6 Simple Ways to Combat Homesickness

So its been just over two weeks now, and I have been having a terrific experience so far.  While I'm enjoying so many things, I'm not going to lie, there are times when I would rather be home.  Its usually the little things that tip the scales.  Things like the lack of sidewalks, the unpredictable electricity situation or the abundance of roosters at 4:00am.  In no way am I wishing my time away here, but I do get a little homesick from time to time, so I thought I'd write about the ways that I have been dealing with it (just in case you ever find yourself in a similar situation!).

Plan a busy day.  Its very difficult to feel homesick when your day is full of distractions.  You've got the rest of your life to enjoy the comforts of home, so even if you aren't feeling your best, get out of the house and do something. ANYTHING is better than being bored.

Journal.  Sometimes things feel a lot worse than they actually are.  I know I have a habit of wasting a lot of time thinking about my problems.  Journelling helps me to remember the good things that happened in my day and helps put my problems into perspective.  Its also nice to look back on earlier entries and see that you're not feeling the same way anymore.

Acknowledge your feelings.  Being homesick is natural and normal.  You can't expect to love and enjoy every experience that you have while you're away from home.  Sure its fun to confidently walk down busy streets and be the only mzungu (white foreigner) but is it REALLY that much fun to dodge herds of goats, motorcycles and dogs on the street?  Be honest with yourself and acknowledge how you're feeling, and share it with the people you're with.  Its likely that they're going through something similar and its always nice to know that you aren't alone.


Don't wallow.  Some days its easier to feel homesick than others, but don't let yourself get caught up in it.  You're away from home for a short time, and the minute you get back home you'll miss where you were.  Sure its easy to imagine your life if you were at home, but don't miss it too much, it'll still be there when you come back.

Comfort food.  You like it at home, why wouldn't you like it here?  I just bought myself some peanut butter to eat at breakfast, and it was a GREAT decision.  Its a small reminder of home and its delicious.

Get updates from home.  Sure I'm only away for six weeks, and sure the time is flying by, but I still love hearing from my friends and family back at home.  Sure life is going on without me at home, but its nice to know that when I come back I won't be completely out of the loop!  Its always nice to find a new email in my inbox, sometimes the nicest cure for homesickness is to realize that people back home haven't forgotten about you (that's a hint for everyone reading this :P ).

Well there you have it, my six simple tips for dealing with homesickness :)

-Matt

Art in Africa

I guess before coming here I never really heard of any African art, normally when you hear about Africa you get all the negatives.  You hear about poverty, food shortages, riots, genocide and HIV/AIDS.  Unfortunately, its rare that positive aspects of African cultures are show cased.

So I’ve been in Arusha now for just over a week, and I’ve been in Africa for two weeks now!  While exploring and getting to know Arusha I’ve encountered quite a bit of art. 

My first weekend, I went on a tour of Arusha and was introduced to two very talented artists SiKenguru and Gasto.  We met them in their gallery and were able to have sneak peaks of some of their works, both were very enthusiastic about me taking pictures to show on my blog.  SiKenguru is a more established artist, and has met Hillary and Bill Clinton (he had the letter from the White House to prove it).  SiKenguru also has a piece of his art in a gallery in Berlin.  Gasto is SiKenguru’s student, and has some very neat work as well!

SiKenguru and a sample of his art work

Gasto and some of his art work

A mural and the Via Via, a local restuarant

 

This weekend we visited an Art Gallery in Arusha.  It is a very beautiful building, the outside is shaped like a spear, a shield and a bowl.  It was super cool.  Inside it was FULL of different pieces of art from all over the continent!  From Sculptures and Masks to Chairs and Paintings, it was really neat to see it (and it was free, which made it all the better!).

The Arusha Art Gallery (Sheild, Spear and Bowl)

OK this is inappropriate, but hilarious.  There was a 14ft sculpture of a giraffe, which was VERY anatomically correct.  I bet you can guess what this is a close up of.  Why they were labelled as 'Extremely Rare' we weren't too sure, since every sculpture of giraffes we'd encountered had testicles.

These little sculptures reminded me of Jacob!! (Like the Toy Story 3 guys!)

Some Tinga Tinga art.

Well there you have it.  Another little snap shot of some African Culture

TIA

Habari Y'all!

Our power went out again tonight.  A day doesn't go by that we don't lose power.  I'm not sure what the real issue is, if there is too much of a demand or if there are technical/infrastructural issues, but all I know is that its rare for us to have power past 6pm at night (which is when you actually need it the most..since its dark by 7pm).  So while the generator runs in the background, I'm quickly writing this post.

