Final Post!!!

Habari!

First, I made a quick video so you can see how excited I am!

Alright. Time for this week's (and this blog's) last post!

This week I want to get you thinking about how far $1 can go in Tanzania. Because, well, $1 can pay for a whole lot of things!

If you had $1 in Tanzania you could....

...buy 1kg (2.2 pounds) of rice

or

...buy 1kg of flour

or

...buy 6 candles, and have 10c left over!

or

...buy 1,650 matches (33 boxes of matches)

or

....buy 3.5 pounds of fresh tomatoes

or

...buy 1kg of onions

or 

...buy 3 small bags of okra

or 

...buy 15 big carrots

or

...buy 12 cucumbers

or

...buy 4 heads of cabbage

or

...buy 33 avocados

or

...buy a bunch of bananas!

or

...buy two medium-sized pineapples

or

...buy a box of pasta

or

...3 forks to eat dinner with 

or

....buy 3 boxes of mango juice (like a Capri Sun or Juicy Juice)

or

...a plate of rice and beans at a restaurant

or

... two bottles of soda

or

...buy 6 eggs

or

...buy 15 passion fruits

or

...100 hot peppers!

or

...5 rolls of toilet paper

or

...1L of Dasani bottled water

or

...buy 25 tea bags

or

...a mug to put your tea in

or

...buy 4 piles of ginger

or

...12 big eggplants

or

...a knife for cutting up all of those veggies and fruits!

or

...a bag of sweet biscuits

or

...half a liter of kerosene

or

...half a liter of cooking oil
or 

...buy an exercise book for school

or

...buy 15 pens for class

or 

...pay for one week of school. 

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So you see, $1 can buy you a lot of things in Tanzania. It can help you buy things that you might not really need, like mango juice or lots of hot peppers, and it can help you buy a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables when you go to the market. 

But, it can also go a long way if you're a student. You can buy an exercise book to write all of your notes in or a bunch of pens so you can take your notes. But most importantly, $1 means that you can go to school for an entire week and not have to worry about being sent home for not being able to pay for school fees. 

A lot of Tanzanian families live on farms; they grow all of the food that their families need to survive, but aren't able to sell a lot of it at the market, because everyone else nearby is a farmer too. That means that while these families are hard-working, they don't have an income (or money that's paid to you for your work/job). 

This also means that they don't have a lot of cash, so when they need to spend what they have, it goes towards kerosene, to light their cooking fires and their lanterns, or to buy rice and flour, which is harder to grow, instead of going towards their children's educations. Furthermore, a lot of families are really big because they have a lot of children, or they also take care of nieces and nephews, so even if they can pay for some kids to go to (secondary) school, they might not be able to send all of them. 

When I was living in Muyenzi and working at the schools, I realized that paying for school fees was a really big problem for many of my students. Many of them were beaten and sent home week after week for not being able to pay, yet continued to come day after day in the hopes that they could learn a bit more before being sent home again.

In order to help some of these students, I started a scholarship fund while I was still living there. I called it The Nyota Fund -- 'Nyota' means 'star' in Swahili, because I hope that helping them get an education allows them to "reach for the stars" and pursue their dreams. 

The Nyota Fund logo....a star bursting out of where I was living in Tanzania!

As I said, it only costs $1 to keep a secondary school student in school for a week-- which means it costs in total anywhere between $30 and $50 a year (depending on the school)! 

I'm still raising money for my students for the 2014 school year, and I would LOVE your help.

If you find any pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, or $1 bills laying around your house, or have an extra coin or two in your piggy bank and want to bring them to school the day that I visit, I'll collect them all, count up how much each school raises, and then email you guys the names of the students you helped in Tanzania stay in school (and send you a picture or two)! 

I can even share with you our address in Tanzania so you can write a pen pal letter, and hopefully, they can send you a letter in return thanking you for all of your help.  

If each school can raise $100 -- which would send up to 3 students to school for an entire year (!) -- the Auburn Education Foundation said they would match your donation, meaning that every dime or dollar you bring in, is really worth twice as much! How cool would that be?

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Well, that's all I've got to share with you guys!

It's been really great blogging once a week and sharing with you all about Tanzania for the past couple of months and answer all of your wonderful questions...but I'm more excited to come and meet you all!

