Ingredients

I'm sure many of you at this point are lying awake at night wondering...HOW in the world does one make Meeshloaf? It is certainly one of those questions that great minds have struggled to figure out for centuries.



Let me put your mind at ease by providing a very simple recipe. Here are some of the ingredients, and as always, please add as much crushed red pepper as you desire.



1 malnourished kitten named Pili Pili (which means hot peppers)

30-162 chickens (kukus)

7-10 children, with at least 3 sisters (dada) and 4 brothers (kaka)

1 large cow (n'gombe)

2 'guard' dogs named Bobby and Peggy (mbwa)... important sidenote: these dogs are cute but are so scrawny they make Lola look like the hulk, i think people just have the dogs to protect from other peoples' scrawny dogs.

Approx. 15-23 buckets in varying colors of red, blue and green (these are useful for bathing, cooking, and washing clothes, although usually not all in the same bucket)

3 charcoal stoves

10 lbs of rice

1 mosquito net

1 Mama

1 Baba

1 Kanga for casual wear (google it)

1 Choo (pronounced Cho) aka hole in the ground toilet.

1 Solar backpack

1 Kiswahili-English dictionary

3 liters of Safari, Serengheti, Tusker, Kilimanjaro, or any of the other awesomely named Tanzanian beers. (kilimanjaro is also the main brand for the huge bottled waters..i wonder if this confusion has lead to any poor decisions on the part of visitors)





The internet here is, much like most of the Peace Corps trainees' digestive systems: fickle. I might be able to read your emails but not respond to them. My last posting was pretty giddy, but it was after my first 2 days of being a student again so I guess you could say I was like a little schoolgirl again. The primary schoolkids here are great at laugh at me and the other trainees a lot when we try to greet them, but the way I handle this is by whipping out the FRISBEE and throwing it to them. (MVP of the packing list so far is hands down the frisbee, so thank you Mr. Benjamin Detofsky for that last minute addition)



Most of these kids look about 5 years younger than they actually are, which has resulted in a FANTASTIC Tanzanian doppleganger of Gary Coleman whose real name is Ali. He's 7 years old but as tall as a 3 year old. (so about as tall as gary coleman) Ali is incredibly athletic, and like most of the kids here, became semi-professional at frisbee in about 10 minutes.



My host family is hilarious. They love to laugh a lot and smile, and so do I, so even if we don't know what the other one is laughing or smiling about, we really don't care--the first night I was there we broke the ice of awkwardness and transcended cultural boundaries when one of my younger brothers who is about 15 asked me to sing a Shakira song. "Meeshie--sing. Shakira!" I feigned shyness and then of course started singing "my hips don't lie" in a Robert Goulet voice about 30 seconds later. Every night since I sing another American song and the 7-10 kids that maybe live there, maybe just hang around sometimes, all sing along. My short wave radio picks up a a lot of stations, and when I help out with the cooking after school I bring it outside and we all sing songs and the best part about them not being able to speak much english is that i can sing in the tune but make up words and everyone is happy.



Special shout out to the ladies of Duberstein Group for my amazing camera...I have taken a few pictures which I tried to post and hopefully show up on here..my host family loves it when I take pictures of them, especially my mama!! She got all excited and then posed next to her pink mosquito net which matched her dress at the time. My Baba works for the District Council Government and my mama runs a Duka, or shop, in town that allows her to sport the latest village fashions. No one in my family really speaks english but this has allowed me to practice the Swahili I'm learning every day a whole lot. I go to Kiswahili class from 8am until 5pm, but we have a daily chai break at 10 and lunch at 2, which breaks up the day pretty nicely. It's pretty exhausting but also a lot of fun exercising the language part of the brain again, and I'm really happy with how the language learning is going. As it did with both German and Czech, singing songs is helping me the most. In fact, myself and the 4 other women in my training group wrote a song in Kiswahili and actually sang it in front of the Local Ward Government council (translate: 6 village leaders in a classroom who deadpanned us until the end of hte song when they smiled and clapped..it was a good test of personal will and yet another experience of looking ridiculous in a foreign country) My favorite part about training is that it is done by Tanzanians and not americans in the Peace Corps. We met the country director and staff when we first arrived, but since then have been in the hands of the tanzanian staff members and now our host families, who feed us so much and will do anything for you (if you can translate it!) Also cool is how 3/4 of the villagers in my village of Manzese-A are Muslim, but there are Christians and Muslims living side by side and really peacefully..no one is really that strict in either case, but people just get along great here and lots of Masai come into the village and use walking sticks, own cows, and have really cool gaged earlobes. Most of the conversations get more complicated than the initial how are you and where are you from, so that is when the song singing comes in handy.



I'll try to get back on here in a week. bye byeeee!!