Farewell, Tanzania

I'm home.

RELIEF
is getting home 24 hours later than expected after spending a full day stuck in the Nairobi airport, and then almost a full day in London. With all my bags (after being transferred from plane to plane an uncountable number of times).

JOY
is coming home to the people I love, hearing voices and seeing faces. Playing a song on the piano, brushing my teeth without using bottled water, taking a warm shower for as long as I want, and eating what I want, when I want it, without it being boiled, cooked, or peeled. Christmas, New Year's, the holiday spirit, and general happiness all around (I can feel it in my fingers...and in my toes...?).

SADNESS
is already missing those left behind, knowing that this life-changing event is over and now I have to move on with my life.

REGRET
is wishing that I could have done more, knowing that I could have, knowing that I didn't.

PRIDE
is knowing that we did make a difference, testing over 700 people, teaching almost 8,000. 700 people who know their status, 8,000 who can protect themselves from the world's deadliest virus.

INSPIRATION
is working with so many talented, dedicated, and motivated people, learning about how an NGO works, how the non-profit world fits in with the rest of the society, and how I can use what I've learned to make the world a better place.

- - - - - -

I made it! Doubters, show yourselves now!

The last week in Marurani was tedious, frustrating, but quite cleansing. As an SIC organization, even in the last week of low energy and lack of motivation, we managed to test several hundred, and teach almost 1,000 people. Walking through the village on the last morning, I felt more comfortable than I've felt in a village at any point. Maybe it was partially my happinness that I was leaving, that the night before was my last (perhaps ever) cockroach infested shower, and that afternoon was my last lunch of rice and beans. But it tells me a lot about how I've grown. I can speak the language (not fluently, but enough), I can walk down the street and feel safe, I know how this society works.

The summer program is only 6 weeks in the village, as opposed to 10. Trust me, it makes a huge difference. Working with SIC for 4 weeks longer allowed us to dig even deeper into the workings of a fledgling NGO, an experience that has undoubtedlty changed my entire outlook on the concept of global charity, and probably steered my future in at least a slightly new direction. Also the extra 4 weeks allow you to absorb the culture that much more. Living in two villages, which seem so similar on some levels, but were actually immensely different, was a much more enriching experience.

It's weird to say that 3 months is life changing. Peace Corps volunteers dedicate 2 years of their lives to their work. Others move around the world helping people for years, decades at a time. And here I am declaring that not even 4 months of work in just one foreign country has left me a changed person. I'm not saying that my outlook on life has changed completely; I'm not going to come back performing tribal African rituals or with a new taste in clothes and music. I haven't changed inherently as a person any more than any 3 month period of someone's life allows them to change. But I will carry these 3 months with me for a long, long time. I will carry the faces of the children we taught, and I will carry the gratitude of the communities we were graciously invited into.

So now it's my responsibility to use all of my experiences to infuse my art for the next who knows how many years of my life. I definitely want to make at least one film somehow related to the to the AIDS pandemic. Maybe a book will come of it? Most certainly some sort of story for a magazine...if I figure out how to shop that around. Not really sure what will be the concrete result, but I know for sure that this experience has left an unforgettable footprint on the rest of my life.

I miss you already, Tanzania. But, wow, it's good to be back.

Last Chance

Yesterday morning, I got up at 8 a.m.

To put this in perspective...I haven't gotten up after 7 a.m. for over a month. Even weekends, getting a late start means 7:30, out of the room and eating breakfast by 8 (a good breakfast is white toast, some sort of egg...and recently, corn flakes with a banana), and then out and around. Last night I stayed up past 11. Woah. Past 10, woah.

So this is our last weekend in Arusha. By this time next weekend I will be sleeping in a hotel on the sandy beaches of Zanzibar, and getting ready to wake up so I can live the hard life for 5 days at one of the most beautiful places in the world. This morning we walked to two markets to get some last minute shopping done for homestay families, etc. and I remember just how completely dumbfounded I was when I first arrived in Tanzania. The same walk I did today was completely disorienting and I wanted to take pictures at every corner just so I would never forget this trippy little town in the middle of Africa. People are usually surprised when I tell them I've never been out of North America before (my only outside of US experience is Canada and TJ..), because I guess I handle culture shock pretty well. I'm laid back, decently flexible, and, most importantly, had 6 months to let it sink that I would be LIVING IN AFRICA for over 3 months. It's kind of weird to just go live in Africa, right? But I don't feel like it's weird any more. I'm surrounded by people who have been doing it...SIC, other NGO workers, ex-pats. It's not a bad way of life, just a different way of life.

You buy fruit and vegetables from the ladies down the street. Most clothes are second hand from America for men, and made out of some combination of ultra-colorful fabric for women. Your toilet isn't a toilet, probably a hole in the ground, and probably with cockroaches at night. You shower with a bucket, while fending off the frogs. You wake up to the roosters crowing. Being fat is good, being skinny is bad. Jogging is weird. Football is soccer, and soccer is life.

But you can see every star in the sky at night. And Mt. Kilimanjaro, one of the biggest mountains in the world, for a few minutes every day. The walk between homes is a parade (constantly waving and greeting), and the walk to school is a safari.

Woah it's so close to the end. I can't believe it.

We went to the orphanage one last time tomorrow to say goodbye to the kids. Some fishy stuff has been going on there - a few of the girls in the program have been doing some investigating and trying to figure out how to make life for these kids as good as possible. But my best contribution at this point is just to give them a distraction for an hour or two, bring some bubbles, play a few circle games, maybe throw a ball or two (or 500).

This weekend were also our last dinners in Arusha. Next Friday, the day we move out, is closing dinner, which is at Masai Camp (always at Masai Camp), a restaurant, bar, and campsite. Yep - you can camp at Masai Camp if you want. I don't think I'll miss Arusha's restaurants. I've had more Indian food than I can handle. Some of the more "wazungu" places are supposedly racist. And most of the meat just isn't that good. Plus I'm looking forward to cooking for myself again. I want salmon. Broccoli. I dunno. Just stuff you can't get here. I don't even like cooking.

This past week was frustrating, yet pretty successful. Members of Parliament (MP's as they call them) apparently like to make unexpected appearances in our ward, so we had to cancel our big meeting scheduled for this week. But, thankfully, our big meeting was also canceled last week..and moved to this week, so we did end up teaching 160 people. Then we also, because of scheduling and bad luck, had our testing day on the same day as our teaching, which SIC has never done before. But it worked pretty well - we got 74 people tested, for a total of 89 in Marurani so far! AND, even cooler, because our testing day was the first of 3 that happened last week in our ward, a lot of the Marurani villagers went to the testing days in Mzimuni and Nduruma on Wednesday and Thursday!

So, our village is convinced that we've come to bring HIV to the community. This is a product of town gossip, which seems to become worse and worse every week. The parents are also convinced that we're teaching their children how to have sex by teaching them about condoms. Really, they've turned one 10 minute lesson about condoms into an entire curriculum about how to have sex. And some of them have heard us teach for sure...we've taught one member per household of over 300 households so far! Sure, we answer questions like "what's oral sex?" but that's the closest we get. So on Thursday a group of Mamas stared us down when we went to teach at school.

I suppose it's just one of the challenges we have to face as HIV/AIDS educators in a community. We were lucky in Majengo - the leaders were supportive, the community wanted to learn, and we were accepted as part of the village because of our homestay situation and ability to work as a group. Marurani isn't so accepting. But it's just something we have to deal with. And only one week left!

Part of our way of doing this is sponsoring the first SIC-sponsored soccer tournament among the villages. The concelation game is on Sunday, and the Final game is on Monday, which is our Community Day. Our games have been bringing out between 700 and 2,000 people over the past week or so. The winning team gets a goat. The second place team gets a chicken. Pretty good prizes, eh?

BUT, if we can bring 2,000 to one place, and test just 10% of those people, we can potentially have the best testing day in the history of SIC. We have some factors against us. The kids are no longer in school - so where the kids performing HIV-related songs and raps in the last ward was a main feature of the event, we don't have that this time. Also, a LOT of people still don't trust us, and still don't know why we're here. But we'll see.

We also had seminars this week. The low point was walking an hour to school to find 7 boys there (all the girls were fetching water for their mamas, of course). Two of the boys ran away as soon as we god there. So we had 5. And believe it or not, teaching 5 boys is a LOT harder than teaching 70. Which is how many we had at our close school on the best seminar day. We taught them goal setting this week, and did a few other pretty cool things. It's just sad when you know most of the kids aren't there because either their parents think we're giving them AIDS or they just have so much work to do at home that they can't spare an hour or two of time. Unless of course they've been called to do work at the school. Once a week, each of the students are required to come to school for something like "environmental care learning" and spend an hour dusting off the dirt from the dirt, and the leaves from the leaves. It's really ridiculous.

So next week is our last chance to make an impact in our community. Test more people! Teach more people! Even if they learn one thing, remember it for the rest of their lives, and share it with their neighbor, we've done our job. So wish me luck and off we go!

Also our last week with the wonderful people of SIC. I will have lived with Shujaa for 12 weeks. Except last week I lived by myself because he had to get his wisdom teeth taken out. A discovery he made after it hurt so much that he couldn't sleep, so they did an x-ray to find out that his teeth were growing horizontally, thus pushing his other teeth. So he was in pretty bad pain this week, and couldn't eat or talk. But anyway, I'll probably never see most of these people again. It's horrible to feel sick of some of them (I am), because they live all over the world. Maybe I'll go to London some day. Maybe I'll even come back to Tanzania. But it's sad. I miss home, but I'm going to make the most of my last week with SIC (except when I do campus coordinating when I get back in January...um...APPLY FOR SIC! I might get to interview you!). So I'll hopefully have a lot of good news and fun times to share about my last week in the villages of Arusha.

