100 things to do during your first month at site in TZ...

1. Meet your village leaders.
2. Meet your fellow villagers.
3. Meet your choo lizard.
4. Name your guard frog.
5. Order a bedframe at the fundi’s.
6. Eat four mangos.
7. Spend two days with a high fever because you didn’t properly clean the four mangos.
8. Get one of your Medical Officers (PCMOs) to say “Oh my God.”
9. Sweep your house.
10. Sweep your yard.
11. Sweep your house again.
12. Stare at a wall.
13. Talk to the wall.
14. Talk to a bug on the wall.
15. Stare at a different wall.
16. Stare at the village kids in the window staring at you staring at the different wall.
17. Sweep your house again.
18. Go to the fundi’s and ask why your bedframe is late.
19. Cook food.
20. Watch ants eat your food.
21. Write a letter to the ants asking them to not eat your food.
22. Declare war on the ants when they ignore your letter.
23. Spend an afternoon spraying ants out of spite.
24. Comb your beard.
25. Buy a machete.
26. Use reflective duct tape to give your machete an awesome handle.
27. Name your machete Nyokabane.
28. Set out with Nyokabane and a gear-laden backpack to conquer the mountain nearest your village.
29. Run home with Nyokabane and a gear-laden backpack when a flash thunderstorm appears a half-hour later.
30. Buy a shortwave radio.
31. Listen to the BBC World News in English.
32. Praise the BBC World News in English in English.
33. Listen helplessly as the BBC World News in Swahili overtakes the BBC World News in English.
34. Curse the BBC World News in Swahili in English.
35. Buy a pillow with Sean Connery’s face on it.
36. Buy a pillow with Ash and Pikachu on it.
37. Commit to finishing your fledgling collection of nostalgia-inducing pillows.
38. Argue with a villager over whether or not the United States controls the weather.
39. Go to the fundi’s and ask when your bedframe will finally be finished.
40. Go to the fundi’s tomorrow.
41. Go to the fundi’s the day after tomorrow.
42. Get your damn bedframe.
43. Kindly remind the fundi that he has no power to power the power drill he wants you to buy him.
44. Put your mosquito net up.
45. Sleep under your mosquito net.
46. Spend a night trying to locate the beg bugs nesting inside your mosquito net.
47. Devise a contraption to drown bed bugs.
48. Drown bed bugs.
49. Wake up at 5:00am to get on the 6:00am bus to your banking town.
50. Watch a herd of cows pass by at 6:00am instead of your bus.
51. Learn that the 6:00am bus doesn’t run on Sunday.
52. Ask a passing lorry driver if he is heading to your banking town “sasa” (“now”).
53. Get into the back of the lorry when the driver says yes.
54. Sigh deeply as the lorry pulls into your village market and parks for two hours.
55. Realize the herd of cows that passed earlier is also in your village market.
56. Watch as villagers isolate a large bull from the herd of cows.
57. Watch the large bull transform from pissed off to ribcage in about an hour.
58. Get to your banking town three hours late.
59. Have lunch in your banking town alone.
60. Order goat soup.
61. Vow to never eat goat soup again.
62. Introduce yourself to the Maasai medicine man who sits next to you.
63. Have a half-Swahili, half-English conversation about traditional medicine.
64. Try to talk about neem trees, HIV/AIDS and malaria.
65. Talk instead about natural remedies for erectile dysfunction.
66. Ponder the origins of the Maasai word “ding dong”.
67. Wonder why other Volunteers in your district refer to some locals as “stage fives”.
68. Meet a stage five.
69. Stop wondering and get away.
70. Attend local soccer matches.
71. Buy jerseys to show support for your village teams at local soccer matches.
72. Watch a local soccer match turn into hundreds of people punching, kicking and yelling for 45 minutes because the ref blew a consequential call.
73. Spend two weeks convincing your village teams that you are not going to buy them new uniforms despite what the village councilman said.
74. Wonder why you received half a box of tampons in a care package.
75. Buy a kerosene lantern.
76. Notice a piece of the kerosene lantern’s fuel cap is loose and will not open.
77. Fix the fuel cap by slicing your thumb with a knife. Wait…
78. Politely tell the village doctor that you don’t need adrenaline shots to stop bleeding in a thumb.
79. Politely tell the village doctor that you don’t need adrenaline shots to stop bleeding in a thumb.
80. Politely tell the village doctor that, really, you don’t need adrenaline shots to stop bleeding in a thumb.
81. Impolitely yell at the village doctor until he stops trying to give you adrenaline shots.
82. Practice greetings outside your VEO’s house.
83. Practice greetings outside your VEO’s house while holding your laptop overhead for half an hour to get an internet signal so you can send an image of your thumb to the PCMO.
84. Go to your region’s only Peace Corps-approved hospital.
85. Watch three doctors debate whether to use stitches or pull the skin off your thumb.
86. Watch one doctor leave to get anesthetics.
87. Watch another doctor try to pull the skin off your thumb while the other is still getting anesthetics.
88. Curse profusely in a Catholic mission.
89. Get an anesthetic shot in your thumb.
90. Curse even more profusely in a Catholic mission.
91. Ponder the irony of how painful an anesthetic shot to the thumb is.
92. Lock yourself out of your house.
93. Have the fundi break you into your house.
94. Try not to think about the ease with which the fundi broke you into your house.
95. Introduce yourself to the headmaster of your primary school.
96. Arrange a formal meeting with the headmaster and teachers for the following day.
97. Arrive for the meeting to find out the headmaster has taken the day off to go to town.
98. Arrange an impromptu meeting with teachers who had no idea you were coming.
99. Return home following the meeting and zip up your pants.
100. Sweep your house again.