Don't forget to save any last questions you might have until my visit...and if you have anything to donate to The Nyota Fund when I come, karibu! 

See you soon!

Baadaye,

Marisa 

Answering More Questions!

Habari!

The last group of questions has been trickling in, so I wanted to answer them for you now. However, if you have any more questions -- you're going to have to save them until I get there!

----

Here at Owasco Elementary, we have been catching up with your earlier posts. Students from Mrs. Brown's class were particularly interested in your climb on Mt. Kilamanjaro. We were wondering how you prevented yourself from getting too cold and tired, and how many miles you climbed. Another student asked if there are any zoos in Tanzania?

Great question! While I was climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, it got increasingly colder the higher up we went. So, in our giant backpacks, we had big winter coats, knit hats, scarves, puffy gloves (like the ones you might use for skiing!), handwarmers, long johns, ski pants, and Under Armour shirts. We also layered our socks and wore big hiking boots to keep our feet warm! And for sleeping, we all got these sleeping bags that keep you warm even in below - zero temperatures. However, while we were wearing all of this clothing and climbing, a lot of the times your body would get nice and toasty...maybe even too toasty! It was definitely better to be hot than cold though! 

I'm only wearing a sweatshirt and sweatpants at the moment (and a hat), but this is all of my gear! 

In order to not be tired....well, we only climbed about 6 hours a day (at the max) while we were going up the mountain. That meant we had a lot of time for resting and a good night's sleep! But we were also encouraged to stay hydrated by drinking a lot of water and taking a break if you needed one. From my experience, it is better to walk slowly and steady without any breaks than to go fast and need a lot of breaks.  

Finally, there are some zoos in Tanzania -- but most Tanzanians have never heard of them or know what they are! Zoos, and the ideas of keeping animals just to look at,  is very Western. Tanzanians would be more excited to go on a safari, where they could see local animals in the wild! Because they don't have zoos though, they are not very familiar with all of the different types of animals you can find around the world in different places. For example, my students were shocked that there are no giraffes and elephants in America, and kept asking, what are these bears you speak of?

I did find this snake park near Arusha, Tanzania though....

But even there, you could touch some of the animals!
(I really was not too happy about where it's head was looking!)

Casey Park wrote, We thought that students who could afford high school were able to go to high school. But after reading Bahati's story, we know that students must also pass the Standard 7 exam. Is that right?
 

This is a great question! I can't believe I haven't addressed this yet. 

Yes, in order to even be allowed to go to secondary school (high school), Tanzanian students take a national examination while they are in Standard 7, or their seventh year of schooling. This tests to see how much they've learned while in elementary school, and how likely they will be able to learn English -- because elementary school is taught entirely in Swahili and secondary school is taught entirely in English. 

As you've seen from the photos, elementary schools are not great places for students to learn a lot. Unfortunately, this means that around 50% of elementary school students do not pass, and are not allowed to attend secondary school. 

Moreover, only 10% of students pass secondary school. Talk about the odds being against you!

In New York State, 74% of students graduate from high school. 

Some of these students stay on the farm until they get married (which they will marry much younger than those who continue on in school), or may spend a few years doing odd jobs. Some girls move in with other families to be maids in order to gain a small income. Imagine being done with school at the age of 12, or even 15, with basically no opportunities for a better life? It's a really sad situation. 

Dakota from Mrs. Dann's 6th grade class wants to know: How old do people have to be to work in Tanzania?

While there may be a law in Tanzania that states how old someone must be in order to work, it is not followed at all. Children work around the house beginning at a very young age, and children who do not go to elementary school (some cannot even afford the uniform or cost of pens and books) or secondary school can be found selling items or food on the side of the road. The money they make goes towards the living expenses of the family. 

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Thanks for all of the questions guys!

Tutaonana karibu! (We will see one another soon!) 

[ too-tah-oh-na-na  karibu!]

Marisa 

Week Eight: School Difficulties

Mambo!

This week I wanted to start thinking about what it might be like to live and go to school in an impoverished area. An impoverished area is somewhere that lacks money and infrastructure (like roads, electricity, government services), meaning that day-to-day life is different than what we might consider 'poor' in the United States. 

On this blog so far, we've touched a few of the other difficulties some Tanzanians face. 

