Middle of Training

Liora McElvaney
Oct 9, 2024
3 min read

I’m writing this after our 15-kilometer (9-and-a-half-ish miles) hike. OMG, it was hard but also so fun and different from daily learning, cooking, and cleaning, which was needed. We hiked Mlima Mashendei and BOI did we scramble up that thing. Peace Corps said it would be tough but fun, yet they did not emphasize the tough part enough. Amazingly my foot did really well and I only almost lost my water bottle off the side of a cliff once (a very agile local kid saved it for me)! I’ll add pictures at the bottom!!

Other than that. I had my rafikis (friends), Fran, Charlie, and Griffin, over for dinner last week and we cooked together at house and made all my favorites like maharage na nazi (beans with coconut), chapati (like a crepe pancake), wali (rice), and mboga (vegetables). Then we ate in almost total darkness because the power had been out all afternoon, but I think that made it more memorable. Plus, when my mama and I walked them home the stars were CRAZY, seriously like nothing I’ve seen before, because of the no power. My jaw was on the floor and my mama was confused when I said “we never have stars like this at home!”. When she asked why I said light pollution (umasemaje light pollution???). The power doesn’t go out too often, or it hasn’t since I’ve been here, but when it does it is PITCH black and the sky goes crazy. Anyways, currently, it’s the 29th of September (we’ll see when this gets posted) which marks one month since my birthday and just about a MONTH with the Peace Corps! One month done, 26 to go!

Okay now it’s October 7th and I still haven’t posted this because I’ve been so busy and also don’t have wifi to make a post! But on Saturday we went to Lushoto which is a town in the Tanga region that has a European hotel with many, many amenities. Almost every week during training we have a Resource PCV who comes and helps with training and is there for us to ask questions and learn more about service, and this one took us to the hotel! We had pizza, and therefore cheese, ice, and mixed drinks for the first time since leaving America! We also swam in a very cold pool and then ran to use the sauna. During training, we are in class six days a week! But since we went to the hotel we sort of got a full weekend which was special, a very nice treat that Peace Corps gave us.

Then on Sunday Charlie, Fran, and I went to maybe the loudest bar I have ever been to in my life and swam in a random pool at said bar with our mamas for 7,000 shilling, which is actually sort of a lot. It was a unique experience, to say the least. Now I’m in week 6 of Pre-Service Training and I’m on my way to spend a WEEK(!) in Morogoro with other Health Volunteers. It’ll essentially be a week of learning technical skills that we can then apply once we are at site, think nutrition education, and more visits to different zahanatis. Since Morogoro is a bigger town than Korogwe (where my homestay is), we’ll have access to more different types of food - like maybe iced coffee?? In a couple of weeks, on October 24th, I’ll find out where my permanent site will be - Dodoma or Iringa - so expect to hear about that!

For now, I’m still having fun It’s weird how time moves here. Days are long but extremely fulfilling, and I can feel myself growing in strange ways. My life is full of Kiswahili, drinking at the local pub, taking bajajis, and laughing really hard.