Til then, best wishes - Happy Hanukkah! - and peace and love as usual,

Devon

p.s. Some people are beginning to wonder what the heck I'm doing with my life now that I'm actually come back to America to start the whole "real world" thing. My plans so far are:

December 21-30/31: San Diego
January 1-6: Los Angeles
January 7-14: New York
January 15 --> forever?: Los Angeles

At this point I'll be in full search of a job somehow related to the film industry. I don't even know exactly what I want yet...I figured I would start looking and see what I stumble across. BUT, if anyone has any connections of course, and knows someone looking for a recent UCLA grad with a lot of film experience, as an office assistant, production assistant, something...i dunno...let me know! My goal is to have a good decent job by February first, and we'll see what happens.

World AIDS Day, winding down

The week in the village was semi-uneventful. About 1/3 of each class showed up to the seminars at our first school, and about 1/4 of each class showed up at our second school. We had a testing day during which we tested only 15 people, and then Nelea led us in a "Problem Tree" exercise, during which we dissected the reasons why people hadn't shown up to our testing day, when 150 people came to the teaching. Our conclusions were: #1) religion #2) stigma and #3) fear. These are issues we can address through education (done and done), but more specifically by going to teach at individual churches and address how getting tested does not in any way contradict religious faith.

The rainy season has brought mild sickness upon all of SIC. We all have colds and flus, and we're all also getting a little bit burned out from the program. It's been a long year, and as our kids are heading into their holiday season and summer break (December = summer!), we still have work left to do. So it's a weird mixture of feelings. I want to be home, but I want to be here. I know I'm going to miss Tanzania three days after I come back. But it wouldn't be so bad to be home right now, even just for a day.

Also, the feelings of leaving a place, knowing that you have done so much, yet could have done so much more, are starting to creep in. Yesterday was World AIDS Day. SIC helped make all the AIDS ribbons for the event, helped set up the entire event, and we were also a large part of the march through town (which was sooo cool! drums, trumpets, signs, signing...way cooler than UCLA's marches, sorry Bruins). The march ended at a soccer field where different AIDS-related organizations set up booths and testing units. Our favorite taxi driver came and got tested by SIC! The day ended with a soccer game between a women's team and an HIV+ team.

SIC contributed a lot to the day's events, but at the end, we still feel we could have done more. We spread awareness, tested people, and educated. And that's what we're there to do. But it's pretty much impossible to avoid even the slightest regret, knowing we've made the effort to come all the way out here, yet still feeling like a little bit more energy, a few more minutes of time, a few more smiles, could have been used to effect just a few more people and make our impact that much greater.

So that's that. This week should be another fairly uneventful week. With the school year officially over, most of what we do is hang around hoping to get the chance to teach one person here, two people there. And really, even though it's slow and monotonous, and we want to be quick and efficient, that is what we're there for. Whether we want to accept it or not.

Until wiki kesho,
Devon

Another Week, Another Risky Behavior

In SIC we say that "risky behavior" is anything that can potentially lead to the transmission of HIV. So it's a term we kind of throw around a lot. If you've engaged in risky behavior, you need to get tested. If you've engaged in any risky behavior in the last 3 months, you need to get tested in 3 months. Blah blah blah.

But lately, risky behavior has taken on a new meaning. A few weeks ago we hitchhiked. Then I climbed Mt. Meru (let's not talk about what could have happened with a few false steps on those craggy slopes). And this weekend 14 SICer's made the decision to risk our lives once again by bussing to Uganda to raft The Nile, the world's biggest river. It's an SIC tradition. And (so far), everyone has come back in one piece.

Rapids in the Nile range from class 1 to class 6. The highest we did was class 5, which is illegal in most places around the world. But with strict instructions from Canadian and Ugandan guides, heavy life jackets, and gnarly helmets, we felt surprisingly safe during our two day trip.

Each rapid has a name, and strict instructions on how to or not to flip over, surf the wave, stay inside the boat, jump outside the boat, ride the current, avoid the current, etc... I felt like I was going to die, but knew for sure I wasn't going to die. We practiced flipping over, abandoning the raft, paddling of all types. During the low currents, we swam in the mildly warm water and the hotter than hot sun of the river Nile. We were prepared for anything. But honestly, I can't put most of these feelings into words in the few short minutes I have to sit here and describe my weekend's experience.

We left Friday, crossed into Kenya and hit a giraffe with our bus along the way (bus drivers here are INSANE). Then we stopped in Nairobi for a few hours, an incredibly surreal city. Kind of like New York City, everything is in English, with more people selling items on the streets. And more well-dressed drunkards assuming that we all know the scores of the most recent English football games.

From Nairobi into Uganda we were stopped in the middle of the road by a turned over bus. The people were calmly exiting the bus, and as we approached in the slight rain, half-groggy, we realized that this was the same bus company as we were riding, and this bus in front of us could have so easily been us. Instead, we rushed off to try to take another road so we would reach our destination on time. Of course, however, the driver's door wouldn't close after he had jumped out to see what was going on, so I was charged with tying a rope to keep the door shut as we flew in the opposite direction at 80km/hr.

So the bus rides to and from Uganda (destination: Kampala, but we were dropped off in Jinja), were most certainly the most dangerous parts of the journey. Who knew?

Uganda is a beautiful, green country (the Nile - duh!), with beautiful people. Sort of like with climbing Meru, it was just nice to get away for a while. Clearly, we were in Africa. But, even more clear, we sure weren't in Tanzania any more.

Oh yea, I also bungee jumped into the Nile, 145 ft. up, touching the river during my first downward spiral. Nile High Bungee is the only Bungee into the Nile, probably the only in East Africa, and one of the lowest in the world...meaning one of the few where you can touch the water. And it's safe. I mean, a towel and a heavy duty rubber band around the ankles sounds pretty safe, doesn't it? The money is worth the first half second of free fall. Indescribable.

Also, I know pictures have been sporadic, incomplete, and randomly ordered, but I'm doing my best to work with the internet connection to give you a glimpse of my experience. Hopefully it's working out. I promise to have my complete collection online by January.

Back to the village for a short week. Last week, we finished up with the school year with some more frustrations (end of the year festivities are obviously more important than learning about HIV/AIDS), and start with training our Peer Educators and working in the seminar settings next week. I taught a group of over 150 at a subvillage teaching earlier this week, which was AWESOME - Shujaa and I taught 76 men, and Joyce, Nelea and Gaby taught 78 women. We have a testing day in that area tomorrow, so hopefully the number of people at the teaching bodes well for our testing numbers.

The SIC malaria count has reached something like 10, with several teaching partners also getting typhoid, and the chance for amoebas and bacterial infections increasing by the day as the rainy season creeps toward us (it rains almost every day now). But in general my experience remains amazing, there's so much more I want to say, but don't have time to think through...which just gives us more to talk about when I get back. Less than a month until I'm home!

Peace and love,
Devon

Tanzanian Conversation, in short

News?
Good.
Problems?
Cool.
Things?
Clean.

- - - - - - - -
Habari?
Nzuri.
Mambo.
Poa.
Vipi?
Safi.

I don't know if I've emphasized this before, but greetings are the basis of Tanzanian culture. You greet everyone, on the street, on a hiking trail, in the village, in a restaurant. Sometimes you go so far as to asking how is the family, how is the work...even when you've never seen them before, and may never see them again.

Strangers are going to think I'm really weird when I get back...

From Majengo to Meru to Marurani

Wow, it really feels like I haven't been to a computer in forever. If I miss one thing from home its being able to spend 2 hours a day on the computer/internet...instead of 2 hours per week. Ok, I guess that's not what I miss the most. But you guys should consider yourselves lucky right now, that's for sure.

In other news, I'm coming home, like, really soon. 4 weeks left of the program. less than 5 weeks left in Tanzania. More than 9 weeks down. Can you believe it?

- - - -

The second half of SIC Volunteer Program 3, 2007 is now officially under way. This Monday, all 21 volunteers and 12 teaching partners, in addition to the coordinators and our new Field Officer for the new ward, moved to Nduruma, a relatively urban and relatively green area about an hour out of Arusha. We are divided into 4 villages this time - the smallest group is 6, and the biggest is 10. And guess what? I'm in the group of 10. Going from a group of 5 (the smallest) to a group of 10 (the biggest) has been quite an experience so far. Because of sheer size, we have potential to be extremely productive in our community. However, because of sheer size, we also have the potential an extreme amount of conflict, stepping on each other's feet, and just general frustration. We'll see how it turns out.

My village is called Marurani, and we have the biggest group because our village has the largest population in our area (roughly 2,000 people). The other villages are Nduruma, Mzimuni and MajiMoto (which literally means "Hot Water" - how awesome is that). All 5 of the homestays in my village are pretty close to each other, which is nice, and we are also fairly close to the center of town. Yes, this village actually has something you could call a town center. Weird, I know.

In addition to a change in terrain and weather - it's rained every night so far, hence the green - the people here have a different feel about them. Because Nduruma is closer to town than our last wards, people are more urbanized in their slang, their day to day mentality and, of course, their obsession with alcohol. My village hasn't been too bad, but we've seen more drunk people wandering our villages on an average early afternoon, than I've seen at most college parties. Times are hard, people say, so they drink their sorrows away.

