Seven Months
Written on April 8th, 2025 by Ben Weber
It has been seven months since I left the US to come to Tanzania. I am stunned by how quickly these months have gone by. One of my biggest hesitations before leaving for Tanzania was the time commitment. Last summer before I joined the Peace Corps, the thought of putting my life on pause for 27 months was a decision I struggled to make. But these first seven months have flown by, and the next two years will be gone before I know it.
While the first three months of training were rough for me, these last four months of service have been a delight. I have been able to explore this beautiful country like swimming in waterfalls in Kipengere. And I’m excitedly planning trips to explore more of Tanzania such as climbing Kilimanjaro, kicking it back in Zanzibar, going on a safari, and hiking in the National Parks in the Southern Highlands. There is so much to do and see here.
In the last month, life has calmed down for me. When school first started, I was teaching roughly half of the students at the school. It was a lot of work, and I was tired at the end of the day. I was a bit of a recluse during those first few months at site since I did not have the energy to interact with the people in the community. Recently, the school brought in a new math teacher who took half of my course load (all the form one students). Since then, I have been playing games with the students every day until the evening and on the weekends. Also, I started teaching the girls basketball team. While I’m not the best at basketball (I have a half decent jumpshot) the students enjoy playing sports with me and its fun playing sports with them too.
The end of next week is the start of the midterm break. The midterm break is a good length, we close the school on Friday the 11th and then don’t open until Wednesday the 23rd. Most schools use this last week of school to do all their testing, but my school and the other schools in my area were early. We started our midterm examinations in the last week of March and then have had these first two weeks of April for teaching before going on midterm break.
For my midterm break, I will be meeting up with some friends in the capital Dar es Salaam for a few days. We might do some snorkeling on the coast and experience the big city life that we do not get in our rural communities.
I was lazy all last month and should have posted this update before my early service training (EST) during the first week of March. EST was the 6-month mark for me being in Tanzania and it was the first time since our swearing-in at the end of November where we saw the rest of the volunteers. For EST, we gathered for four days of training in Morogoro. It was nice to be able to reconnect with friends that I had not seen in three months.
Normally, EST is two weeks back-to-back and we bring “counterparts” who are people from our village that we work with often (like fellow teachers or community members in leadership roles). This year they split up the training into two parts, part one in March and part two in May. I am glad they did it this way because I was already exhausted after only one week. And as a plus, I will get to see everyone again in a few weeks.