I've shared pictures of how people might cook over charcoal or woodfire, and that they have to walk long distances for water, carrying the water on their heads. 

I've also shared that hospitals are far away, and some houses may not even be made out of concrete or have a metal roof. 

In short, life outside of the classroom isn't easy. Most students have to study in the evenings with dim lighting. Many do not have alarm clocks, but will be beaten if they are late for school. Others are only able to eat one meal a day.

My student Boniphace only has one school uniform, which he keeps in pristine condition by hanging them up in his small room. 

Being silly with a number of the boys who live in the shared housing near the school in order to focus on their studies.
(The one in the blue shirt and yellow flipflops on the left is Linus, who wrote last week's story I shared!)

Others decide to live with other students in shared housing without parents in order to save hours a day in walking to and from school. One of these buildings is pictured here, where 4-8 boys live inside and share a handful of bedrooms.

---

But life in the classroom is also difficult. 

In Tanzania, it is 'free' for children to go to elementary school through 7th grade. However, Tanzania had to quickly build schools across the country to try and accommodate the sudden influx of students. 

Because of this, many of the primary schools (elementary schools) are dilapidated -- literally falling down. Yet, the government cannot afford to rebuild schools, so students and teachers must make the best of what they have. 

*Note: Elementary school teachers in Tanzania only have a high school education; they barely even need to pass in order to go to a primary school teacher's college! 

Here's the principal sitting in his office at a primary school I visited. 

A primary school in NW Tanzania

The kitchen for the primary school, where they make porridge for the students. 

This is Muyenzi Primary School. Notice none of the rooms have windows, and only a few of the classrooms have doors. 

Another photo of Muyenzi Primary School. Only a handful of these students pass their exams in seventh grade and are able to attend Secondary School (which is not free). 

 When you get to secondary school, another set of problems arise. 

The first is that you have to pay to go to school every year, or as they say "school fees". They might be what we consider cheap, about $50 for a year, but where these students are from, that might be 10%-50% of what their entire family makes a year. 

One of my classes posing with me (can you see me?!) my first semester. 

 The second major issue is that teachers do not always go to all of their classes and teach their students. One of the reasons I think my students did so well in English class was that I was always there to teach them!

The other hardship is that there is no technology in the classroom, and students do not have their own textbooks. This means that the only information students get is what the teacher writes, by hand with chalk, on the chalkboard in the front of the classroom.

In one class, I would fill the board at least twice, because I was careful to write large enough so students in the back of the classroom could read what I was writing! 

Yet, in the face of difficulty, in the face of long days, grumbling stomachs, and hard chores, these students have big dreams.

They go to school each and every day with a smile on their face, many times walking hours a day to and from school, because they know that education is the key that could unlock a brighter future.

These students know that if they study hard and get high enough scores, they might have the chance to go to college and get a job that will allow them to live a better life, and help their families to have a better life too. 

They are all truly, truly inspiring -- and an amazing reminder for us to be grateful for everything that we have...but also to also dream for everything we can be!

Next week is my last post! I'll be talking about the value of $1, as well as sharing with you a fundraiser that I am working on that helps keep students like the ones I talked about today in school. Hopefully, I will also be able to post a short video introducing myself before my arrival!

Baadaye,

Marisa 

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Teachers & Faculty: Below is a link to a story of a specific student, Bahati. Bahati is a true inspiration to me, and depending on the ages of your students, you might want to read this story to them and engage them in a meaningful conversation about education. 

"A Boy Named Luck: Bahati" 

http://www.tanzania365.com/2013/06/a-boy-named-luck.html 

Week Seven: Folktales

Mambo!

I hope you all enjoyed your week off! 

Like all cultures, Tanzania also has folktales and stories that are passed on from generation to generation. One day when I was teaching, I asked my students to practice writing a "Once upon a time" story using the past tense and having an animal as a main character.

One of my students, Linus, shared this folktale with me, and I thought it was so great, I just had to share it with all of you! I typed it exactly as he wrote it, so you'll see that there are a few errors in his writing. 

A couple of things to note before reading the story:

1. "the bush" is what many Tanzanians call rural areas, particularly small villages or houses far away from bigger towns and cities. It's kind of like what we'd refer to as "off the beaten path". 