Plus, people are quite religious. We met a man who speaks very good English on our first day in town while wandering the main strip. Laura happened to mention that she hadn't really chosen a faith yet - a perfectly acceptable answer in most Western societies. However, the rest of us lied and said we were Christian, of course. The man began to attack Laura for being undecided. She argued that to be a good person, one does not have to believe in God, or a certain God, and one can be a good person and feel successful in his or her life without necessarily finding God. He wouldn't have it. However, he does believe strongly in HIV education and happily welcomed us into his community. We haven't completely discovered the response to condoms, though. When Shujaa and I attempted to do a condom demonstration for our Baba, he wouldn't even let us take it out of the package.

So I'm living with Shujaa again, but this time sharing a 6x6 bed (we were spoiled with separate rooms last time), in a good size room, in a good size house, electricity at night (run from solar panels), our Baba and Mama who are both really, really young, a few kids, 2 cats, a few dogs, and an uncomfortable number of lizards, frogs and cockroaches. We live pretty close to Laura and Joyce (yep, so far, all from my last village), whose house is practically on a mini-orchard. The variety of fruit available in this village is awesome compared to the constant doses of banana with every meal during the last homestay. We've gotten mango, papaya, avocado, orange, banana, and some Tanzanian fruit I can't remember the name of.

The other three homestays are:
Gaby (UK) & Nelea (TZ)
Alex (UK) & Stefanie (UCLA)
Dustin (U of A) & Jonas (TZ)

So we have 6 volunteers and 4 teaching partners, which is a very comfortable ratio for getting as much done as possible, considering we foreigners can't exactly get along very well with our work without our Tanzanian friends.

In Tanzanian style, we arrived in our village this week to discover that there were exams scheduled for our students during the first 3 days of teaching, a few trench buildings that prevented community leaders to meet with us until Friday, and there were some ultra-important can't miss, more-important-than-HIV/AIDS soccer games (have I ever mentioned how big of a deal soccer is here?). So we didn't actually get that much done this week (and you all know how hard that can be for me). However, on the positive side, we were able to completely immerse ourselves in our community, and we did a few community teachings, including one with 50 village leaders.

Next week, the Tanzanian school year ends. So we have exactly one week to get through most of the curriculum. After that, we request that the kids come back to school on certain days for extra "seminars," but we have no way of knowing if they'll show. It's like saying to you, when you're in 5th grade "So I know we promised you a winter break...but how about if you come back to school every other day instead of just taking the time to play at home. What do you think...?)

- - - - -

Arusha is becoming less and less safe, so we're spending less and less time here. Apparently the holiday season is the worst for crime rates in this area because well...people gotta get their family presents, and stealing is much cheaper than buying. No one from SIC has gotten hurt yet, but we have had some incidents. So to ensure our safety our weekends in town are going to be 24 hours ish.

Last weekend was a 3 day weekend in between villages, so, like any good SIC volunteer, 5 of us decided to climb Mt. Meru (may-roo), the second highest mountain in Tanzania, 5th in Africa, the hardest hike/climb of my life.

Mt. Meru is almost 15,000 ft., which makes it a hefty feat to conquer in 3 days. It's apparently possible to climb it in 2 days, but most climb it in 4. And besides the difficulty of the actually physical exertion, the reason for a longer climb is that as the air gets thinner, we get tired more easily, and the faster we climb, the more of the chance there is for altitude sickness.

We started planning for the climb about a week ahead of time. Gaby, Jess, Jenna, Dustin and I rented some gear from a safari company, including a gas stove which was RIDICULOUSLY huge...pretty much not carriable. We were kind of taken aback when we got it from the company. Wait. It would take TWO people to carry this. And we're planning to take this up a mountain. So, you see, most people use a company when they climb Meru, and spend a good $400/person doing so. However, we, in volunteer/student style, managed to spend about $250 each by renting our own gear, buying our own permits, and cooking our own food. And it ended up working out. We just rented a few porters to help us with some of our stuff (local villagers who cost a very small amount conisidering how much help they are), including the stove.

Most of us, though, carried our own backpacks. Which I guess is part of the experience. It certainly made our backs sweaty as we first trudged up sunny grasslands with views of zebra, buffalo and giraffes, which were soon followed by torrential rains, and then the next day, below freezing temperatures.

The guidebook says Day 1 is a peaceful winding road up the first third of the mountain. STEEPEST HIKE EVER. Then we stay in a cabin-type complex, which they call a "hut." Of course by this time everything we have with us is soaked because of the rain. So we huddle in our cabin and make our quick noodles and chomp on our peanut butter, raisins, bread, and protein bars (at least we tried to be healthy).

Day 2, the guidebook claims, is much harder. NOT. Much more windy, still tiring, but only a few hours. Some of us are beginning to feel slightly light headed. We decide to rest instead of taking a small hike in the afternoon to "Little Meru," which is one of the mountain's 18 false peaks.

Day 3 begins at 1 a.m. And, of course, seeing my luck in Tanzanian so far, I get pretty extreme altitutude sickness. Similar to when I had malaria in terms of my aches and pains, diziness, nausea... But I decide that I'm already so close to the summit, that I can just grin and bear it. I do pretty well on the way there, which involves hiking completely in the dark, often on walls that are somewhat vertical. We figure that part of the reason they take you at night on the way is so that you don't freak out when you realize that a few missteps and you'll probaby die. By the time we're almost at the top, it's below freezing, it's sunrise (you can see Mt. Kilimanjaro rising over the clouds, with the sun behind it!), but I feel so, so horrible. I feel like my head is going to fall off. But, once again, I take it slowly, and all 5 of us make it to the summit!

By the time we got down the mountain (via a "rescue" vehicle for the bottom 3rd of the hike...thanks to me), got back to Arusha (by the way...we took a TAXI all the way into and away from Arusha National Park, that was quite a sight), and had dinner...it was about 9p.m. So after behing up for 20 hours, my body wasn't too happy. But with a good night's sleep, the sickness was pretty much gone by morning.

I know it sounds like I've been pretty active, but I doubt all the running and climbing means I've lost wait, or gained muscle...because I've consumed more sodas and snickers bars in the last month than I've had in the past 2 years. Yea, and these mediocre ice cream bars with "vanilla" ice cream and chocolate coating. They don't use preservatives or artificial anything here, so we consume a lot of sugar. However, I do avoid it in my nightly tea. They think I'm pretty weird.

UPDATE: [Sunday morning.]

I went to the orphanage again on Saturday morning. The kids remembered me! I took a few pics this time. We only hung out for an hour or so, but it's a nice feeling to know that you're loved by little kids who hardly know you.

Last night we had Thanksgiving Dinner, SIC style at Erica's house (the Volunteer Program Manager). People started cooking mid-afternoon at 3 different staff member's homes. We made hand turkeys as decorations, ordered loads and loads of fried chicken (turkey is kind of hard to get), made mashed potatos, candied yams, stuffing, tomato/cucumber salad, and corn bread muffins. Erica's house was the first time I didn't really feel like I was in Africa for the last 2 months. We just hung out for 5 hours like it was someone's apartment in Westwood, played music from someone's ipod, and drank sodas (and some drank alcohol I suppose), and just chatted. Definitely not the typical Thanksgiving dinner. But it was really, really poa.

- - - - -

Next week we have another long weekend (a 4-day), and a bunch of us are going to Uganda. Which means, once again, I'm not really sure what my Internet situation will be next week.

And the Saturday after that is WORLD AIDS DAY! So get excited.

MASWALI??

So I've been trying to take varying approaches to my blog so you guys won't get bored, so here's a new one. I want YOU (yea, the few of you who actually read this....or maybe a lot of you, I don't really know), to ask me questions. What haven't I covered in the blog so far that you're dying to know about?

We start our new villages on Monday, so this is a great chance to delve into anything that you've really been wondering about.

Ok, that's all for now. Don't have time for a full blog update until maybe Sunday, but probably next week. But I look forward to your questions (silly or serious)!

SIC Curriculum, in short

I realize that most of you probably have no idea what the curriculum consists of. We teach different versions of the same information to men vs. women, secondary schools vs. primary schools, Standard 4 vs. Standard 5/6. It all depends. But basically, we cover:

- The numbers, how big of a problem HIV is, and why it's a problem that is difficult to fight
- HIV progression in the body / the Immune System
- Male and Female Reproductive Anatomy, Puberty, Menstrual Cycle, Pregnancy
- The Fluids and the Doors that transmit HIV
Here's a chance to learn, if you didn't know:
FLUIDS (majimaji): blood, semen, vaginal fluid, pre-ejaculate, and breastmilk
DOORS (milango): open wounds, vagina, anus, tip of the penis
* a fluid and a door must be present for HIV to be transmitted, makes sense?

- The 3 Modes of Transmission:
1. Sexual Transmission; ABK's (preventative meausres), condom demonstrations (male and female) - accounts for 80% of transmission in TZ
2. Mother to Child Transmission; when a mother transmits to her child, how to prevent it, alternatives to breastfeeding for HIV+ mothers - accounts for 19% of transmission in TZ
3. Blood to Blood Transmission; where this commonly occurs, how to sterilize instruments - accounts for 1% of transmission in TZ

- HIV Testing: the process, how to interpret results, when you should get tested
- Living with HIV, healthy life choices
- Caring for someone with HIV, how to protect yourself and the patient
- Combating the HIV pandemic

So, if you have any questions about any of this stuff, I know a pretty good amount by now. So please ask!

