Letter No: 3, October 29, 2002

Dear Fam! I got to talk to Mom, Fin and Dad today, which was great! But there was so much more that I wanted to tell them, than the time and phone connection allowed. I guess going back to letter writing is the next best thing...here goes..

My family is awesome. Everyday I feel as if I fit in even more. Today, being Sunday, and my one full day a week to do what I want, I stayed home and washed my clothes (by hand) and learned how to make pilau, a kind of rice pilaf dish. Those two things took 5 hours to do. It was actually really nice to just sit and socialize and enjoy all of that time while my hands were busy. Life moves much more slowly here, and so far, I really like it. You just have to prioritize things I think. Then, there's another part of me that wants to tell everyone to hurry up, as the Peace Corps training center definitely moves at an American/European pace, not Tanzanian.

I think I've mentioned before that my host sister( Stella) is getting married in a couple of weeks. For the wedding, Martha, the girl (PCT) who lives down the street from me, and I are going to get dresses made. It's a big thing here for girls who are really close friends, or from the same family, to buy the same material together, and then, get dresses made with the material, but in different styles. We decided that would be kind of fun to do something special, like Stella's wedding - were adopting Tanzanian traditions one by one I guess you could say.

Continued letter 11-10-02 Wow!, sorry for the long delay in finishing this letter. I guess you could say that PC has kept us rather busy. Yesterday was a day full of events worthy of a letter home about though. We started out internship at local schools, and then later that night was the send off for my host sister's wedding.

They broke the 65 of us up into groups of 3-6 for the next three weeks. My group is a group of 3, and we are all doing teaching internships at Enaboishu Secondary School. Crystal, Fred and I take the scenic walk down the hill, through a river (there are big stepping stones) and back up a hill from out road in Sekei (our village) to get to our school. We are teaching different subjects or levels and have different mentor teachers. The schools is so pretty, and yet really needs a lot of help as well. Its location up on the hill, with a boarding house/field/garden/big playing field makes it really unique. Inside the big echoing classrooms you find as the problems that plague other schools. Students sharing chairs and desks, not enough chalk, 60-70 students in one class, the list goes on.

Yesterday and today are observation days. My mentor teacher didn't show up for his first class (which is not unusual). So I went with Crystal to her class (Form 3 Maths - I'm doing Form 1 Maths). Form means class. The students stay in the same classroom all day long, and it's the teachers who change classrooms here. I would hate teaching the last period after they've been sitting in one place for so long! So I was able to sit in on some classes, and I eventually met my mentor teacher. He seems really helpful, and has been teaching for about 8 years. Next week, I start teaching four times a week for 80 minutes each time. We'll see how it goes.....even though I've done a few mini lessons at the PCT site, and they went well, I'm really nervous.

After observation, and morning Chai, (a tradition here that I LOVE) we sat in on a rehearsal session for some performances that are going on at graduation for Form 4's tomorrow. It was my first experience of African singing - and - WOW! I was impressed. They had about 2 hours of it. The girls voices were so beautiful, and the harmonies were amazing. They used their feet to make rhythmic sounds. It was all done acka pella, and they had drums as well. Some of the PC Trainers have been playing drum at training, but this was beyond anything I had heard since my arrival.

So after that treat, I rushed back down the hill to my host family's house to get ready for my host sister's send-off. The send-off is much like the wedding, but is a more intimate affair, and is part of the Masaii heritage that my family has (I cannot count the number of extended family members I walk by as I leave the house everyday that ALL have the traditional ear piercings). My host mom, myself and a dozen other female family members were decked out in these fancy silver dresses, with all of them wearing all the traditional beads, necklaces, head-dresses and earrings. My host sister was decked out in a traditional brown dress with beads, and her closest friend was in a similar maroon one.....(Don't worry I took lots of pictures, which I'll send later)! There was a wedding type of ceremony, where the grandfathers came up and promised to make sure life was as good for Stella after she got married as it was now, and gave Stella and Joseph all kinds of advice.

After the send-off ceremony, we walked down the street to the send-off party, which was a lot like a wedding reception. For this Stella changed into what looked like a wedding dress - (but apparently was not, as she proudly showed me THAT dress tonight) There was an entire ordeal of food, best wishes, cake, dancing and present giving. For the "cake" they had two kinds. One was more like what we would expect and the other "cake" was a GIANT slab of some kind of meat - maybe a cow - most likely a goat. It really interested me to see that the "cake" of meat was more popular than the one I really liked.

The actual wedding is tomorrow, and it will be interesting to see how that goes, as the send-off was such a big party in itself (450 people!!) Somehow, I don't think I'll be getting much sleep this weekend..... I'll let you know how it goes later!!!!!!!

Love Jessica