October was probably one of the most frustrating months at site just based on physical environment. I was very thankful for my cushy Zanzibar vacation weeks before. It is pretty depressing when the mountains all around are completely barren and formerly lush cropland is nothing but sand. Fortunately I got another volunteer at my college in the middle of the month. Two Wazungu volunteers (white westerners) total joined my district bringing us back up to six individuals. In October, many new birds started to pass through too though this one is pretty common all year. The Cordon Blue darts around my house eating seeds, presumably.

Sometimes sunsets do great things with the otherwise dull brown. My counterpart Allan swings by my house to say hello on a slow afternoon without electricity. “Counterpart” is a loose Peace Corps term which indicates somebody who you like to work with in your community. You’re only suppose to have a couple but I end up throwing the term around a lot in various contexts.

Power was a big frustration this season: shortages of water mean hydroelectric plants starts to fail and our electric company was preparing for the strong rains so was taking the power down for 12 hours every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday to replace termite eaten poles in the hundred-some miles straight of non-redundant medium-capacity wires running from our regional capital, Dodoma town. They then run back down into the distant bottom of our large-ish district by another route which has a dam and reservoir. Our district sources its own power but quixotically has the most unreliable coverage from these services.

A random classroom at my college adjacent to my IT compound. Thank goodness for student teachers for watering all the plants keeping my workplace green as it was. Unfortunately this term turned out to only have six weeks of time with students around and four or five weeks of students in classes. This effectively means I saw each of my students four times in the entire term and for many, half of these times were without power. Thankfully, we have a generator which can run all ~100 computers so in at least half of the classes we generated power to teach computers (at significant expense). Almost none of the other 33 teachers colleges in Tanzania have generators so would be completely stranded by periods like this.

The problems which delay and shorten the national teachers college term are many but initially most of the problems stemmed back to the Ministry of Education which was several months late in accepting and assigning student teachers to the individual national teachers colleges. A mitigating factor: after national exams are graded many of the students are waiting to hear about university acceptances and often decline at the last possible minute. Another factor: the Ministry of Education seems to have lost a huge chunk of its funding thanks to a parliamentary gambit to shirk transparency requirements made by donor nations. In recent months this has caused mild but persistent teacher unrest due to unpaid salaries.

Secondary school students from distant Chamwino Secondary catch a breeze with me near the cell phone tower on the hill above my town. Initially they were a bit skittish about helping a Mzungu white person with his photography–you should see the smeared expression on their faces in a panorama I was trying to cut them out of. Then I explained I was a teacher and that I actually knew some of their teachers and that I was a teacher. They quickly cooled off as we chatted about their school and even smiled! I love cultural connections. Its also fortunate that teachers are one of the most culturally respected positions in Tanzania (much like doctors in America) .

I ventured up the mountain for the first time in quite a while as the first rain in some eight weeks had just plowed the dust from the skies leading to some of the best dry season vistas yet. My two other fast friends on the hill included the guards of the cell phone tower. Here they are resting in the moist air as the rain dissipated.

The guards’ adobe. I wish I had caught the contrast between it and the tower just behind the camera which has electric fences, 24 hour air conditioning and a huge modern generator. He had been working here for several months and had recently changed jobs: he used to be a guard at our nearby mountain livestock college. He hadn’t yet been through a rainy season. I’m anxious to visit him again and ask about how it has gone now that everything is green, green, green.

Above my house; Find the red flame tree in the right half of the image and look for the blue door hiding under it. That is my house. The satellite dish near the bottom-middle flame tree are my nearest neighbors houses. The sat-dish house is my counterpart Allan’s. The flame trees are typically called Christmas trees around here since their fantastic color lasts until about that time.

A hunch and little patience on the hill rewarded: Here is a very mildly High-dynamic range (HDR) shot taken from the cell tower just after a fierce twenty minute rain storm forced me into the little hut pictured above.

Rains aren’t all fun and blossoms. My poor students didn’t realize it would rain today, after all for the most part it hadn’t since they started term. Their shoes got soaked. The rain also brought out a number of sleeping critters: winged, awkwardly flight-capable termites who use it as a signal to fly into the air, get knocked down by raindrops, promptly lose their wings, mate and proliferate randomly around for maximum dispersal.

Frogs and toads seem to have caught onto this behavior and they also are awakened by this first major rain. I spotted 15 in the small green area around our ICT compound

Scorpions aren’t so much cued as forced out of their crannies by the flood. This one decided higher ground was the nook under my doorstep. Scorpions bark is much worse than their bite (granted I haven’t been bitten) but they are sure fun to play with when you have stove tongs (pictured decending).

So I admit, I chucked him into the spiders nest hoping to force a faceoff. No such luck.