This is Tanzania, Man.

When you walk outside in the middle of the day, you can see a few scattered houses, some of brick or cement, and some of mud. Maybe a broken down one made of wood, more than slightly slanted to the right, clearly abandoned years ago. There are a few trees, many with thorns that would gladly live in your arm instead of a branch, but mostly there are tall grasses, open plains, and dirt roads. And by dirt, you mean dust. The dust will decide to kick up every once in a while in a whirlwind you're sure would take a house away. You are so dirty afterwards, you can't see your toes. You hair is a different shade of brown, even gray.. And then it's quiet again, and you can see for miles. Majengo is completely flat. So when the sky decides to give us a gift, we can see 3 types of clouds, dancing as one, across the completely clear sky, unobscured by skyscrapers or even rolling hills. Only in Africa.

* * * *

We had an interesting week. Shujaa started off on the wrong foot, coming back into our village with a sprained knee, a friend in the hospital, and a chipped tooth. The worst was the tooth, which he broke on "chipsi" which is, basically, french fries. Yea, I know. We're not sure how it happened.

MONDAY
Monday was pretty normal. We did our art project with the kids at our other school, reminded them about our community day on tuesday, and continued on our merry way back to our homestays to prepare for Tuesday's community day. We had a scheduled church teaching that nobody showed up to, but, it's normal. This is Tanzania. We all ate dinner together at my house (last week we ate at Jess and Laura's, Thursday we ate at Joyce's...yea, we like each other that much), and while eating dinner we heard a strange announcement over a megaphone (not ours; SIC had given us a broken that we attempted to advertise with earlier in the evening). People in these villages prefer megaphone advertising because people are pretty much all in their houses during dark, so someone is paid to walk around shouting out announcements all over the villages. This announcement stated something like: "Trench building tomorrow. Fine of 5,000 for all men if they do not attend."

TUESDAY
So instead of coming to our community day of Tuesday, the day which the leaders had chosen for us to host the day, the day which we spent so much time planning and preparing for, the men of Majengo listened to their leaders built a trench. And the women stayed home to cook for them upon return. So when, on Tuesday, it well into half way through our community day, featuring art projects for kids, HIV testing, AIDS ribbons, an AIDS ribbon in the ground made of Coca Cola bottle tops and a DJ, and only 10 or 15 people had made an appearance, all we could say was, "This is Tanzania, man. This is Tanzania."

Thankfully, the $100 and countless hours put toward the Majengo Siku ya Jamii wasn't a complete waste. ALL of our students showed up, meaning the teachers made it an official half-day for every Standard 4. 5 and 6 kid in Majengo. And our kids danced, sang and chanted about HIV/AIDS for a good 4 hours in the middle of the village. The sound system was great, and our students gladly took the mic and performed raps, skits, songs and dances that we had asked them to prepare, telling us why it was so important to get tested, how to prevent disease, how to stop stigma, etc... We gave out hundreds of AIDS ribbons and they were SO excited. And at the end of the day they took home their artwork from what we did in class. It was a day these kids would never forget.

41 people got tested, 5 were wazumgu, which means only 36 villagers were tested on Tuesday. But that's 36 people who know their status. And Laura, Jessica and I got tested also. We went through all 3 steps of the process, though most of the counseling was in Swahili (which was ok, since we pretty much knew what they were saying). We got the finger prick, waited for our results, and experienced the elation one feels when he knows his status. And the nervousness one feels, even when you think there's no way no how, for those 20 minutes before the lady says the word "negative." It's scary. But "I KNOW" my status. I wear the wristband. ;-)

At the end of the Community Day, we waited for the final truck to come back so we could return some of the tables we had borrowed from the school. Early in the day, 4 boys were elected to help carry the furniture from the school to the dispensary for us (decently far). We would have done it ourselves, but they were so excited to help, that several jumped out of windows so they could help too. That night, Shujaa went to town to get his tooth fixed, and didn't come back until Thursday. Suffice to say, my Swahili improved again while he was gone.

WEDNESDAY
With our planned teaching schedule, we were pretty much screwed with Shujaa out of commission. So Upendo, our field officer, met me at Engatani school and I taught the Engatani Peer Educators, while Joyce, Laura and Jessica worked with the Majengo PE's. This week we worked on our PE's public speaking skills. The school year ends on November 23 in this area, so they have final exams starting next week, and then there is a 2 month break. So, really we couldn't delve into the PE curriculum. Instead, over the course of the week with our PE's we forced each of our kids, between 8-14 years old, to come up to the classroom multiple times and in essence talk about themselves while we sat in the classroom like students. And then we talked about the strengths and weaknesses of each speaker. We also did a few teambuilding excercises (human knot, trust circle, ya know...), a game about stigma, and attempted to have a discussion about the concept of peer pressure.

PE's are awesome to work with because we choose the most out-going and smartest kids in each class, we put them together in a seminar-like setting, and get to pretty much teach them whatever we want. It's like teaching the gifted kids at a large public school. These kids actually care about fighting HIV in their communities, educating others, and staying HIV-free themselves. They are perfect role models for their peers.

But the best part of the day was my journey to Engatani. About 20 minutes into an hour-long walk, a Masai man riding a bicycle in full Masai robe attire (a more common sight than you think) asked if I needed a ride. So I hopped on back and he took me down the rocky road to the school. He was also on his cell phone for about 10 minutes of the time.

THURSDAY
Imagine walking into a teachers office, sitting down, and suddenly noticing out of the corner of your eye that 3 young boys are hanging from the top of the windows so that their feet don't touch the ground. They are clearly in pain, but it's such a hilarious sight that it's painful both not to laugh and not to cry.

Today late-comers walked around like frogs in lines, hands on each others shoulders, while being whipped. They also apparently hung on window sills (at least a few of them). This is Tanzania, man.

At the end of teaching on Thursday, our last day at Majengo school, the teachers asked if we could take a picture of them. So we did. We printed the picture in town on Friday, and we'll swing by on Tuesday to drop it off...but Thursday was pretty much the last day we were going to see most of these kids. And after Tuesday, the last day we would see all of them. The last day we would see Shujaa. The last day we could answer their questions. It's just weird to know that you've (hopefully) made an impact on their lives, but will never, ever see them again.

But I also had an epiphany this week. Many of the kids, when we had them draw their pictures of what they want to be when they grow up, drew teachers. And at first I thought, "that's so awesome that their teachers are such good role models that these kids already want to be teachers." But I realized that this was completely wrong. Out of the dozen times we've been to these schools, we've seen a teacher in a classroom maybe 3 or 4 times We've seen lessons written on the chalkboard maybe once or twice. We've seen teachers asleep, smoking, socializing in the common area, or just hanging around more times than I can count. On Monday, one of the teachers at Engatani likened his job to being a prisoner in a prison.

So when those kids wrote that they wanted to be teachers, it was because of us. We are role models for these kids. We work together from different backgrounds to fight a common cause, and we're damn good teachers in the classroom and out. If I thought I was a great teacher 4 weeks ago, I was kidding myself. I'm so much better now. And I'll be so much better by the end of the this program. It's just awesome to have kids look at us in front of the classroom, yell out our names from across the fields and from the doorsteps of their homes, and know that they are inspired by us, just like we are inspired by them.

FRIDAY
We finished up at Engatani early in the morning. SIC said they couldn't pick us up until late in the afternoon...so we walked to a sort of "main" road, and...we hitch hiked to Arusha. Jessica and I flagged down the cars, and after getting rejected 3 or 4 times, we actually got a ride. Yep, we rode in the back of a pickup truck for almost two hours, while random people (including a nicely dressed man in a briefcase) hopped in and out along the way.

This is Tanzania.

TUPO PAMOJA KUUSHINDA UKIMWI!

(We are together to fight AIDS.)

For all intensive purposes, this is the slogan of SIC. But it's more than just something drilled into our heads to memorize during Orientation, or something we write on T-shirts and banners.

This weekend I spent 7 hours traversing 3 villages to visit 4 HIV+ patients. The villages were like jungles, with tall, green banana trees and rich dirt, animals and people everywhere. Four of us met in the morning with a man name Ephrem, who has been working with SIC since the beginning, one of the 4 founding members, one of the 2 on the Tanzanian side. Ephrem is, simply put, probably the most amazing man you've ever met in your life. He is technically an SIC staff member, but more so he is simply a friend to HIV positive people all over Arusha. He helps them get vitamins and medicine, he brings them visitors, he connects them with each other. Just because. Sometimes he'll wake up with a feeling that one of his patients needs help, rush over to their house, to find them about to pick up the phone to call him. Or perhaps, about to die, and in need of loving arms to put them to rest. He has an intuition, he calls it a spirituality, that connects him with these people and enables him to help them more than almost anyone else could.

From the very beginning of our journey, Ephrem continuously said, "Tupo Pamoja." We are together. We are together walking across town. We are together to help each other. We are together to bring happiness to the people we are visiting. We are together in the villages, in the classrooms, in the eyes of the government, in our philosophies. Tanzanians and Americans. Tupo Pamoja.

The first woman we visited has been living with HIV since 1999. She is 29 years old. When her family discovered that she was positive, her husband left her, taking her two daughters away and leaving her to fend for herself, without a way of making money. Her husband has since died (he refused to get tested) and her children live with their grandparents, go to school, and live happy, healthy lives. Albina is moderately healthy, is on two ARV's (they are all taking Nevarapine and another drug - you have to take at least two for the drugs to be effective - I'll explain later if you're wondering why; also if you are on drugs in Tanzania, it means you have AIDS...not just HIV - the government provides ARVs to anyone with AIDS), and has become a spokesperson for the HIV positive in her community. She recently moved into a concrete room (many live in mud huts), which she keeps clean with the help of her brother's son, who has come to live with her and care for her when she is sick. She made us porridge, and said it was a blessing to have visitors. We sat, the six of us taking up every spare inch in her room, and talked to her for over an hour, asking her questions, and her asking us questions in return.

