sky is an amazing experience.

At the end of six weeks, I returned to Dar Es Salaam in early December, and was sworn in along with my fellow Peace Corps Trainees in a ceremony at the American Embassy. From Dar, I departed for my new home in Idetero to begin two years as an environmental extension worker here. I love my work and the adventures I’ve had have been fantastic. I will share more about these soon.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you. Communication is problematic. I can only access e-mail occasionally. Snail mail is even more so here, and my post office box is about 30 kilometers from my village. Even so, if you write, I will eventually get it. My address is Alex Jordan, P.O. Box 923, Makambako, Iringa District, Tanzania.

(Editor’s Note: Alex Jordan is a 2007 graduate of Jasper County High School, and the son of Phillip and Miriam Jordan of Monticello. Hopefully he will continue to educate us about life in rural Africa in future editions of The News.)