2. There are a number of tribes in Tanzania who believe cows are sacred creatures. Also, many people who live in villages or in "the bush" may raise cattle or goats for a living, so cows today can only be found in captivity. Conversely, buffaloes are not domesticated and can be found in many national parks when you go on safari!

Some cows grazing outside of my house one rainy afternoon (the garbage bag on the right is a young boy with a makeshift raincoat!)

---------------------

The Story

BY: Linus B. Anatory

Once upon a time there was a buffalo and a cow. Both lived together in the bush. They cooked together and ate together, both gave birth and one day a buffalo went in the bush which was far from their home and a cow went to visit her friend goat. They left their babies themselves, they told them to play near their home. Both babies played for a long time but later on the cow’s child stepped the buffalo’s child and buffalo’s child got hurt and died. By a short time cow arrived from her friend goat she found buffalo’s child lied down without breathing. She realized that the baby has died. What could she do? She thought that when the buffalo will come back would attack them. The cow told her child to run as how she could. They ran to man’s home for their protection. When buffalo arrived home found her child died. She ran after the cow, when she reached the man’s home she asked have you seen the cow with the child passing? A man said they passed on that way. Man directed them by a front right leg while the cow and her child were inside the man’s house.  After the buffalo has gone away the cow got out the house. They thanked him. A cow asked what can I do for you? The man answered “come to live with me for better protection”. Until now the cow is living to man’s home, afraiding the buffalo.

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Last week, I also posted while you were gone all about food in Tanzania, so I'm going to keep this week's post pretty short!

I'll be visiting all of your schools in just THREE weeks! I'm getting really excited, and I hope you are too!

Baadaye,

Marisa 

Week Six: Tanzanian Food and Eating Customs

Habari!

All have the week off from school and are hopefully enjoying your break, but I've been getting a lot of questions about what I ate while I was in Tanzania, as well as what Tanzanians like to eat, so I figured I'd write about it this week so you can enjoy reading all about it when you're back in shule ("school" - pronounced shoo-lay)!

As I was going through the hundreds and hundreds of photographs I took during my time in Tanzania, I realized that almost none of them are of food! I took a couple of pictures of things that I made, and a couple of pictures of people cooking, but rarely did I ever take out my camera before eating....I wonder if I thought that it would be inappropriate to ask! 

Anyways, between my photos and some help from the internet, I've got some photos to show you of popular Tanzanian cuisine. This does not include everything, but does cover a lot of what you could find if you went to a small restaurant. 

Let's start with breakfast foods: 

We've got chapati - which is kind of like an oily tortilla, mandazi, which is a semi-sweet bread bun, and uji, which is a porridge made out of ground up corn and water. 

Chapati (photo courtesy of Google)

 

Here I am getting a scoop of uji into my teacup at Bukililo Secondary School

Mandazi - most commonly eaten after dunked into tea! Mandazi aren't only limited to breakfast,
but are also commonly eaten as a snack or served to guests. 

Of course, all of this must be served with some hot tea! You can either boil tea leaves into water,
or you boil hot milk and add a teabag and sugar. I prefer milky tea!

Lunch foods and dinner foods are largely the same -- families typically eat breakfast, and then eat either once again in the evening, or eat in the afternoon (4pm) and then again much later in the evening (10pm). This depends on what jobs they have, as well as if they can afford to eat two or three times a day. 

Because cooking takes up so much time, I only ate breakfast and dinner around 8pm. But before you eat, you need to make sure you know where you're going to cook!

Here are three options: 

You might cook dinner like Mama Kabibi here, with a pot over a small firewood fire in the open...

Or in a jiko, or stove, like I did...using charcoal and a bit of firewood to get the coals hot...

Or in a handbuilt shelter/hut like one of my students --
also using firewood she and her housemates collected!

Once you figured out where you're cooking, you need to decide what you are cooking!

This is the fried chicken that Mama Kabibi was stirring up before!

Or, you can have boiled bananas, mixed in a tomato and vegetable stew (I made this!)
Boiled bananas can alternatively be mixed with beans as opposed to tomatoes. 

So here's a HUGE plate of boiled bananas and beans!
It's been covered with a boiled banana leaf to help keep it warm while everyone got ready to sit down. 

