Church + Election

I made it to the Catholic mass this morning at the Carmelite Community in town. Although I was told it starts at 07:00, I think it starts at quarter to 7 because it was already going when I got there at 5 of. Since it was in Kiswahili, I didn’t understand much but the format was the same so it was a bit comforting. On the way home, I walked to the market to try to get a pumpkin. Unfortunately my plan to make a Jack-o-lantern for Halloween today was thwarted because the vendor wasn’t there to sell me the pumpkin, which was there. Dang.

Much of my day was spent writing quotes and nice personal comments to the other people in my training group. The first few months at site are very lonely for most PCVs so the PC office will send an envelope to each one of us with personal notes from others in the group. We could choose to do notes for just those in our POD or the whole group. Most of us chose the latter despite the increased difficulty. When I brought the notes to Doug to put them in the envelopes, he was making pizza. He lucked out because his host family has an actual oven so he doesn’t have to try the makeshift Dutch oven way of baking.

Tonight I did some PC homework, which had me talk with my brother Raphael and sisters to answer questions on kitchen parties, weddings, and funerals. It was the most I’ve talked with my family because I had to do the homework in English. Raphael even asked me why Pluto isn’t a planet anymore. While talking with my sisters, I mostly talked with Magdalena, whose English is the best, and I learned a lot about my family. For instance, the father is dead, the 2 boys I live with are brothers, and the house girl is Muslim.

Magde and Belinda showed me their black inked pinky finger pads from voting in the national election. Mama ended up with a whole black pinky (*that lasted a few days*) showing she voted. They are registered in the village so they were able to vote locally. My teacher took a trip back to Dar in order to vote. We won’t know the results for about 4 days but we have been seeing and hearing about the presidential election our whole time here and are looking forward to it being over. Officially the system has multiple parties but CCM (the party of the president) has a lot of power in the government and therefore most of the money. There are posters everywhere with Kikwete’s face (the president) but few from other parties. Everyone pretty much knows that Kikwete will win again even if they don’t like him. Luckily this country is very stable compared to other African countries so even though we are on Standfast because of the election, we don’t really expect any major problems.