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Two months in Tanzania and I’m having a blast. First of all, if you’re reading this I’m assuming I know you, and I’d like to say I miss you! If I don’t know you, I’d like to! For my second blog post I want to give a little update and talk about my host family before I get introspective and talk about mirrors in a reflection (or lack thereof). I also haven’t really figured out who my primary audience is, so I’ve decided to just write this for me and hope everybody likes it. Which they will, because I’m an incredibly humble writer that exercises the mastery of many languages.
Training is continuing and I find my Swahili noticeably improving every single day. Not only can I get everything I need using Swahili but I can tell stories and make jokes. One of my favorite things to do is learn Swahili proverbs like this one: Marafiki watakupa kiwanja kujenga nyumba. It means “friends will give you space to build a house.” Aside from training, I got to visit my permanent work site for a week. I will be teaching physics in a small village in Njombe region. It is deep in the southern highlands of Tanzania where the environment is most similar to the Pacific Northwest—cool, breezy, and rolling hills of pine forests. I never imagined a place like Njombe existed in Africa. Before even coming to Tanzania if you pointed to Njombe on the map and asked me to describe it, I wouldn’t even come close to getting it right. The school I’ll be serving at already has many of its basic needs met i.e. water, electricity, laboratories, computer lab, permanent garden. With time freed up from getting basic needs, I’m excited to see the larger school and community projects that I will be able to work on in addition to teaching. Njombe region has the highest rates of HIV in Tanzania with over 11.9% of people testing positive (USAID 2023). The students and teachers are also unfamiliar with Microsoft Word and Excel, making it difficult for the students to prepare themselves for future jobs or to even write resumes. The primary export of Njombe, timber, is exported straight to China. However, if people in Njombe were able learn the skills to make things like furniture they would be able to add value to the timber and get more out of the available resource. I’ve stayed in Njombe for only a week so far and I’m already looking forward to working with the teachers at my school to create lasting projects.
Aside from my brief visit to Njombe, I’m living with a host family here. My family consists of me, baba (dad), mama (mom), dada (sister), and mpwa (nephew). With the exception of baba, my family will cook together and do laundry together, processes that take several hours. When baba returns home from work we all sit down and eat together. My host family is incredibly compassionate and generous. I once mentioned that I liked to eat yogurt in America. Every day for the next 2 weeks there was a cold container of yogurt at my place at the dinner table. I mentioned that I like to eat cold watermelon, and now we haven’t had room temperature watermelon since then. With a family comes a new sense of belonging and a new aspect of my identity here in Tanzania.
“A man cannot step into the same river twice, because it is not the same river and he is not the same man.”
- Heraclitus
There are no mirrors in my house. If I want to shave or check my appearance then I have to find a reflective window somewhere or have a little extra faith when I walk out the door. The longest I’ve gone so far without seeing myself in a reflection has been about a week. I didn’t even recognize myself when I finally saw myself in a window. Being enveloped in Swahili language with a Tanzanian Swahili-speaking family has impacted my sense of self in so many ways. I’ve always identified myself through the relationships I build and the family and friends I maintain, but now I’m in a foreign country with completely new relationships. Unable to recognize my own image, unable to see familiar friends and family, unable to see the places I’ve always called home, I am left to my thoughts and memories alone to define myself. It sounds daunting, but I find it refreshing so far. They say you come out of Peace Corps a changed person after 2 years. I find myself thinking that maybe I won’t be changed so much as I will know myself better. I’m excited to see the way I handle new situations without the same support systems I’ve always had to lean on. With the loss of support comes a sense of freedom from expectations.
Fun Fact:
In psychology there is a test called the mirror-self recognition (MSR) test that is used to determine if an animal is self-conscious or not—whether it is able to recognize that it is seeing a reflection of itself. In addition to humans there are only 8 animals capable of passing the MSR test: Great Apes, Dolphins, Elephants, Cleaner Fish, Manta Rays, Orcas, Octopuses, Indian House Crows, and Eurasian Magpie.
In a world where you can choose to live as a foolish optimist or a realistic pessimist, I will choose to be a fool every time. When I see the man in the mirror, I will like what I see. When I know nothing but myself, I will like what I know. When I imagine the beautiful things that everybody is capable of, I will smile.
Love,
Ryan