Another really common meal is ugali and beans. Ugali looks a lot like mashed potatoes, but is a specific type of flour that is mixed with water at high temperatures. It doesn't have a lot of taste, but it fills you up quickly! It's a common food that can be found in Tanzania and neighboring countries. 

If you want a snack, mahindi choma is quite popular (seasonally). This is corn that is grilled!
Corn in Tanzania is nowhere as sweet as the corn we have in Upstate NY -- mahindi choma tastes kind of like popcorn! (Image from Google)

On top of this pile of ugali is mchicha - which tastes a lot like spinach.
It's any kind of leafy green, boiled or cooked in oil, with lots of salt. It's usually served with ugali or rice and beans!
(Image from Google)

Katchumbari is a salad made up of cucumbers, tomatoes, sometimes cabbage, and fresh onions.
Dressing might be a little squeeze of salt and lime!
(Image from Google)

This could be served on the side of any meal (just a scoop or two),
but on the coast, is typically eaten with a rice dish called pilau. 

My favorite Tanzanian food is called chipsi mayai - which means chips (french fries) and eggs!
Basically, it's a french fry omelette! Here is a chef taking the french fries out of the hot oil (left) and into the omelette pan. He'll then add scrambled egg mix on top, and cook it on both sides!

 

Here's the finished product! You'll notice on the side is a big pile of salt, a squirt of ketchup or chili sauce,
 and a bit of kachumbari on top. Tanzanians will commonly eat this with a toothpick.
(Image from Google)

Another great snack is bananas! These ones aren't ripe yet, but these tiny bananas are very sweet, and very delicious!
People also might snack on an avocado too. 

Grilled meats are always loved - typically goat, cow or chicken,
but if you ask around you might also find pig! Tanzanians don't typically eat pork though,
so if it's served, it's very hush hush. 

Finally, a couple of times a year is kumbvi kumbvi season. I think it's a plague, but everyone in the village got very excited when these winged bugs started dropping out of the sky and crawling all around.

After a little bit (between minutes to a couple of hours), kumbvi kumbvi shed their wings. Tanzanians find these to be extremely delicious when fried -- we even had a day off of school when they came so students could run around and collect them!

I was not adventurous enough to eat them, but I hear they don't taste too bad. Grasshoppers are also a delicacy (because they're also seasonal and hard to catch!)

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So, that's a quick adventure through some typical Tanzanian food! 

What do you think? Did you see something that you would want to try? 

What looks similar to what you eat at home? What doesn't?

My favorite Tanzanian food is definitely the chips mayai - or the french fry omelette. Oddly, even in neighboring countries this dish is hard to find....but it's so delicious, I'm not sure why it isn't!

As for customs, it really depends on the area. Different tribes have different customs, and different regions also have different customs. In cities and now in many homes, silverware is fairly common (or at least they have it in case guests come). However, most of the time, meals are eaten with your right hand.

[Food is not allowed to be touched by your left hand because they have a bathroom hand (left) that is used for only that and an eating hand (right) in order not to mix the two and get sick]

 One thing is for certain -- if you ever visit someone's house, it is expected that you serve them food before they leave. This can be anything from some biscuits on a plate to a full meal...which definitely takes time to prepare!

And when you are visiting someone's house and they serve you food, you must always take seconds...and maybe even thirds! Whenever I knew I was going to visit, I would make sure to be really hungry before I got over there so they didn't think I didn't like their cooking! 

I should also add that napkins are not used except in some restaurants. Instead, a waiter, or your host, will bring over a jug of water, a basin, and a bar of soap before you begin eating and again after you finish eating for you to wash your hands. 

I think it's a great custom -- and a great way to save the trees!

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Baadaye,

Marisa 

Answering Questions from Week 5

Mambo!

A bunch of questions came in this week from Herman Avenue Elementary and Seward Elementary -- thanks guys! I've posted their questions below, as well as some answers!

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Kristen, a fourth grader at Seward wants to know what the students did on their days off from school.

On weekends, many students took the opportunity to study during the daylight hours, or helped their family with farming. Girls might help their mothers clean the house, watch the kids, or help cook lunch or dinner. However, the big market day was on Saturdays -- and that was the place for students to see and be seen! It was just like going to the mall; you wore your snazziest outfit (so people could see your style), walked around and saw what was being sold, and chatted with your friends.