I thought I'd update my blog with a few pictures to show what I've been up to the last few days.

We started working at the Umoja Centre, doing some community needs assessments with the students today!  It was really great!  We are hoping that over the next few weeks we can work with the students to develop programs that deal with issues that they have identified in their communities.  Today's assessment went REALLY well, we got some great feedback and information from the students, and they were all super excited to participate.

This is one of the views from the YCI office in Arusha

Another view from the YCI office, Mount Meru in the background

Just one of what sound like 40 roosters that live in my community.  They are all very early risers, which is unfortunate for anyone who likes to sleep past 4:30am.

My three lovely co-volunteers.

  

Before our lesson, we played a quick game with the Umoja Students.

Working hard in the classroom to fill out some community assessment forms.

Jessie in the classroom. She's a natural.

What do you call Sour Milk + Corn? Leshoro...or a nice lite snack.  This is about all I could stomach.

I actually do volunteer

Jambo!

So I know it probably seems that after all of the fundraising I did for this trip, I haven’t done a whole lot of volunteering and have spent most of my time gallivanting around Africa. 

 

We HAVE been doing a lot of work, a lot of orientation and a lot of planning!  Now that I have some more of the details, I’ll try to fill everyone in on what it is we will be doing!

First, the four of us will be working at the Umoja Centre (which I had described in a previous posting).  There we will be teaching three afternoons a week covering topics in Health, the Environment and Civics.  On Friday afternoons we will be working with groups of students and helping them develop community programs.  We will ask them to assess the needs of their own communities (with some tools and guidance provided by us) and then we will help them program an event that will educate the community on the issue.

We will also be working with a small number of previous Umoja Centre graduates who wish to run small businesses.  We will be helping them develop a business plan, so that they can work towards opening up a successful business in their communities.

Finally we will be working towards putting an event together for Youth Day (August 12).  We aren't quite too sure how this day is going to work yet, or what we will do, but we'd like to show members of the community of Arusha that the youth here are talented and possess many skills.  I also think we may place an emphasis on youth employment, in hopes of convincing employers to hire youth to allow them to gain some experience.

All in all, we have our work cut out for us!  We start teaching at the Umoja Centre tomorrow and we're all quite excited!  

Kwaheri!

-Matt

Safari Njema!

Habari!!

So this weekend, the other volunteers and myself decided to take a break from the orientation and the planning and enjoy a small safari.  We visited Arusha National Park, which is about a 45 minute drive from where I am living.

At the park we saw a whole whack of animals.  Unfortunately for this blog, I am no great photographer of wildlife, so I’ve included a few of the more scenic shots.  The animals we did see were: Giraffes, Water Buffalo, Water Buck, Bush Buck, Mongooses (or is it mongeese if we saw more than 1?), Flamingos, Baboons and Warthogs.  

Also unfortunately, the animals were few and far between.  We didn’t get to see any elephants, which was too bad.  

My favourite part of the whole adventure was just how scenic the entire place was!  I just tried to describe it in words, but I didn’t think it would do it justice.   You’ll have to visit for yourself!

Mount Meru

Flamingos living in a salty lake (the flamingos are the pink/white blogs REALLY far away)

Mount Meru

The other volunteers took some amazing pictures, and I'll steal those from them and update them to facebook once I'm back in Canada with a faster internet connection!

-Matt

Week One! BIG Post!!

This posting was written on July 13, I'm sorry if my posts come in chunks over the next few weeks.  Internet is very unpredictable!

I woke up early this morning to the sounds of a confused rooster crowing and then to some LOUD singing.  I’m not sure where the singing was coming from, if it was in the hotel or across the street.  The noises have died down, but now that I’m awake I can’t get back to sleep.  Its probably alright since I went to bed at about 9:30pm last night!  I think its going to take me a while to get used to this time zone!!!  Since the sun doesn’t even rise for another hour or so, I thought I’d take some time to write a blog post, which I can hopefully upload another time later today or during the week!

So Jessie and I have been in Dar es Salaam since Sunday (Marilyn and Sureet got in later on Monday), and we have been staying at the City Park Hotel.  The hotel staff is incredibly friendly and really nice!  We get a nice breakfast in the morning, an omelette with toast and either fresh fruit or fruit juice.  Each room has its own bathroom, a fan, an air conditioner and a double bed.

