From Maroroni to Marurani

New village stats:
Group size - 10 (4 Americans, 2 Brits, 4 TZ teaching partners)
Village pop - 2,000
# of subvillages - 3 (Juu, Katikati, Cusini - translation = high, middle, south)
# of schools - 2 (Shule Msingi na Umoja - two primary schools)
# of weeks before "summer" break - 1
time spent walking to school - approx. 1 hr and 15 mins (Umoja is 1 hr away, Msingi is 15 mins away)
# of churches - 4 (Muslim, Baptist, Lutheran (2))
Homestay stats: 2 people (Alex, one of the Brits and I) with one room and one bed. I stay with the diwani of the ward (Ward Elected Counselor) and he is amazing - he speaks really good English and is fascinated by everything American, so he loves to ask us questions and get our opinion on many different topics, including long distance relationships, George Bush, and romantic comedies (he is a fan of Titanic).

So we've spent a week in our new village. It is SO different from Maroroni. Maroroni was spread out - you would walk 10-15 minutes within seeing one house or even one person. However, in Marurani, it's a completely different story. We have one main street, and there are so many houses, one next to another. You walk and greetings abound with every step (since that's how it is here, every time you pass someone, you have to greet them, either with a hi, how are you? or a how have you been since the morning? or how is your work? how are your cows?). It feels so much more like a community when you compare it to the desolate open plains that composed Maroroni. The street is tree-lined (the trees are MANGO TREES!!) and there is just so much more activity. This area gets more rain than Maroroni and it's closer to Arusha, which means that it is comparatively, more wealthy. Many of our homestays have generators for electricity and televisions, as well as a pikipiki (motorbike) in addition to their bicycle. Their increased income is reflected in the food we are served as well. I have never tasted better quality meat (in Tanzania) since arriving here (my family is Masai, so they are very particular about their meat - we get goat meat regularly but it is REALLY good when my mama cooks it) and I get tomato and onion salad at every meal here (as opposed to one a week for a treat). Furthermore, many of the homestays have fruit platter (as opposed to one banana per day).

Since the schools had national exams this week, we actually haven't started teaching, and now only have one week of formal classroom instruction before the schools are let out for summer break. Luckily, we have 1 1/2 hours of class time every day, so we should be able to get through the bulk of the curric, but I hope we can find enough community teaching opportunities to fill the void that classroom teachings usually fill. We have seminars set up with them for two weeks after, as many students are required to come back to work on the school (ie, clean it) during their break time, so hopefully we will still be able to work with many of our kids, as I feel like a week is hardly enough time to get to know them, or to have them get to know us.

There's really not much to say, as this week was mostly spent getting to know our community and walking around (although we did do 3 community teachings for the 4 days that we were there BOOYAH!) More later. Kwa heri!