Thursday, December 23, 2010

The funniest "Crap" story ever!!

The following is a journal article written yesterday by husband, Michael. This should be a story of extreme embarrassment on my behalf (if I had any shame), but it is just too darn funny to keep it our little secret, so I put it in my blog:

          So Mindy and I just arrived home from downtown with Flo (the German Anthropologist) and Thomas (the Aftrican tribesman). The sun just set as we returned home. All of our laudrey from earlier in the day was still hung out to dry, and Savannah and Mogley (our new puppies) were anxiously waiting for us. When we entered the courtyard, I had noticed that the wind had blown off some our clothes that were not pinned. The dogs took advantage of this, and have been playing and chewing with my underwear and a pair of Mindy's. I picked them up and started whipping them around in an attempt to get the dirt off of them. As I was whipping, I realized that they smelled so very bad. I kept putting each pair up to and touching my nose and face, to get a big whiff, to see if they needed to be rewashed. The smell from one of them (Mindy's) was horendous and had a great amout more dirt than my own pair. I began to ask the dogs "Jees guys, what the hell did you do to the underwear, they smell like crap!?" Just then it hit me like a ton of bricks and I had just realized what I was holding and putting to my face multiple times.
        It turns out that the dogs did not get into a pair of Mindy's underwear that were freshly cleaned and had just fallen down from the clothesline. The dogs had actually found and dragged out the pair of underwear that Mindy had gone diarreha in the night before and had just hidden them under rocks in the courtyard. The story is that she was eating with us downtown the day before, and nature hit her, so she had to leave us and rush home (a 20 minute walk). She didn't quite make it home in time so as soon as she got home she got a shower and didn't know what to do with the underwear (there are no trashcans here just public holes of burning trash) so she put them in a bag and hid them under big rocks in our courtyard for the time being. She told me all of this that night when I returned home. Once I realized I was holding and smelling Mindy's now brown, once pink, underwear, I stood there in horror while Mindy (who realized it at the same time) broke out into a pain in the gut laughter, and almost peed her pants. I'm glad she took amusement from my dismay in sniffing and bringing her diarreah filled underwear  up to my nose. It is also interesting how she failed to dispose properly of her goopy-poopy underwear (she says she didn't want the neighbors to see it). Well funny enough, I had paid off for it tonight...and we did dispose of them..in the deep hole of a huge turmite mound.

I apologize if this story makes you grossed out. The funny thing is that everything happened so perfectly and unplanned that it couldn't have been better in a movie. I guess that I am a wife than only Michael could love. . . and I am soo glad to have him even with all that he has to go through. The fact that I post this entry probably leads you to the idea that the rest of our PC experience thus far has been fairly uneventful. We do not start teaching until mid January, so in the mean time we have been hanging out with fellow community members, cooking, and reading. We will be enjoying the holidays together with a couple other PC people... and exchanging hand made and heart filled gifts (the non-material type).  Happy holidays!!

P.S. A wish list can be found on the side of the page if you would like to send us some goodies within the next two years.

Love you, miss you





    

Friday, December 17, 2010

A few life lessons from the Tanzanians

Hello!
Michael and I are very fortunate and appreciative to have been born in such a developed country as the U.S.A. We were given the opportunity of further education (along with massive debt) as well as the opportunity to live and work in another country through the Peace Corps. Our awareness of this is one of the reasons we joined the PC; so we could take the knowledge we have gained as Americans and teach it to the Tanzanian students. But, what we have noticed is that the Tanzanians have some valuable life skills that most Americans do not have… and there are many sociological reasons for this. Sure, Michael and I are able to teach them complex ideas such as the number of electron orbitals correlated with a specific element, or the synapse mechanism through which neurons communicate, but here are a few lessons on resource management that Tanzanians follow (and many Americans don’t) that are vital for a sustainable world :

