Peace Corps stresses you should “Greet everyone”
This morning I called out “Hello Grandmother!” when I saw an old woman, and she didn’t reply. I figured she might be deaf. I was about to try again when I realized she was actually just a stump.

Mwalimu Peace Corpse
It happened so gradually I barely realized what was happening. Like someone whose nightly scotch gradually grows in size, going from shot glass to cup to mug, to bottle. One day I just woke up and realized that… I’m a teacher.

I’d been in denial for a while. What started as a couple of harmless school clubs gradually spilled over into several classes. You take on one class, and soon it’s “I’ll just take one more before noon. That’s it. I know my limits. I can stop anytime.” When you wake up and go straight to school, give lectures and exercises, grade papers all day, and live your life by the “bell” (actually a rusty wheel hung on a tree that kids hit with a mallet), then you’ve got to eventually accept the truth.

Once you start you can’t quit. You worry about whether the kids actually understood what you said about the renal vein, and whether they care about the main crop of Sri Lanka. You find yourself trying to snap out of the teacher voice with your friends. You constantly have chalk on your hands, in your hair, and, inexplicably, on your butt.

If I were a normal Tanzanian teacher, I’d be carrying a stick wherever I went. Instead, I’m armed with only my knowledge of kids names, which I say with my most evil angry teacher-voice when they are being noisy. For now, that’s working. But at any point they could realize there’s no threat of punishment and decide to eat me alive.

Winter, summer, spring, fall… such generic terms
Tummy-trouble season is over. Clothes-never-dry season is over. Scrape-muck-out-of-your-orifices-after-bike-rides season is over. Farm-morning-until-night season is over. Eat-giant-unripe-peaches-pretending-they’re-apples season is over.

It is sideways-rain season. It is tall-crop season. It is pear and roast-corn and fresh-bean and flamboyant-mushroom season. It is warm-morning season. I like this season.

Sadly I’ll only see one more season here in Tanzania. I call it frozen-morning, custard-apple, dust-in-your-nose, haul-your-water season. Wherever you brush against any plants, your clothes get coated in “dog decorations,” long thin black seeds that grab on like Velcro. People call me a hick for always being covered in them. They say it must be because when I decide to go somewhere, I march there in a straight line, through farms and fields, ignoring all obstacles.

Each season here has its good and its bad, so you have to learn to love the good.