My mosquito net.  I didn't know how to hang it, but now I am MUCH better at it and can actually sleep under it!

My shower and toilet.  These were awesome, especially when there was power AND running water.  They were less great when the water pump broke for a night.

On Monday, Jessie and I set off on a few adventures by ourselves.  We went to the bank to exchange some of our USD to TSH, and we stumbled upon a really nice little internet cafe.  That afternoon we thought we’d practice some of our kiswahili, however, we more just relaxed by the beach by the Indian Ocean.  That afternoon was phenomenal, we not only got to practice getting around Dar es Salaam, but we recharged after our long flights from Toronto!

The beautiful Indian Ocean

Relaxing on the beach after enjoying a bajaji ride

Yesterday, the four of us had a lesson in kiswahili.  We tried to learn a few of the basics, which would allow us to communicate a little bit better.  Now, I’ve tried learning languages before and I’ve always found the hardest part to be practicing outloud to someone who speaks the language.  Sometimes you can get snubbed if your accents aren’t right or if you aren’t exactly grammatically correct. 

That doesn’t seem to be the case here.  The four of us came back yesterday from our lesson super excited with the bits and pieces of kiswahili that we remembered.  When we tried it out on the hotel staff (saying ‘good evening’ or just ‘hello’ or even ‘thank you’), they got so excited that we were learning their language!  The enthusiasm and excitement was enough to motivate us to continue to learn and practice.

 To get around town, the most exciting and exhilarating way we’ve found so far has been by bajaji.  The bajajis are weird hybrid of motorcycle and golf cart.  The bajaji drivers we’ve met so far have been fun and friendly, and I have NEVER met anyone who knows the EXACT dimensions of their vehicle better than the bajaji drivers.  Traffic doesn’t always mean you have to stop if you’re in a bajaji, its small enough to find its way through pedestrian paths or in between tight spaces left by telephone poles.  If you’re ever going to spend any time in Dar, you 100% need to try a bajaji!   They’re inexpensive, faster than taxis and just fun!

Country side of Dar es Salaam, taken from a bajaji

Some pottery sold on the side of the road.  Taken from a bajaji

These are the bajajis!  They are small, but VERY speedy!

One of our many different Bajaji drivers

 

Another really great part of this experience has been the food!  The fruit that I have eaten here has been some of the best fruit I’ve eaten in my life (mangoes, papayas, bananas, pineapple, avocado).  We have had a couple of traditional Tanzanian meals, my favourite one so far was my meal last night of Antelope, a side of cooked bananas (green bananas, cooked with meats...its kind of like eating potatoes) and a side of cassava leaves with crushed nuts.  I’m kind of nervous about coming back to Canada and being morbidly obese.  I know I’m only gone for 6 weeks, but I’ve eaten better here than I did sometimes while a student!  Contrary to popular belief, I will not be going hungry while in Tanzania!!

Some fruit vendors at a bus stopped. We stopped here for lunch on our 12 hour bus journey to Arusha from Dar.

Somaki na wazi (fish and rice) with a size of fruit salad aaand salad salad.

Kuku na pilau (Chicken and Pilau Rice)

We'd been eating omlettes and were amazing that the cook was using only egg whites. Then we got a hard boiled egg, and discovered that the chickens may be a little malnourished.

Some say Margarine, others say Fat Spread.

My avacado milkshake.  It was awesome AND I could have used it as a face mask and probably really improved my skin. 

Now here is my awesome food story!

While in Dar es Salaam, the group of us went to a nice little local restaurant (the Brake Point bar). I ordered Antelope (awesome, right!?) with a side of bananas (takes the place of a starch).  The bananas are still very green when picked, so they are more similar to plantains, and they get fried up. 

These bananas were then cooked in a sauce that contained some mystery meat.  We found chicken, and pork and assumed that some of it must be antelope.  Then I found a shrimp, and I was QUITE excited!  This was a BIG tiger shrimp.  I guess I was being a little too hopefully and I little naive, because when I crunched down on this ‘tiger shrimp’ it popped in my mouth.  

Now if you’ve ever eaten shrimp before ever, you know that they don’t tend to pop.  So I am not entirely sure what it was that I put in my mouth, but I know for a fact that it was NOT shrimp, and I would be willing to bet that it was eyeball or testicle.  Mmmmm. 

Alrighty, I've worked on this post for hours (mostly letting pictures load)!  I'll update soon again!  We have some more details on our projects, and I'm REALLY excited about starting to work at the Umoja Centre!

Kwaheri for now!!

-Matt