  • Recycle: By this, I do not mean take your plastics and cans to the nearby recycling center. Over 80% of Americans claim to do this anyway. But what I mean is too improvise and re-use. Here, when we go to anywhere and buy a coffee or a soda, we always receive the coffee in a glass mug and the soda in a good old fashioned glass soda bottle. The soda you can either: drink it there and leave the bottle, or if you take it home, the worker will not let you buy another later until you bring the bottle back. The restaurant saves all the empty bottles, and cannot get new soda shipments unless they swap the old for new. With the exception of nice restaurants, back home I can honestly say that (other than rootbeer) I have never received a soda that was not in a cardboard cup or plastic bottle. These containers then get thrown in the recycling bin at my house, but the trash in many others. The glass bottles were just one example. The other is how often Tanzanians improvise. We have come across many neat things such as curtains made of bottle caps, shoes made out of tires, to the ‘Khonga’ which is a cheap, square, and often beautiful, piece of cloth that women use as clothes, baby carriers, hot pads, mops, practically anything.

  • Limited Waste: From my first point, you can expect that here very little is thrown away. Back in my apartment with my lovely roommates, we threw out a whole bag of trash about every other day. Here, Michael and I have used the same small grocery bag for our trash in the last month (it still is not full). Paper towels are none-existent here and a waste of money back home (sorry Dad!).  Our food is completely made from scratch so there are no cereal boxes or pre-packaged dinner boxes to throw away. After making dinner, we only have vegetable peels which can be composted. No food packaging, no junk mail and circulars, and no plastic anything (other than water bottles which we don’t buy)! AWESOME for us and the earth!

  • Water Management:  Wow. I do not even know where to begin with the difference in water consumption. Granted, the vast majority of African families do not have running water to waste but the way they conserve their water is amazing. Even the richest of Tanzanians we have come across have never seen a dish washer, let alone a clothes washer. Everything is done by hand and with the minimum amount of water. And they definitely wear their clothes until they’re physically dirty and do not wear them once and throw them in the dirty clothes pile. Furthermore, we shower using a bucket of water and a cup. We use the cup to pour water over our bodies, and this is no more than about 3 liters for one bathing. We do not have gallons of water coming out of a shower head each minute we wash.  I am not saying that when I return home I will not get a nice hot shower, but I will definitely remember the difference and never stay longer than 5 minutes and turn the water off  (not leave it running) while I am waiting for the hair conditioner to do its job or if I’m shaving my legs. There is no excuse for a whole country of 307,000,000 to all have continuously running water in their daily showers while half of the world’s population has to make the daily decision of whether they will bathe, drink, or wash their clothes with their water rations.

  • Energy Conservation: This is probably the most important and beneficial skill we could learn from the Tanzanians. I will admit my dependency to my car back in the states. I would drive to places I could probably walk too and definitely ride my bike. Practically everyone in Tanzania takes a bus when going between major cities and rides their bike or walks to the local market when they need food. Something else I didn’t think about until I was here is the difference in common appliances. Teachers, here, are decently paid in comparison to the rest of the population and have a fairly easy time finding a job. Their housing is considered middle class and luxurious. That said, Michael and I (who are teachers) do not own a fridge, a microwave, clothes dryer, or any other energy gobbling device. Basically, dry your clothes outside and not in a dryer, or ride your bike to work, or take a bus more often, don’t let the shower run just to make sure you have hot water. Simple things add up. Tanzania does not have to wage a war against other countries to maintain their energy wasting lifestyles, so why does the U.S.? These are all things we know are good for the world but for some (like myself) it takes witnessing the conservation of another culture to learn the lesson.

My main goal with this blog is not to say Americans are wasteful and stupid and Tanzanians got it down. As a matter of fact, Tanzanians are conservative with these resources because they have no choice. They can’t afford to live any other way; they do not do it to save the world and our future generations. However, Americans have the availability to waste and the education to know its consequences, but many still do. I had to actually live within another society to fully understand these differences and I know I will carry these lessons back with me when I return (if I return). I hope this may convince small changes in your daily lives or to install appreciation at the very least. I have learned a lot, and one of the Peace Corps missions is for its volunteers to teach their fellow Americans about the culture and lifestyles they have experienced. So here is some of my take. . . I am sure more is too come.  We love and miss you all. Happy Holidays!