A lot of students would also get their hair cut on Saturdays -- because in both primary (elementary) and secondary school, you were required to keep your hair short short short!

Reagan from Mrs. Dann's 6th Grade class and Ben and Michael who are in 4th grade at Seward 
want to know: What do kids play with? What sports do they play? 

Most children don't have toys, so they use their imaginations a lot. I posted a picture a couple of weeks ago of a little boy playing with a toy car he made, which is common, and also kids use old bicycle tires and chase them around! 

Without a doubt, the biggest sport that everyone is always talking about is football! However, when they say "football", they mean soccer, not American football. They are in love with the English Premier League and listen to the radio to hear the updates (Chelsea, Manchester United and Arsenal are top favorites). 

Girls don't play football though, they like to play netball, which is a game that has hoops like basketball except that you can only throw the ball to one another while jumping, so it's a little different. 

Each year, all of the schools train their students for a nation-wide sports competition. For the competition, students participate in different running events, team sports (football, volleyball and netball) and also the long and high jump. I've put a bunch of pictures below for you to see them playing!

My girls running a distance race

The start of a sprint race

Long Jump

High Jump

High Jump (seriously high!)

Football

Netball

Finally, when I was in Tanzania, one of my friends came to visit and brought with him a few Frisbees. When we first showed them, they asked why Americans play with plates! 

So, we taught all of the students how to play Frisbee (and that it is made of plastic, not a plate!), and left the Frisbees at the school for them to play with on Fridays. 

Here's some pictures of them in action!

The girls practicing with my friend Matt

Dawsoni ready to throw (he's a Nyota Scholar!)

Linus showing good form

Caitlyn in Mrs. Messina's 6th Grade class is wondering what types of foods you ate while you were in Tanzania. 

My post on Monday will be ALL about food, so you only have to wait a couple more days to find out!!!

Amber from Mrs. Messina's 6th Grade Class wants to know: 

How did you feel when you first got to Tanzania? Was it difficult to get used to the language? 

Amber, what a great question! This was actually my second time visiting Tanzania so I knew what to expect, the only difference was I was about to LIVE there for ten whole months! I was very excited, but I was also a bit nervous because I still didn't know where in the country I was going to be teaching. Also, it was a very long time to be so far away from home. 

As for the language, it definitely took a little while to realize that I couldn't just start speaking in English when I saw somebody. But I have been studying Swahili for a few years now, and I was happy to be in a place where I could practice...a lot!

Caitlyn from Mrs. Dann's 6th Grade class asks: 

Are you still in contact with the people in Tanzania?

I am in contact with some of the people I met and worked with in Tanzania through email. However, my students don't have access to email and they are not allowed cellphones, and the cost of calling Tanzania is also extremely expensive, so unfortunately, I do not get to talk to them as much as I would like to.

But Josias, who helps me run my scholarship fund, meets with students regularly and passes on my greetings to them, and then they relay it back to him to tell me! So I am lucky that Josias is able to communicate for me. 

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Looking forward to more questions, and to meeting you all in a month! 

Baadaye,
Marisa 

Week Five: Water, Water, Water

Habari!

 I hope everyone had a great weekend and was able to stay warm! 

As I mentioned last week, this week I wanted to share with you all my living experience in Tanzania - particularly in regards to water. 

If you think about it, we use A LOT of water here in the United States. To wash our hands, do our dishes, wash our clothes, take our showers, brush our teeth, flush our toilets, and to drink to stay hydrated. We might also use water to help plants grow, mop the floors, or make ice to keep our drinks cool. It is really easy to forget how lucky we are sometimes!

When I was living in Tanzania, my house did not have running water. In fact, my house did not even have a sink, a shower, or even a faucet. We learned that there were two ways of getting water: either collecting buckets of rain water outside during rainy season, or having students carry buckets of water to our houses (they knew that I was not strong enough to carry my own water from the water pump).

Whenever we thought it was going to rain, we would put our basins outside underneath where our roof drips into our courtyard. If we forgot to put it out, we didn't collect any water...so there were days while I ran home in between classes to double check our basins were out!

