Tanzania Research Starting

A little bit more information about the Corporate Services Corps program is trickling in. We have an official team made up of nine people from across the globe (Canada, Germany, Costa Rica, New Zealand, U.S., Japan, and Italy) I've chatted with a few of them and all are very nice, interesting people, so I look forward to meeting them in person and doing some "teaming" pre-work.

It turns out there is a small, but vibrant community of people that have ties to Tanzania in Rochester, MN. One of the local churches (Bethel Lutheran Church) sends missionaries to the country every year and there is an IBMer who grew up in Moshi, which is a town right at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Everyone that I've met who has been to Tanzania looks at me the same way people who have studied abroad do when they tell you they'd do it again in a heartbeat. It seems that Tanzania has a way of touching people's hearts, even if they're only there for two weeks.

Here are some of the more interesting things I've learned from talking to people who have been to the country:
1) A "wedding cake" in Tanzanian culture is really a roasted goat (mbuzi).
2) Tanzanian electricity is largely powered hydro-electrically, which means that there are somewhat frequent outages during the dry season (when I'll be there).
3) Bananas (ndizi) from Tanzania are a bit different from the ones we get in the US (usually from South America). They are normally cooked with meat and I'm told they taste like potatoes.
4) Some of the rural roads (njia) aren't so good. It can take 8 hours to drive 200-300 kilometers in some areas.

I can't wait to go try some of this stuff for myself!

I'm also starting to learn Swahili using the Teach Yourself method. The few words I know are in parentheses above. For the most part, I'm a big fan of the language. The pronunciation of letters is very similar to English, so it's easy to read a word and then say it, save a few combinations like ng', which sounds like the gn in the Italian word "gnocchi". A few phrases I know are "Habari za asubuhi" (How is/was your morning?), "Hujambo?" (How are you (singular)?), and "halafu pinda kushoto" (then, turn left). Very practical, and I find it sad that one of the first words they taught us was mbu (mosquito), which, coincidentally is pretty useful here in Minnesota as well.