Habari za siku nyingi?

It's the beginning of February but I have the feeling I won't get to internet until late March. If that's the case this will be the first of many journal entries to read. I left off in the village, sick, and went to bed at 9pm on new year's eve. I spent the next day in the village but it was just a normal day. I prepared to leave for another Peace Corps conference. It was in Dar es Salaam and was mostly medical check ups. Good news: no unusual illnesses or problems. Just the usual ones.

The road was really bad so we were being flown up from Mtwara. I got to hang out with Denis in Mtwara. We went to the fish market often and tried snorkeling but a storm off the coast was stirring up the water too much and made visibility really bad.

I got to fly up a few days early and Anna and I went to Bagamoyo, a small town just north of Dar. Bagamoyo has a large artist community and a mission that was one of the leading institutions to combat slavery in Tanzania. Anna and I enjoyed visiting the museum inside the mission and got to tour the local art college, although it was out of sessions so we just walked around a bit. There is also a large beach there and we spent a morning in the water and on the beach building sand sculptures. As we were deeply engrossed in our craft a herd of cows was coming down the beach. Cows usually aren't too scary but I've seen them get agitated and run off kids. Well these cows had HUGE horns. No joke, I want to say they were at least 6 inches in diameter and 3 to 4 feet long. Those cows must have very strong neck muscles to support two of those. Also, the herd was big. As they approached us at a steady speed of 0.25 km per hour we debated. Seek refuge in the water or defend our castle (my sand sculpture) and it's dedication, a turtle (Anna's sand sculpture)? We chose the latter and it wasn't too terrifying being engulfed by the herd and passed on with relative indifference.

Next we returned to Dar to see our training group and hang out for a week. It was great to see everyone and hear new stories from the lives of PCVs. As is often the case there are too many people to see, seeing everyone at once can feel overwhelming, and before you know it it's over. But it was still a great time and refreshing to hear stories, get new ideas, and just relax with friends. Mike had just been in America for Christmas with his family and brought us exciting news from the states. Things like cereal, boneless meat, ice cream, the Wii, driving cars, wearing jackets, paved roads, and book stores.

All too soon we had to say goodbye to our friends and once again Anna and I prepared for 3 months apart. Once back home I got ready for the coming year. Although I arrived one day after school 'started' I was greeted with 2 weeks to prepare before enough students arrived for teaching. I'm preparing lessons much better this year now that I know available resources. I'm happy to report I was able to find an outdoor activity for my students on the second day of class. We were doing coordinate geometry and I needed to show them how we find the mid-coordinate and distance of a line segment. So I had the students gather sticks, we taped on numbers, and stuck them in the ground to make a coordinate axis. Next I had 2 students stand at certain coordinates and hold a string. Concentrating on just the x-values we found the midpoint on the x-axis then the y-axis. Next a student used these two values to find a coordinate along the line. I explained this should be the mid-coordinate so the string to both end coordinates should be the same length. We pulled them together to see that, indeed, they were. Next we made another line segment and then created a right triangle with a line parallel to the x-axis, a line parallel to the y-axis, and that segment being the hypotenuse. But I didn't cut enough string to complete the triangle so I had students hold hands to complete the triangle. Where else can you ask teenage boys to hold hands and know they won't complain or be embarrassed? (Holding hands is a sign of closeness-like best friends-between boys. Boys and girls do not hold hands. There's no PDA-Public Display of Affection-here.) Using each axis to count the number of units on each corresponding parallel line we then used the Pythagorean equation to calculate the distance along the line segment. We had used a meter to separate the numbers on the axis and I had created an example where the answer was 10 meters. We used the meter stick to count and prove the method valid. The students had a lot of fun and enjoyed being outside. We were lucky it was one of the few days that week when it didn't rain during school hours.

It's cold here. Yeah, it's the summer here in the Southern hemisphere. But I think it's colder in the summer than the winter. Why? Well, when the difference in temperature between Summer and Winter is only 10 degrees but the difference from direct sunlight and shade is 20 degrees you can understand. It's now the rainy season; many cool, damp days with no sunlight. Brrr....

At the end of the month I started preparing the library for opening the first week of February. I'll let you know how it goes. Until then,

Justin