July 11, No Power

Tonight is the third night in a row we don’t have electricity. I think it came back on last night, so I don’t think it’s permanently gone, but I’m not exactly sure why it’s not here anymore. My family doesn’t really have many lanterns, so I ate by flashlight after the solar light the Peace Corps gave me died. I haven’t charged it lately, so tomorrow I need to stick it in the sun.

Today I started teaching for the first time. I found out 1 hour before the class that they wanted me to do a lesson on the past tense, but I was allowed to teach how and what I wanted!! I observed a lesson at 8:00 that morning. Teaching was interesting—the students didn’t understand things that I assumed they would, and got things I thought would be hard for them. For instance, one mistake a bunch of them kept making was to always say “I ___” even when switching pronouns. “Elizabeth I washed” or “She I went”. They looked at me like I had three heads when I asked them to work in groups and write a story about their friend’s weekend. I tried explaining they could make up anything they wanted to say, but I guess that concept is pretty foreign to them. An interesting mistake they made was confusing talking with taking. “I talked my bag” was written down by several of the students. Strangely, they seem to know some big vocabulary like “dust-bin”, but don’t know what talk means. Fortunately that’s one of the verbs I know in Swahili so I was able to translate.

I will be teaching tomorrow and taking the written part of my Swahili midterm. I’m nervous and kind of disappointed in myself preemptively. I really should know more by now. I have learned quite a bit, but it’s hard to buckle down and study after being in class all day. I get tired even when we aren’t doing anything strenuous, and I do try to spend at least a couple hours around my host family. Tonight I studied some vocab with Priska, which was fun. I like when I can use studying as a bonding activity!

Before going home today I went out to get a drink/chill-out at a bar down the road. When we got there a woman came up and welcomed me, kissed me on both cheeks, and hugged me. Then she sat down at our table and started talking to us in English. She had a toddler with her that she was breastfeeding periodically and she took my Reds (4.5% alcohol) out of my hand and gave it to the baby. Then the baby kept grabbing for my drink and crying when I wouldn’t give him more. She stole my drink a couple more time and also gave the kid sips of beer.  She assured us she wasn’t crazy or part of the free-masons (they think they’re a secret society of devil worshippers run by Jay-Z and Rihanna for some unknown reason.) She was pretty drunk and decided to buy us drinks even when we repeatedly said no, no thank you, we can’t, we need to go home soon, our families wouldn’t approve etc. We ended up leaving the drinks she bought at the bar since we needed to go home and study/didn’t want to send a wrong message. I’m not sure if it would have mattered, but Sam made sure to refuse the beer that she opened for him (with her teeth no less!) and I left mine with her as well.  It was pretty funny because she kept telling Sam to marry me, and she explained to me he hadn’t married me yet because we’re from “Europe”. Tanzanians seem to be kind of obsessed with marriage status. In fact, she went from calling him my “boyfriend”, to “husband to be”, to “husband” in the course of about five minutes. I didn’t argue with her because I didn’t think it would be worth the hassle of explaining. I still need to invest in an engagement ring for future times when marriage comes up and I don’t have another male volunteer with me. It’s easier to turn down proposals if you can visually back up the fact you’re “taken”, or so I’ve been told. For now I’ll hope being around male volunteers will keep people mostly at bay, although it definitely hasn’t worked as a full-proof plan so far.

Oh, the power just came back on. I think it has something to do with a problem in the neighborhood supply. Our neighbors were without power today too I think, but I still need to figure out what’s happening exactly. It is good practice for being at site since I doubt I will have any electricity there. It’s 9:30pm now.

In other news, my host sister and mother ate with me tonight, which was nice. My baba came in shortly after and asked me some questions about America and about what I’m teaching at St. Denis Secondary School. I’m craving papaya even though I know I don’t actually like it. I think I’m just dehydrated again. I forgot to drink most of the day. I need to do better about that.

Baadaye!