Jino Langu ni Jackie

-My name is Jackie

Upon arriving in Tanzania I found Tanzanian names to be very interesting. On the one hand there are many people who have distinctly Tanzanian sounding names such as Asha, Rehema, and Jumapili (Sunday). On the other there are some people with western names such as John, Anna, and Frank (yes some of my classmates actually checked his ID). Early on in one of our Kiswahili classes our teacher kept on calling me Jackie. At first I thought she was just saying my name with an accent but after awhile it became apparent that she actually thought that was my name. The rest of my class found this highly entertaining and the name stuck. Apparently Tanzanians like adding an “ie” to the end of peoples names as I have also heard Jadie, Benie, and Minhie. However the people who actually have an “ie” at the end of their name they call Kate and Willie. Who knows what my name will be 2 years from now as I’ve been told to expect my name to be changed several times. Jino Langu ni Jackie.

--------

I flew out of Atlanta on Monday morning on a plane with some PC volunteers who were headed to Kenya. Apparently they were also staging 4 countries that day in Philadelphia as I also met people headed to Sierra Leone, and Burkina Faso. Arriving at the Tanzanian staging it was great finally getting to meet everyone after so much anticipation. It was like all of the sudden I had 46 new friends even if they are not all FBO. After a long 15 hour flight to Johannesburg a 7 hour layover there and a 3 hour flight we finally arrived in Dar es Salaam. The energy really started to build as I don’t think anyone could actually believe that we had finally arrived in the country that we would be spending the next two years. We were loaded onto buses to then head over to the Msimbasi Center where we would spend the next 3 days. There has been so much information thrown at us that it is like drinking from a fire hose (after boiling and filtering the water of course).

Yesterday we finally got to go out and into the city. Not surprisingly it was like stepping into a whole new world. Walking out of the compound we were immediately greeted by people riding their bikes full of chickens, logs, people on their backs and one guys with a nice looking office chair on his head. My bike handling skills were immediately put to shame. We then boarded a daladala which is a Tanzanian bus. To put things simply a daladala is not like an American bus. In the US buses stop, wait for the passengers to get on, and take their seats. With the daladalas people are jumping off before the bus stops, hanging out the door, and still jumping onboard as the bus starts driving away. How many Tanzanian people can you fit on a daladala? At the beginning of the ride I started out standing on an elevated platform towards the front of the bus where I couldn’t see anything but cement and my shoulders were jammed against the ceiling. At the next stop seats opened up and I got to ride shotgun. It was exciting/terrifying since I could actually see what was going on. There are people crossing the street in every direction coming within inches of the bus, bikes riding both ways down the road, and there doesn’t seem to be a center line that people follow. At one stop the driver kept on poking me in the shoulder and yelling at the money collector causing the collector to flick him off. I have no idea what he was saying but I’m just going to assume he was showing off his mzungu (foreigner), and the collector was jealous.

Once we arrived in the city center and finding out that our ATM cards don’t work we found a conga market and began to talk to the people selling congas. Congas are a piece of cloth that girls use as a wrap which come in all sorts of colors and have different Swahili phrases on them. One of my fellow volunteers accidently bought one that was for a funeral. Being of the male orientation, I was not particularly interested in buying a conga but one of the sellers was incredibly insistent on trying to sell me one. He was not convinced that I didn’t have a wife or a girlfriend who needed one. After awhile he gave up and found out that I was going to be a math teacher. He then posed a math problem for me: 3^x-9=72 (first one to post the answer gets 10 Tanzanian Jack Schillings!) After that he posed another question for me: log[base3](2^x)=2 (this one is worth 20 TJsh!) After solving this he then asked me to give him a question. I asked if he knew calculus and after saying that he did I gave him: Integral(e^(2x)/2 dx (30 TJsh!) He missed the answer as he tried a long way of solving it but he clearly knew a lot about calculus. Not too bad for a guy selling congas on the street!

Tomorrow we are heading to the Peace Corps Headquarters and the next day we head out to Morogoro to meet our host families!