This water could only be used to quickly rinse your hands (if you had charcoal or dirt on them) or to flush our toilet or clean where we spit out our toothpaste. This water was dirty because while it was rainwater, we kept it outside and uncovered, and within a day you could see organisms and algae start to grow (see how the middle basin is dirty? That water is older than the one with the soccer ball on the left). 

Our best invention was this: We went to a hardware store and bought a spicket, then we went to a market and bought a bucket, and then we walked one afternoon to town to have a fundi, which is a handyman make us this makeshift water tap. The water in here was water we got from the students who carried water for us. We used this to wash our hands and to help save water when we washed our dishes! Also it was great when we were rinsing the suds out of our small clothing items! Underneath we put another basin to collect our dirty water and also used that to flush our toilet.

When my roommate and I left Muyenzi, we gave this "sink" to the girl's dormitory on campus to use outside of their bathroom.

Here is the only water pump I knew how to find, but I know there are a couple more near our house. This one, around the same distance as the others, was about 1.5 miles away. Everyone who lived in the area went to one of these few water pumps for ALL of their water needs. 

These are elementary school girls walking with their water in the afternoon (while wearing their school uniforms!)

Here are some of my secondary school students carrying water back to their houses. Because the water is so heavy, the girls take a fabric and make a bit of a hat out of it, and rest the bucket on top of that. It's still heavy, but it's easier to carry long distances this way. As they walk, the girls sing songs, chat with one another, or greet other people walking on the paths and roads. 

Off of our courtyard, Elizabeth and I had a room where we were able to store our buckets of water.  Because there were bugs, lizards and bats that lived in the roof, we tried to keep as many of the buckets covered as we could, but sometimes, our water would become too contaminated and we couldn't use it.

These five buckets would usually have to last us an entire week -- that's about one bucket a day. It meant that I was only able to take one shower a week, but that left us enough water for cooking and drinking, so it was a price I was happy to pay.

Here I am putting some eggs in to boil! That pot is sitting on my kitchen -- it was just a part of the courtyard where I would put out our charcoal grill, light the charcoals, and cook over. It wasn't easy, but once the coals got hot -- it didn't take more than 30 minutes to get to a boil! Every night, we spent about 2 hours cooking dinner, and another hour boiling water for tea or making boiled eggs for the next day.

Here are some of the girls from the girls' dormitory washing their clothes! All clothes have to be washed by hand -- which takes a lot of skill if you're messy like me! I ended up paying someone to wash my clothes most of the time, but a few weeks these lovely students of mine washed my clothes and sheets for me, which was so nice of them. 

  

Because we had to take "showers" outside in our courtyard, we would wear a swimsuit while we bathed. You can see our swimsuits and towels hanging up to dry after an afternoon shower! We would fill a basin with about 6 cups of water for our bodies (using a loofah and soap) and then when we emptied that basin, we would fill it again to wash our hair with shampoo, and one more time for conditioner! In total, about 20 cups of water for a whole shower.

That's a little over 1 gallon of water. When I looked up how much water a shower uses, it's 2.5 gallons A MINUTE! So, if you took an entire shower in 30 seconds, that's how much water I used...once a week. 

 Other ways we saved water was by using wet wipes to wipe off dirt from our face, arms, legs and feet during the week, paying other people to do our laundry, using 'dirty' water to flush the toilet (about 1-2 cups a flush), and using hand sanitizer to wash our hands rather than use water. 

We were frugal with our water because my students had to carry water for us, and we knew we couldn't possibly carry it ourselves. Students left during school hours to go and fetch water for all of their teachers, and I wanted to put as little of a burden on them as possible. However, we could have been very wasteful with our water, and asked them to bring us 5 buckets a day if we wanted! I just knew that it was more important for them to be in the classroom or be doing fun academic activities with their classmates.

And that's that! Some weeks we had a lot of water, some weeks we really struggled. But overall, it wasn't that bad. 

But I have to admit, every time we went to a bigger city with a shower, it was my favorite part of the vacation!!!

Next week, I'll be back to share with you some local Tanzanian foods as well as some customs! 

Kwa heri,

Marisa 

Weekly Challenge:

1. Write down all of the times you used water and why for one whole day. The next day, look at the list you made and think about how you might conserve some of that water. How could you use less water?