Albina is a rare case. She lives a healthy life because she has an immensely positive attitude. She helps to create support groups in her communitites (although many of her new neighbors don't know yet that she's positive), and tries to eliminate stigma by seeking out other HIV positive people and telling them that they are not alone. In essence, she is a Community Health Worker. She does counseling and provides support and advice to other patients around her. We bought her some gifts, some sugar, soap, rice and peanut butter, but it was surprising when she asked us if we could give her money to help put her daughters through school.

It's ridiculous what the cost of an education is here. Sure, it doesn't cost more than in America...but in America we have that kind of money (however much we complain about the cost of college). Some families can't even support a child going to primary school because it costs about $3/month. People her, for the most part, value an education, they just can't afford it. It's horrible. And what do you do when some asks you for the semi-large amount of money that it costs to send a child to college for a year. How can you put a price on education? We are so lucky that we all have the oppornuity to go to school, one way or another. Kids here either have to help herd the animals and work on the farm, or can't afford the uniform and supplies. And even if they attend school, many end up parents at age 19 anyway, attempting to make enough money to get by.

Anyway, Albina was great. She showed us pictures from her daughter's communion and happily walked with us around town for a while. She was such an inspiration; we know that at least some people realize that they can live happily with HIV - and they can help others do the same. Two of the components of a healthy lifestyle that we teach in our classes, both for HIV positive and HIV negative people, are having a social support network and having a positive attitude. Albina's positive attitude comes from the fact that she prays for her own happiness and health. She asked us to pray for her, too.

On the way to visiting the patients, we actually ran into another of Ephrem's patients. She was drunk... He had told her not to drink multiple times, but she keeps drinking. This sort of goes back to an idea we have talked about, but never seen or experienced first hand: when many people discover they are HIV positive, they drown their sorrows in alcohol or drugs. They are legimiately, always depressed. Not only is alcohol bad for hte body, but it is bad for the mind.. it keeps her negative, both her status and her view on life. But anyway...the second woman we visited was slightly older, but had a similar story of stigma in her past. Her husband all shamed her for being HIV positive, and she also hardly ever sees her children. She uses Albina as a support network. She has more visual illness, one of her eyes looks pretty nonfunctional, she is sick in bed much of the time, she lives in a mud room that she can hardly afford, and she has no business to make money (Albina sells second hand clothes - some days are good, some days she sells nothing). However, she was still very happy to have us, and we learned a lot from her.
The third patient was just a quick hello, who lives with another HIV+ woman who we didn't meet. Once again, the support network is so important. That is why SIC teaching against stigma and providing support in the local villages is so crucial to these people's survival.
The fourth was a 9-year-old girl named Irene. Though she had been very sick when she was young, she looks healthy, has a beautiful smile, and loves to play. She has two sibilings, an older sister and a younger brother, both who are negative. Their parents died from AIDS. Irene has medications for opporunistic infections, vitamins, and ARVs that she takes every day. The children live with their grandmother who is very old and weak, so two ladies who live next door take care of them a lot. The place is perfect for the children to play, they are attending school and loving it, and it, once again, seems like a very supportive environment. Much thanks to Ephrem.

Some patients I've heard about in the past:
- One woman's CD4 count reached 0, so they took her to the hopsital to die. Technically, she was dead. 6 months later, after all her family and friends thought she had passed away, she came back, alive and well. She now has a higher CD4 than many AIDS patients.
- A woman with a very high CD4 has two children she can hardly support. Even though she's technically less ill, her negative attitude leaves her bed-ridden on many days. Her childrren are forced to take care of her, and they can't even eat many days.

(As you notice, women tend to much more open to having visitors when they HIV positive. It's harder for men to take the step to get tested, and do something about it.)
So that was an interesting day, for sure...

- - - - - - -

This week was quite an eventful week. The days are going faster and faster. And its absolutely insane that we only have 8 1/2 more days in our first villages...then we're done and will probably never see these people again (check out my photos for pics of my family!).

On Tuesday we had a testing day in one of our subvillages. We thought that SIC didn't have the resources to have both a testing day and a community day in our village, but last minute they figured it out, so we were able to have one! Because our village is so spread out in itself, only people in the Kaloleni subvillage showed up. Many of them had attended our teaching on monday, during which we taught another almost 130 people! It's so rewarding when these men ask questions that really challenge us, because it means that #`1) they care and #2) they're actually listening.

The testing day was held at the subvillage, and despite a few complications and frustrations with SIC staff and resources, we managed to test 86 people. We know that 3 were positive. And we think that one was a little girl who was brought by her really, really old grandmother. They were in the results room for a really long time.

Surprisingly, most of the Masai men who came to our teaching did not show up to our testing. Actually, a lot of men in general didn't come because they were working. But the morning was pretty dominated by men getting tested. Just no Masai. We realized that it was beacuse the Masai believe they have a cure for AIDS. Actually, Jess and Laura's Baba believes he has a cure for AIDS. It is a simple mixture of herbs. We would like to tell them that they could sell this cure and be the richest men alive.
This week we also did some cool projects with our kids at school. We played a jeopardy-like game (sort of modeled after the way we did in O-staff training...thanks to me), to review all the material. And we also did an art project after teaching some life skills. We are here to teach HIV/AIDS education, but SIC also encourages its teachers to take the opportunity to teach about goal setting, being able to make life decisions, have power over one's own future, etc. These are lessons that they never learn in school or from their parents otherwise. Kids aren't asked, "what do you want to be when you grow up?" Kids don't think they have power over their futures, but we teach them that because they DO, they also have the power to keep themselves healthy and HIV free. We had them draw pictures of "I want to stay HIV free because..." It was a very powerful activity. Most kids know, especially girls, that they are going to be parents...they are going to be mamas and men are just workers to raise a family. P.S. We saw a father who looked about 19 with his 1 year old working at a store. Wow. I am NOT ready for kids.

This week we also finished up our condom surveys, providing about 17 stores in our village with male and/or female condoms. Woohoo!

Meanwhile, we are preparing for our huge community day on tuesday, working to begin training our peer educators, and becoming more and more convinced that our group is the most functional and productive group of the program. Our group is awesome. You should hear some of our conversations...

This week I also saw kids beaten at school by the head teacher, did laundry in a bucket at my house, was caught in several wind/dust storms that reached the sky and continued our runs (and took some pictures - the kids were so excited!).

I think that's all for now, folks. Thanks for reading, I hope everything is ok there in Cali...fires and all. I just need to stop hearing people say "Jimbo la california...moto, moto" (the state of california is on fire!). :(

Best as always,
Devon

Majengo: Wiki 2

Another week, and the days are moving faster and faster. I thought I would get more homesick as the days went on, but I think I've finally gotten over the hump and am starting to feel kind of comfortable in this land that is so far away from everything I know. It's weird to walk around Arusha and feel anger toward the tourists who have no respect for the culture, have made no effort to learn the language, and simply make stupid decisions. And it's nice to know that I'm not that tourist any more. I keep joking that I want to make a shirt that says, "I'm not a tourist, I'm a volunteer!" Every time I see groups of white people, I shout "wazungu!" in my head (or sometimes outloud) just like the people do here. I know I stand out walking around, but all of us are beginning to feel more and more African. There are still stupid things like the use of toilet paper and brushing teeth that we haven't completely given up on, but there are so many American luxuries that I've sort of just forgotten about. It'll be weird when I get back, that's for sure.

This week we continued school teaching and began working more intensively with other projects that we have to complete while in the village. In addition to teaching the SIC curriculum to our six classes, we are responsible for:

- Community Groups: we have another huge one tomorrow! and Shujaa and I did a short one this week with some young male farm workers, which was good. They were really scared of getting tested though, largely because they've heard that people get really depressed when they find out that they are positive. So we tried to convince them that it's better to know your status, and get treatment, than be ignorant, and probably live a short life in the long run. We're also in the process of setting up community teachings with groups of Mamas, the church choir, and some other groups. Should be good.

- Condom Availability Surveys: we go around to every single store (duka) in the entire village and ask them if they sell condoms. these stores are literally little shacks or huts with windows that you look into to see if there's anything you want to buy. They sell things like soda, soap, batteries, maybe food. The duka owners go to town and get stuff on the weekends, or whenever, so they charge a lot for the stuff because they are the ones going to get it from Moshi or Arusha (the two closest large cities). Only one of the dukas we've been to so far has sold condoms. One has refused to sell. And the rest have said they would be willing to potentially sell in the future. When they say they want to try it out, SIC provides one free box of condoms, and then we explain that if they want to continue selling they can buy them in town. So far we've only distributed male condoms, but we also provide and promote female condoms. All of the ones we promote and provide, both male and female, are made in Tanzania. One duka owner was so excited for his free box of condoms that he gave us free sodas!

- Mapping: These areas are not on Google Maps. In general, these communities are rarely mapped, and extremely spread out. So we're supposed to somehow make an understandable map of Majengo. We'll see how that goes.

- Testing Days: We schedule and run days for the SIC mobile VCT (voluntary counseling and testing) units to come to our village.

