It looks like Africa here

Well, I arrived at site. After a long bus ride followed by a taxi ride for an hour on a dirt road in the rain, my headmaster and I arrived at our school after dark. I discovered my house is very nice and rather large with two bedrooms and a living room, an enclosed compound in the back, and bathrooms and a kitchen room across the enclosed area. However, as I'm at a new site in a new house, I have nothing but a bed, two tables and a couple chairs, a bucket and a kerosene lantern, and my clothing and books I brought with me. No stove, no pots and pans, no shelves or wardrobe or anything. Also, I wrote in my last post that my house would have electricity and running water. False. It has neither. So in addition to all of the things I need to find, buy, and figure out how to get back to my house, starting with a charcoal and a kerosene stove, I also need to figure out a system for water: getting it to my house from the neighbor's, storing it at my house, and then boiling and filtering it for drinking. I also heard that in the dry season the tap water for the whole town is only turned on on Fridays, so you have to store all of your water for a whole week! Woah!

Luckily my headmaster is really nice and has worked with 3 Peace Corps Volunteers before me. His family has been feeding me and entertaining me with chatter at his house (maybe too much! I haven't had time to sit in my house, unpack, or anything like that yet). He's also looking into getting some living room furniture and curtains for me this week. That'll make things a little more cozy.

One of the female teachers at my school took me to her house one afternoon, where I talked a little to her and another teacher. For most of the afternoon, though, I talked to one of the teachers' boyfriend who teaches in Iringa and has very good English and Western ideas. It was a lot of fun to talk to him, and it encouraged me that it's possible to have male friends in this country. Maybe. The trouble is that Tanzanians do not have intergender friendships at all. So we'll see how that works.

The landscape at my school is really nice. It looks like Africa. You know, the savannah yellowish tall grasses and trees with flat tops dotting the landscape. Just what you imagine as an American who's seen The Lion King but never stepped foot in Africa. And the blue mountains of Iringa town rise up in the distance. All this I can see right outside the windows of my house. The village nearby is right next to the school, and the market and shops are about a ten minute walk if you go straight there. However, the villagers were so curious about me when we walked around yesterday that we had to stop every few feet to greet and chat. They speak a local language here, so the greetings are different, but most people also speak Kiswahili so my training was not entirely in vain. However, my headmaster introduced me to everyone one by one, and I really can't say much more than my introduction myself, so I would stand there awkwardly, alternately nodding in confirmation of what I understood and furrowing my eyebrows trying to figure out what else they were saying so quickly. Mostly I just walked around wide-eyed and overstimulated by the sights. Village life is soo different than life in the town. Woah!

So I can't figure out whether to be scared to death of the prospect of getting everything I need and learning to live in a village independently and speaking broken Kiswahili to villagers who've maybe never seen an mzungu (white person) before, or excited and stimulated by the challenge of setting up a new site and getting to know villagers and making friends with them. I think right now I'm mostly on the side of scared to death, but I won't give up hope. I'm sure this month will be the most difficult, trying month I've ever lived, but things will come and I will become more comfortable and less overwhelmed, little by little as time goes on. What I'm really excited about is the time when I do get more comfortable and have my house set up a little and I'm able to at least support and feed myself. I'm excited to speak better Kiswahili so I can actually talk to people and maybe even make some friends. If I can get through the first few weeks (including the beginning of January when I start school), I think I'll be set. Then I'll be able to face any challenge that ever comes my way.

So here comes the determination, the courage, the independent streak, and the sheer strength. This is it- I'm really doing it!