Most teachers and students wait until our 10:00 AM tea break to eat "breakfast", but sometimes I have a homemade roll with butter or a banana from one of my trees before I make the short walk (50 feet) to my office. I share an office with 6 Tanzanian teachers. It's a small room and our desks are all very close to each other facing the center of the room. During the work day when I'm not teaching, I'm in that office and I'm lucky that it's a fun group. There's always lots of good conversation and plenty of joking around...except of course when they bring in students for corporal punishment. Tanzanian law allows students to be struck twice with a stick on the open palm or buttocks for violating school policies. The most common violation is being late for school. Every day the church bells ring at 6:00 AM, "but teacher I live so far from the church"....Every day the church bells ring at 6:00 AM,"but sir I didn't hear the bells". I hate to see the kids get hit, but I know that if it really hurt that bad they would find a way to be on time. Of course I don't hit the kids and neither does my favorite teacher, Sister Nerea. She's a nun from the church but I don't think she's the one who rings the bells...she doesn't wear a watch. I teach 9 classes each week for one hour and twenty minutes each. That may not sound like a lot, but when you add grading homework and tests for over 100 students and preparation time for the 9 lectures, it's really a full week of work. I teach 9th, 10th and 11th grade but I like teaching the 9th graders the most. These 26 9th graders can barely speak English but they really understand math and are very motivated to learn. A few have even asked if I could teach extra classes on Saturday.....maybe THESE kids DO need to be hit.....just kidding. When I put a problem on the board in their class, almost all of them raise their hands to solve it. When I choose one, he or she knows to be ready to catch the chalk that by now I've thrown in their direction. If they don't catch it they have to sit down and I choose someone else. I can't play this game in my other classes where hardly anyone raises their hand.

Each school day is broken up into nine 40 minute periods, and one student (one who happens to own a watch) is the school time keeper. There are no clocks in the classrooms so we rely on this one kid to get up from his desk and ring the "bell" every 40 minutes. Ringing the bell involves taking a big rock and slamming it against the rim of a wheel that is mounted on a post. As I mentioned earlier, we have a 20 minute tea break every day at 10:00 AM. The school provides hot tea for the teachers, but I'm spoiled. I walk back to my house and have a nice breakfast that my housegirl, Maria, has prepared. Sometimes it's just homemade bread with butter and jam, but other days it's an omelet or my favorite, chapati mayai. Chapati mayai is like a combination of pancakes and french toast, without the maple syrup, but I put lots of butter on top. After my tea and breakfast it's back to school until 2:00 PM. Most of my classes end before noon, so I spend the afternoon work hours preparing for the next day. At 2:00 I go home and Maria has my lunch ready. She works from 9:00 AM until 3:00 PM Monday through Friday and she cooks enough for lunch so that I can eat the leftovers for dinner. That way I only have to cook for myself on the weekends. I'll give the details of what I eat for lunch and dinner some other time. After lunch I usually read for about an hour. The volunteer in Mgeta before me left behind 2 shelves of books and I'm slowly working my way through them. For you readers out there, my favorites, so far that I've read here, are "Anna Karenina" by Tolstoy and "Ahab's Wife" by Sena Jeter Naslund. Later in the afternoon the students have extra curricular activities like sports and debates, so some days I go watch and almost every day I teach some of them to play chess. A couple have gotten pretty good and can even beat me occasionally. At 7:00 PM it gets dark and the boys go home for dinner and the girls go to the dorms (classrooms with cots). The school generator also comes on at 7:00, so that's when I eat dinner (prepared earlier by Maria) and then I take my bucket bath. The classrooms are lighted at night by the generator so many of the boys return around 8:00 to study (and flirt) with the girls. Some nights I walk over to see what they're up to, but usually I finish my preparations for teaching the next day and then read a book or write letters until I go to sleep. I'm usually in bed by 9:30 but sometimes I'll stay up until the generator goes off at 10:00. So that's a typical day. I also try to get some exercise when I can in the afternoons....either a run on the dirt road or a hike in the hills around the school. Some of you might not have heard that my dog, Tupo, died a few weeks ago (probably from a snake bite) so now I don't have her to go with me on my hikes.

Every other weekend I go into town (Morogoro) on Saturday and stay the night. I usually leave my house at 7:00 on Saturday morning (every day the church bells ring at 6:00 AM) and it can take 2 to 3 hours to get there depending on how far I have to walk to catch a daladala (public minibus). When I arrive in town I usually go to the post office and bank first (because they close at noon on Saturday) and then spend a good part of the day at an internet cafe reading and writing emails. I've also become friends with a few shop owners and I always stop to talk with them. Most of them are Muslims whose families came to Tanzania from India. Saturday evenings I spend with some of my Peace Corps friends and also some Europeans that live and work here. We have dinner and drinks and usually stay up pretty late talking. I get a comfortable room in town for between $8.00 and $42.00 a night, depending on how much "luxury" I want. I usually spend $12.00 and have hot running water, AC and a TV with 2 local channels. Sunday mornings in town I get up early and go shopping for supplies that I can't get in my village.....things like DOOM (insect spray), strawberry jam, batteries etc. The 2 hour ride home in the daladala is usually miserable because they cram so many people in these tiny buses. The good thing is that I've gotten to know a few of the drivers and they let me sit up in the front passenger seat. That makes the ride a lot less miserable, but in either case I'm always exhausted on those Sunday evenings after I've returned from town and usually go to bed before 8:00.

On the weekends that I don't go to town, there's always plenty to keep me busy in Mgeta. Just cooking my meals takes a good part of each day. But also the students play soccer on Saturday and Sunday and the field is right outside my front door. After soccer a few students will always want to play chess and once I bring out the board they won't stop playing until the sun goes down. If I want to do something a little different, I burn my trash in a ditch in front of my house or make a few trips with a bucket down to the river to refill my water tank. I've also gone to church on Sunday and it's quite an experience with all the villagers. I hadn't been to church in such a long time, but when my students come to my house on Sunday morning and ask me to go, it's hard to say no. I've also found that listening to the mass helps me improve my Swahili since I mostly use English at school. I sometimes stay up late on weekend nights and read by the light of my kerosine lantern.

So there you have it....life in Mgeta. The daily life of a Peace Corps volunteer. It's a good life....and every day the church bells ring at 6:00 AM.