- Community Days: A bigger version of the testing day, with games and activities for kids, as well as tables with different topics being taught, and other HIV/AIDS related info. We usually do Ward-wide community days, which would encompass 3 villages, but since my village is so far away from other villages (a half day walk, pretty much), we have to plan and run our own. It's going pretty well. I'm on the SIC Community Day Committee and we've started to plan activities and make posters. Our tentative date is October 30th. Should be awesome!

Also, in order to make our classroom teachings sustainable we have two programs implemented:

- Field Officers: SIC staff members who have offices near the villages and are the contact point person for the leaders and teachers in that area. They also work with Community Health Workers, also trained Tanzanian SIC staff members, who work in the communities for counseling and advising purposes.

- Peer Educators: Our sustainable programs at the schools involve choosing a few outstanding students from each grade level at each school and training them how to continue HIV/AIDS education at their schools and communities. We review all of the information, and also train them how to give class presentations and other leadership and life skills. Also, a teacher is chosen at each school to run the PE program after SIC has left. So right now we're in the process of choosing our PEs and getting ready to start training them.

This week was a very smooth week in terms of teaching. We completed the curriculum at one of our schools, and got pretty far at the others. We've played a lot of games with them, and it looks like they are really learning the material. Their favorite (and ours too), is the ABK song. These are the ABKs of sexual prevention. Acha Kabisa (Abstinence), Baki Mwaminifu (Be Faithful), and tumia Kondom (use a Condom). Some of these kids have rhythm! It's kind of hard to describe in words what it's like to be in a classroom full of yelling kids, dancing and singing, excited to learn about the ways to prevent HIV transmission. They think we're so cool, and we think they are so cool...and it's just so cool to be there. I love being in the classroom. Even if I wake up in the morning and dread the hour long walk to school, the 2-3 hours in the classroom makes the entire day worth while.

Shijaa, the HIV+ 5-year-old at one of our schools, continues to be one our favorite parts of the week. This week, he followed us into one our classrooms and hung onto us for the entire class periods. He's figured out how to take my watch off my wrist, put it on his, and then take it off his and put it back on mine. Which is impressive, considering how sick he is. He can't even really speak. It's really sad. I want to take him home with me.

Speaking of good parts of the week, Jess and I have continued to run almost every day, and it's probably the best part of the day. We run at sunset, the beautiful perfect, clear-skied African sunset, and between and 2 kids (depending on the day) have made it a habit to run with us. They recognize us from school, sing the ABK song with us, and yell out our names, constantly asking "Umechoka?" (are you tired?). It's also a wonderful time of the day for us to clear our heads, and bounce thoughts off of each other. We've run about 20-30 mins each day, but it's enough to make me feel a lot better when I go to sleep a few hours later.

In other news, my family is doing pretty well. We've been eating dinner slightly earlier, playing with kids as usual, and just hanging out a lot. Although more and more of our days are becoming dedicated to SIC work.

Last weekend, Jessica's phone was stolen from her homestay. Kind of a weird chain of events. We think it was a random miner, but we're not sure. And all of our homestay Baba's were pissed off because they felt that it was a personal attack on the family. We never got it back, and we think the sim card was probably pulled out. But we were fully prepared to have the guy meet us somewhere, and then "grab him until he gives it back..." Yea...

Some recent dinner conversations have included:
- a discussion of how fish are kept as pets in America, in tanks, inside, and not just to eat
- marriage practices in the US. Apparently in Majengo, or in my family's tribe, men must bring 3 buckets of soda or alcohol and present it to a woman's family before he wants to marry her. He also must pay a dowry. They asked me how much it costs to marry a woman in America
- another conversation about religion. They laughed at me when I explained that I believe in evolution. They legitimately had never heard that theory before, and could not believe that someone would begin to think that.

My Swahili is becoming better, but I'm still kind of depending on Shujaa. At least I know how to say basic things, and enough to get by in town for sure. When flycatchers (people who try to sell you things on the street) approach us, we either don't talk to them at all, or bust out our Swahili - both methods work perfectly well in dumbfounding them enough to make them walk away. But actually, we've been around long enough so that most flycatchers recognize us when we go to town and we don't get bothered much any more.

In other news, my Baba recently got Malaria, in addition to 2 more SICers. Which means a total of 3 people in my household have gotten in the past 2 weeks. And a total of 3 SICers have gotten malaria in the past 2 weeks, one on each of the 3 major prophylactic drugs (larium, malarone, and doxy - which is mine).

One of the villages attended a funeral this week of a little girl who died of malaria. She was sick for 2 months. Her family was too poor to get her to a clinic, and when she finally made it there, they ran out of malaria tests. So it was too late by the time they realized what it was, and the family couldn't afford the medication. $20 could have saved this little girl's life. Things like that seem so unfair. This village saw several of their students on the floor in hysterics as they grieved. They were asked to put flowers on the little girl's grave. It's just so unfair. My village isn't poor, they can afford to go to the clinic, half of them own motorcycles, and all of them have cows and donkeys. But there are areas around here, even some of the other villages, that are in such a state of poverty that they can't afford to feed their kids more than one meal a day. Even some of the richer families only eat once a day. Things like that are such a wake up call. At one of our schools, actually, the students are so hungry by 12 that they fall asleep during class so we have to have them do stretches or run to a tree and back outside just to keep them awake during our lessons. They also don't drink any water. They bring water to school, but it's for the teachers.

In a little less sad news, there was also a request to talk about the weather, so here goes. The days and nights are usually pretty hot and dry. My village has been having a drought for a few years, but it has rained for 5 or 10 minutes at a time once or twice this week. It gets really windy, and it's really really dusty, so when it gets windy, you can hardly see the house next door. At night, it's usually a good temperature. The nights are beautiful, especially the skies - I can't get over it - except when we see scorpions - kind of scary.

- - - - -

And now it's the weekend. During the weekends we come to town and stay at a hostel on the main road of Arusha town. It mostly consists of eating non-village food, running errands, doing internet, and, little special visits.


Last week, I visited WODSTA (Women Development for Science and Technology Association), with a few other volunteers. I rode a Daladala for the first time, which was quite an experience, but not THAT bad considering I actually had my own seat (that doesn't usually happen, from what I hear). WODSTA is a few year old non-profit aimed at helping women become more efficient and ecologically friendly at home. We helped with some manual labor for a while involving bricks made out of compacted sawdust, and a learned a little about the organization. One of the things that SIC prides itself on is being really involved in the non-profit circle in Arusha. So we have connections to a lot of other organizations that are on the rise, which is really awesome for the future of SIC and all that it may be able to accomplish.

Last weekend, we also experienced our first very, very drunk taxi ride. Most taxi drivers at night, especially on the weekends, are more than slightly intoxicated. But this driver drove on the wrong side of the street for most of the drive, swerving back and forth even more than usual. We were kind of scared for our lives for a moment. But we did make it home.

Also last week, when we went out one night to Via Via again and some of the volunteers witnesses an incident of mob violence that was pretty traumatizing. In Tanzania, if someone is caught stealing, or anything else remotely wrong, other people will start beating them and hitting them, sometimes to death. These "other people" often involve the police. One of the volunteers was so upset that she tried to stop it, but only made it worse. The last they saw was the man being carted away in the back of a car.

This weekend, I visited an orphanage in a village right next to Arusha town. The orphanage was partially founded and funded by two past SIC volunteers, so we have some deep-rooted connections to the place. The building where the 28 orphans live, about half boys and half girls ranging from 1 to 18, has a living/playing area, two small bedrooms, where 12+ boys or girls share a bunkbed and floorspace in each room, and a storage room. There are also 4 women who love the kids, live with them, cook for them, and care for them in every way possible. These women are amazing.

Many of the kids were severely abused or traumatized when they were younger, brought to the orphanage by leaders of their villages hoping to give the children a safe haven. All of the school-age kids in the orphanage attend school, which is great, and the kids certainly eat enough. However, they are still certainly struggling. They seem happy, they sing, they dance, they play, but every day is hard.

For their hardships, they turn to Jesus. We played a lot of games with them, they held our hangs, sang in both Swahili and English, but so many of their songs involved thanking the Lord. Many of these were in English, so some of them probably didn't know what they were saying, but it's still extremely interesting to see how religion has bonded these kids together, and made everything ok even among such horrible hardship. They sing songs about their mothers and fathers, but they don't have parents. And they sing about a Christ that has somehow saved them, when they have so little. It made me really think about the role of religion in so many people's lives here in Africa. Do they turn to God because they need some sort of being to tell them that there is a reason to live? Do they turn to God because they need to believe in something that those around them are believing? Or does their Christianity really benefit their inner being, deep down, to a profound level. I still don't understand religion, I've decided.

I'm hoping to go back to the same orphanage some time soon, and I'm definitely going back at some point during the program. And I also think I want to visit an orphanage in America, and see what I can do.

Next week, I'm going to visit some patients with AIDS. I've been hearing stories about other people's patient visits, but I'll wait to share those until I have mine to share as well.

Thanks for reading, peace and love,

Devon


p.s. I've added a few more pictures...still lots more to go, but it's kind of an update?

Picha Picha!

Here is a link to some of the pictures I have managed to both take and post while I've been here. Pictures take FOREVER to upload onto these computers, so I've been working on compiling this for a while, and there are still a lot more where these came from, but this is a start: http://www.flickr.com/photos/devonian451/

I haven't taken pictures yet of my village, my schools, or my family because people here have a very different perception of pictures here in Tanzania. If I start taking pictures now, they'll expect me to take pictures of everything at every moment ever. They'll crowd around my camera wanted to see the picture, and I also risk my camera getting damaged. So...yeah expect some cool pictures of village life some time in the coming weeks, if I can manage without making it awkward.

