Angie & Brice Allen

Jambo friends! Jambo is the Swahili word for hello and used frequently in Africa. We are Brice and Angie Allen (husband and wife) and we currently live in Pennsylvania; Ms. Rose is our sister-in-law. Angie is a Digital Consultant for a Fortune 100 health care company and Brice is now an entrepreneur currently embarking on developing his first small business. However, prior to this new endeavor, he was the Head Cross Country Coach and Assistant Track Coach for the University of Louisville. Over the years the coaching profession enabled us to travel abroad searching for elite athletes in places like South Africa, Kenya and Uganda.

In these places we had the privilege of meeting wonderful, talented, dedicated athletes and their families that will forever humble us. Most of our travel was off the beaten path in non-tourist regions generating unpredictability in each day such as encountering wild monkeys and baboons, hitchhiking at sunrise, landing on a dirt runway, riding many miles in a mutatoo (public van), eating goat meat in a mud home, flying through a lightning storm from Kampala, Uganda to Nairobi, Kenya and many more.

We look forward to corresponding with all of you and sharing our experiences!

African Adventure

Hello all,

My name is Andrea Rose and Ms. Rose is my sister. Currently I am in South Africa right now teaching at a local high school. I am teaching 8th, 9th and 10th grade classes for math and science. So far right now the school is very different than an American Middle School or High School. I am teaching 11 different classes right now and they are all on different days and not at the same time everyday either. The students here do not take there main core content classes everyday as well. So for example they only have six days out of a ten day schedule that they have a science class. The school I am at is a public school and all students must take a Christianity class no matter what there religion is. Sports is very important to the school over here as well. For three weeks now there has been a school track meet once a week. This means that all classes are cancelled and they have a track meet instead. The school does not have a mascot but does have houses and prefects like Harry Potter. the house names are Deary, Ffolliott and Dupea. The school I am at which is called Pearson High School is one of the first schools to have both genders in the same classroom. The individuals who opened the school are the house names. Three times a week the school gets together in the morning to hold scripture and to sing the school song. At my school there are two major languages which are English and Afrikaans. So half of the classes are taught in Afrikaans and the other half are taught in English. Ever students is bilingual and a lot are actually trilingual. This is because in my area as well there are a lot of bushman tribes. Three main ones to be more specific. Each of these tribes have their own language which consists of clicking noises and cues. One thing I forgot to mention about the school is that there is no air conditioning and there is no technology. So in my apartment, in the schools and so on has no air units at all. It is hard to get use to the heat at first.

I have no idea what you may have heard about South Africa so far but there are some poor areas. There are people living in shacks all over but there are also very rich areas as well. The part of town I am staying in does not have a lot of technology but it is high class compared to some areas. I live right across from the beach and surfing is a huge sport here. I just went skydiving the other day and you could see the whole coastline with all of the rivers and mountains. My skydiving instructor use to actually work for MTV and the beach where I landed is actually where Billa Bong has a lot of surfing competitions. The point I am trying to make is that the kids here are very similar to the kids in America.

In case you do not know the American dollar goes to 7.8 Rands which is the South African currency here. The food is a lot cheaper as is most things but the clothes are typical the same price as it would be in the Unites States. On the streets there are always people selling items on the side of the roads. You will see a lot of wooden carvings, jewelry, bags and so much more.

Out here they also have a lot of tourist places where you can see and interact with elephants, lions and any type of wildlife that you can imagine. I have met a lot of interesting people from all over the world here and will keep you updated. Thanks for reading and enjoy!

Introduction of Natalie Struble

Dear Students of Mrs. Allen,

Hi! I’m Natalie Struble.

Mrs. Allen is a wonderful friend of mine from Otterbein College. We ran cross country and track together, and lived in the same dorm. We had LOTS of fun together.  During my sophomore year, I transferred from Otterbein to Ohio State University, where I studied Agricultural Engineering. After completing my B.S. in Ag Engineering I applied to and joined the Peace Corps. I had spent the past 6 years in Columbus, Ohio before Peace Corps. I was assigned as an environment volunteer to Tanzania, the country with the best Swahili in East Africa! People here say the language of Swahili “was born in Tanzania, got sick in Kenya, and died in Uganda.” That’s one country’s opinion...  meaning Tanzanians speak more pure and correct Swahili than other countries. Joining the Peace Corps is a 2 year commitment. I arrived in TZ with 40 other health and environment volunteers from around the country. We lived with families in villages during our 2 months of technical and language training, where we learned ‘survivial’ Swahili, and how to garden and teach about proper health. After finishing training and swearing in as Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs), we were assigned to and moved to rural villages throughout TZ. We live and work alongside our host country counterparts, friends, and neighbors, eating ugali (stiff maize porridge, like play-doh made of maize flour) and speaking Swahili.

Right now I live in a village of around 3000 people located north-west of the town of Njombe. If you want to find it on a map, it is south of Iringa and Makambako, in the Southern Highlands area of Tanzania.

I live in a brick house with a tin roof and a concrete floor. I have a courtyard, which is just a fenced in dirt-floored area where one does laundry and things like that. It’s kind of like a backyard, except used more. To enter my house, I go in through my courtyard gate, then go in the door of my house. I live on the school grounds of our primary school, which has kindergarten through 7th grade. I do not have electricity, except for a solar-powered LED light, which can also be used to charge my cell phone. I do not have water in my house, but there is one tap that is located on school grounds. Thankfully, part of school responsibilities is for students to do work, and this includes carrying water in 20L buckets to my house. It is stored in a waist-high plastic barrel in my house. This lasts me about a week. My main water usage is for laundry and bathing. My toilet is called a ‘choo’ (rhymes with ‘low’), and it is a pit latrine with a wooden hole that one just squats over. The walls are brick, there’s no door, and the roof is thatch/grass. The windows in my house are glass. There are 3 rooms in my house – living room, bedroom, and kitchen. I have a little shower building at the back of my courtyard with a concrete floor and tin roof. There’s a little storage room outside my house where I keep my huge bags of charcoal, my charcoal stove, sticks (for starting fires), various burnable trash, a little pile of rotted potatoes, and lots and lots of daddy long legs!

I work mostly with the teachers of my primary school, teaching environment to 5th, 6th, and 7th graders, and this year I’m adding 6th grade math. I am working with the teachers of our primary school to write a grant to get solar powered lights at the primary school and for the 11 teachers’ houses that are on the school grounds. This will allow students to have ‘study sleep-overs’ where they can stay overnight at school to study in the evening. It will also allow the teachers to have light at night so they can grade notebooks and plan lessons for the next day. Without solar light, people have to use candles (which are too expensive for everyday use) or kerosene lanterns (which give off smoke that you end up breathing in if you’re close enough to it for your papers to be lit up well enough).

That’s about it for now! My internet time is limited to whenever I come into Njombe town, which is a 1 ½ hour bus ride from my village that goes just once a day. Today my bus is leaving at 2pm; it’s now 12:42! After this I still need to go buy some bananas, beans, carrots, green peppers and onions in the soko (market), and pick up some pictures that I got printed for the teachers at my primary school.

Siku njema! (Have a good day!)

Natalie