Pictures of Arusha and people are pretty much impossible unless we are in a moving vehicle and quickly being whisked away, which is why many of my "daily life" pictures are kind of crooked and blurry. Some people, such as Masai dressed in traditional garb, will actual charge for photographs, watching to see if tourists take their cameras out so that they can demand money.

But I'm working on posting as many as I can as quick as I can, so take a look!

MAJENGO!

On Thursday morning we took the long drive to our villages out of Arusha. Majengo is actually the farthest away from Arusha, and something like a 4 hour walk from our homestays to the next closest village. So we're pretty much stranded. But it's also good because we can really get to know our community.

I live in one of the three houses in Majengo that has electricity. And boy, are they proud of their electricity. Our house is a little smaller than my apartment, the living room is the size of a small bedroom, and our bedrooms are the size of our beds. The walls, both inside and out, feature cracking brightly colored paint jobs. We don't really have any other decorations on our walls, but Joyce's home has a picture framed picture of Arnold in some sort of wrestling costume over the doorway. And a jesus clock. There are a lot of jesus clocks around, most without batteries...so they just sort of sit there as decoration.

All three of our homestay families are part of the same family, which is probably one of the most wealthy families in the area. My Baba and Mama are the grandparents of the family, and their youngest daughter, Rebecca, is 17. Our other kakas and dadas (brothers and sisters) are all grown up have their own kids. Two of their sons own the other homestay houses and thus are the Babas of Jess/Laura and Joyce. So all of our families are extremely related, meaning they are at each other's houses all the time, we are always welcome to go back and forth between the houses to play with the grandchildren/children, and, because each home is only a 5 minute walk from the other, it's a pretty nifty situation.

In our home, there are always people, everywhere. The main industries in Majengo are mining and farming. And because we are one of the closest villages to the mines, we also have some of the most uneducated people living in our area. We can't actually go the mines to teach on a regular basis, but we are hoping to get a large contingent of SICers to actually take a trip out there one day and teach during their lunch break or something. Mining men are at such high risk because they are away from home for long periods of time, miss their wives or girlfriends, and thus find prostitutes and insist on not using condoms. It's really horrible. But we also truly believe that these men will want to hear what we have to say for the most part once we start telling them how they can save their lives.

Laura and Jess's Baba is a miner, but a legit miner, while my Baba runs a big farm. We actually also own some of the only vehicles in town, including a tractor and a large truck that comes home full of maize almost every day. I practically live on a farm, so we also have several cows, goats, sheep, donkeys, a dog, a cat, and too many chickens. Sleeping is difficult once the sun rises because the roosters decide it is time for the entire village to wake up. And thus, the family wakes up, and then radio turns on. Since we do have electricity, my family sure does like their radio and we frequently listen to Bongo Flavor (Tanzanian Hip Hop) and American R&B, with a mix of gospel music on the side. Starting at 6am. Until about 10pm. Yea, they like their radio.

Eating is a big deal here. If I go visit one of the other homestays, I have to eat otherwise it's rude. So sometimes I have 2 lunches. And maybe two dinners. The most important thing in this culture when having a guest over, is to feed them, especially chai. So I have a lot of tea. A LOT of tea. I've been eating a lot of starches, such as Ugali, which is a mixture of flour and water that we eat with our hands - just a stomach filler, and lots of rice and lots of potatos. We eat cooked/fried vegetables pretty frequently, and a lot of bananas (they're sort of like dessert, except extremely plentiful and very cheap). I've eaten goat, a few types of fish, beef and chicken, but the meat in general hasn't been sitting well with me... I'd say in general most of us have stomach pains of some sort on a regular basis. It's because we're eating so much grease and oil all the time. Oh, what I would do for a fresh green salad right now. We can't eat raw fruits in vegetables, unless they have been peeled, because the water here is so bad that it can give people amoebas. Actually, Laura got an amoeba. Not fun. Clearly, between Laura and me so far, our village is slightly bit cursed.

Anhway, we also pray before every meal, and before bed. I don't understand any of it, and it's kind of awkward, but it's really sweet to see my Mama, who is a 60 something year old lady extremely proud of her family and home, sitting on the couch and praying.

And along that line, when I said I didn't have a religion, my family got really excited and they offered to baptise me.

Our kitchen is located right next to our choo (the "toilet" and shower), which is a hole in ground in shed near the back of the house, so it's definitely an experience to wonder what the food will smell like during the next meal. That and our animals have free reign of the property (hence the goat on the bed incident).

So I won't go into 100% of the gruesome detail, but let's just say that on Friday morning, everything that I had eaten on Thursday, was no longer in my body and instead had come out of my mouth. Still kind of gruesome, sorry.

For those of you who have not had malaria (so...everyone except Amber), it's not fun. It's sort of like the flu, except by far the worst flu I've ever had. Thankfully, after neck/back aches, shortness of breath, horrible stomach pains, vomiting (couldn't eat for a few days...people said I lost weight...that's bad...), and just general tiredness, I pretty quickly realized that something was wrong and they took me to a clinic that night. I caught it early, so I'm lucky. It's not really life-threatening in Tanzanian, because it's a fairly gentle strain, but it's still good we caught it early. I spent the weekend in town, so I missed a few cultural experiences over the weekend, but it could have been a lot worse. But I'm all better - yay! I have my appetite back finally and I'm trying to fatten up. Many of my friends have even offered some of their extra fat to me, which is very generous of them. haha.

This week we also did our first teachings. I'm actually running short on time now, but they were pretty amazing. In each school we teach a total of 3 classes, standards 4, 5, and 6. Both of them, Engatani and Majengo, are primary schools (like our elementary school, so it's sort of equivalent to grades 4, 5, and 6). Instead, except of moving on to secondary school automatically, most people stop their education at level 6. Some don't even start school until they are 9 or 10 years old, or even older, so our students range in age from 8 to 19. But we can tell they're learning. And after the second day in the standard 4 class that I taught with Joyce last wedesday, the kids asked "when are you coming back?" "can't you come every day!?"

On tuesday, instead of teaching in the schools like we usually will, we were invited to a village meeting with 130 people. The village leaders required one member from each major household to attend the meeting, because they were to talk about bringing more electricity to the village. But, the leaders forced everyone to show up 3 hours before the electricity representative was to come...so that we could teach them!! Crazy. So Shujaa and I taught about 80 men, and the girls taught about 50 women...the entire SIC curriculum. We got some crazy questions (i'll tell you later), but it was SO AWESOME to teach so many people and answer their questions and clear up misconceptions about HIV. SO COOL. So we stood under a large tree near a water storage container in the middle of the village and taught the entire curriculum, condom demonstrations and all, as the men laughed at us, but now can't wait to get tested for HIV. That's why we're there.

I figured out that for sure I NEED to be a teacher at some point in my life. I need to have control over a classroom and be able to watch my kids learn and it's just such a rewarding and amazing experience to stand in front of a room full of excited eyes and watch as it clicks and they learn something. We've only taught in each classroom once or twice, and the preparation and lull time can get on our nerves, but it's all worth it once we step into those mud-brick rooms with dirt floors and dilapidated wooden desks and they yell out the cells of the immune system with such glee. Haha. Oh the little things...

So yea, having had malaria and all, I decided not to climb Mt. Meru, the 5th highest mountain in Africa, this weekend. And instead I am enjoying a relaxing weekend in town. We love our villages, but the culture shock is a little intense at times and it's nice to get away for a little while. Which is why I will be back here in town almost every weekend for the next 10 weeks.

It's starting to hit me more and more that people actually have HIV here. It's not just a ghost we talk about, trying to prevent it from happening, but not really understanding that it's here. We met an 8 year old HIV+ orphan at one of the schools. One of the teachers has taken him in along with the responsibility of getting his medications. He is clearly sick, and so shy, and we played with him for about 30 minutes between our classes on thursday...and it just hit us. There is so much we can do to help. But, there still is only so much we can do. We can't save every orphan, or help every HIV positive person in the country. The best we can do is educate. And there you have it.

And My Village Is...

I've officially been in Africa for a month! Crazy, huh? It's hard to believe that a little over a month ago I was driving on freeways (at night even!), walking through town without having to guard my stuff for dear life, calling my friends whenever I wanted, sleeping without a mosquito net and eating food for taste instead of just for nourishment.

I don't even know where to begin. So much has happened in the last 2 weeks, so many fun times and so many challanges. And even though it's technically a 1/3 of the way through my trip, the real work has only just begun.

So let's start with 2 weeks ago:

We went back to Orientation to resume our 8-5 training schedule. Swahili became somewhat painful, and I think we've all learned more just being in our villages in the last week than we learned during our class for those last few days. Most of the second week of Orientation consisted of teaching practice, so we were placed into a few different "random" groups to test out the waters, were given a set amount of time to prepare a lesson, and then taught the rest of the class for 30 minute increments, followed by critiques. After a few teaching demos over the course of a few days, we also had an individual evaluation on Wednesday - we were given about 10 minutes warninga and then were brought in front of SIC staff members to teach a topic by ourselves without notes. That afternoon reminded me of senior exhibitions in high school where everyone who wasn't a senior would go home early (all the Tanzanians who had done the program before were exempt from this process), and the rest of us would sit around nervously in our business-casual attire waited to be told if we were good enough to graduate and move on to college. Sort of the same thing, except this was telling us whether or not we were ready to teach in front of a culture who isn't quite sure what to make of a white person talking about HIV/AIDS like it was something to be excited about...


My birthday was on the Monday of Orientation, Wiki Mbili (orientation, week 2), and people were very sweet considering the circumstances. Sure, it's not every year that you get to spend a birthday in Africa...so we lived it up...by having eggs, toast and tea for breakfast...veggies and rice for lunch, and an approximate repeat for dinner. Woohoo! But, really, they made me a poster and put in the classroom, and people said "happy birthday" to me a good 50+ times. Before bed, a few of us played Sassafrass (some of you might know this as Ocelot, or Peanut Butter - yes, I taught them the game - they thought it was was awesome, but of course weren't as skilled or strategic as you guys). Not really a memorable birthday in itself, but I'll definitely always remember how I spent the 2nd anniversary of my 21st birthday (I'm not old, ok?) in Tanzania.

There were also several other birthdays this week - 2 American volunteer, one Tanzanian teaching partner, and one sort of staff member (its complicated). So the last night Orientation, which was Wednesday, we all went out to dinner to celebrate the end of training and they sang to us, we had a cake type thing divided into 40 tiny slices, they made us posters to put around the "restaurant," and it was a nice way to spend the last night that every single SIC member will be in the same place at the same time until closing dinner in Decemeber.

On wednesday we also FINALLY found out our final teaching groups. Your teaching group sort of makes or breaks your experience. You can request to be with people, to not be with people, to be in certain villages, to not be in certain villages, to live with a Tanzanian, an American, or alone, etc, etc... So of course after the first teaching group assignments came out on Tuesday, much of the SIC cohort were not happy campers. It's pretty utterly impossible to satisfy the wants and needs of every single person at the same time. I was pretty happy with my first group, but of course after the drama that ensued over the next few days, the groups were almost entirely changed around and I ended up with an entirely different set of people that I thought originally. I'd say it's working out pretty well though.

My group, which has been assigned to MAJENGO, in the Makiba Ward, is (drumroll please....):

SHUJAA (yep, my roomate from Orientation): his maturity in many circumstances reminds me of my friends from 8th grade, but he is absolutely hilarious with his purple shirts, card games, internet phone and aviator glasses. He likes to work on his English, even though it's pretty much spot on, so mostly we're teaching him slang and abbreviations. He likes "Duh!" and making up his own abbreviations (such as "gfy" - good for you, and "you are very atm/atw," meaning attractive to men/women). I'm also teaching him Spanish (do I even remember Spanish? yes. whenever I want to not respond to a question in English my mind automatically reverts to Spanish, so I think this trip is actually better for my Spanish than my Swahili). He has been a great friend so far, and an awesome resource for our teachings. Plus his name means "Hero" in Swahili. How cool is that?

JOYCE: this is her 7th SIC program. She was late to Orientation because she was climing Mt. Kilimanjaro. She's a hardcore n100% Tanzanian, knows her stuff, lives alone in her homestay, but is one of the tiniest women I've seen here and is sooo good with the kids. Plus she's pretty hilarious, too. Favorite word: OBVIOUSLY

LAURA: Trained with the Stanford kids, but didn't go to Stanford. She is in the process of applying to nursing school, loves to laugh, and always has a positive attitude. She has health conditions which restrict a lot of her activity and eating habits, but is such a trooper for being here. We also share a love for Dane Cook.

JESSICA: Just graduated from UCLA, and is planning on applying to Nursing school also. She's very athletic/strong. We went running together through our village for about 10 minutes the other day and, first our Mamas laughed at us, then little kids proceeded to follow us and try to run with us, and a older man pointed at us and shouted "Wazungu mazoezi!" (the white people are excercising!). Anyway, Jess and I get along really well, she is very professional in the classroom, and she and Laura and really good with the kids in our homestays. We're worried they might take one of them home. Really.

By the Numbers / I Got Malaria!

# of bags returned from a missionary in Kenya: 1
# of bags of Peanut M&Ms placed in the bag as a "concellation gift" by said missionary: 9
# of beds/sleeping locations I've had, not including moving vehicles (i.e. planes, long car/bus rides): 9
# of times a goat has walked into our house and walked onto my bed in my village: 1
# of malaria diagnoses: 1
# of clinies to achieve a correct diagnosis: 2
# of days i had absolutely no appetite: 5
# of pills taken to cure malaria: 24
-- cost: 16,500 tsh
-- cost in America: a lot more
# of people who got malaria during the 8-week SIC summer program: 5
# of insects of different species i can often seen on my ceiling at any given time upon waking up in the morning: 5
# of spiders about the size of my fist on my ceiling at a given time: 5-8
# of bath/showers using only buckets: 6
# of American songs I've heard for the first time here on Tanzanian radio: more than 10?

# of houses with electricity in Majengo (my village): 3

# of schools we teach: 2
# of classes periods we teach per week: 15
# of kids in our smallest class: 24
# of kids in our biggest class: 100
# of people who attended our first community teaching: 130 (50 women, 80 men)
age of our oldest student (standard 6 = 6th grade-ish): 19 years old
time of walk to one of our schools: over an hour
# of kids in several of our classes who think that HIV is a punishment from God: all of them

Orientation, Wiki Moja

First of all, thank you so much for all of the facebook, blog and e-mail love. It means so much to me that you're all thinking about me while I'm gone (and it's also great, because it means you're thinking about the cause, too).

* * * *

It's been a long week, to say the least. We started Orientation (you'd think I'd be done with Orientation after doing it all summer...guess not - shoutout to O-staff!) on Saturday with a trip to the SIC office, which is a beautiful two-story house, with indoor waterfalls, and a dog named Chong, in a neighborhood inside town. It's down a road called Fire Rd. because there's a Fire Station there, but there's no phone number for the police or fire dept in Tanzania...and I have yet to see a firefighter or a fire truck. So by Fire Station I mean a building with space for potential emergency-like vehicles and a pole to slide down from the lookout point upstairs.

We had our first Swahili lesson on Saturday also, which now, at 2 hours a day Saturday through Friday has now totaled more hours than the entire quarter of class at UCLA. It's definitely structured differently though, and our teacher often makes comments about "the other Swahili" (referring to the inferiority of Kenyan Swahili - all of our teachers were Kenyan, both for UCLA and Stanford). I haven't really been able to study very much because my Kiswahili materials are all in my other bag. But hopefully that should be fixed soon. Supposedly, my bag is in Arusha as I type and I should have it with me on the truck ride back to the Orientation site today.

That night we had our SIC opening dinner at Masai Camp, the bar and restaurant part of of it, buffet style, great food (I'm getting so fat here...the serving size is SO MUCH, and it's half starches and carbs), and we got to meet the entire SIC staff. The Tanzanian teaching partners, six men and six women, range in age from 21-30, and are either recent college graduates or current college students. We also have several Tanzanian full time staff members, most importantly a field officer who lives in and operates out of each Ward (which is a collection of villages) and is responsible for keeping SIC sustainable. The field officer continues the programs that we initiate during our stays in the villages, each of which I'm sure I'll write tons about once they are under way. To be honest, the Tanzanians are slightly intimidating. They don't speak perfect English, but they know our language, while we are still struggling with theirs. Their culture is just so different, but they have all made a sensational effort over the past week to make us feel at home and I become more and more comfortable with them every day.

On Sunday we went on a hike that is SIC tradition, called "The Waterfall Hike," through a small national park in the backhills of Arusha town to this gigantic beautiful waterfall. Everyone goes, volunteers and Tanzanians, and it's certainly not an easy hike, but some great staff bonding. The water is freezing, but you can climb near the top and feel the backsplash of the falls (more like a downpour), and it's a freeing experience because you just stop caring about everything else around you. The surrounding cove is a jungle oasis, as green and high as the eye can see. And then the hike back is long and hard, but we stopped for to each lunch on the top of a hill overlooking rural Tanzania, green mountains of cornfields and hornbills, and small hand-made houses of dirt and wood. On the walk back, several children followed us, but they mostly just smiled and laughed, retreating behind trees or goats and cows as we walked by saying "Mambo" and taking in the African farmland with our last breaths of fresh, mountain air before returning to the city below.

That night, we ate dinner at Kahn's, a mechanic by day, Indian food restaurant by night. We rode home standing in the back of a pickup truck. We have special permission (a hand-written note) from the police allowing SIC to use the back of the truck for human transport. We stand up, the wind blowing our face, and it helps sometimes just to see Arusha from an elevated angle, instead of the dirt and sweat of the sidewalks below.

Next morning: back in bed of the truck, standing up, cold wind blowing, volunteers singing songs inspired by words and phrases printed on the Daladalas (sort of like their metro system, except smaller, more crowded, and a lot more sketchy). We moved from Centerhouse hostel to a university of agriculture and forestry to officially start our Orientation. The site is beautiful, and for the past 5 days we have followed a strict 8am-5pm training schedule. Lots of bio. Lots of sex. LOTS of sex. Lots of HIV/ADS public policy. Lots of swahili. Lots of information about the villages, the program, the people...and lots more to come.

The Orientation site is beautiful, which seems to be a theme of Africa thus far, doesn't it? We have a picture perfect view of Mt. Meru, the 5th highest mountain in Africa, the 2nd in Tanzania. We are actually hoping to climb it in two weeks. We'll see.

My roomate is Shujaa, the youngest of the teaching partners. He just graduated secondary school at 21. Which means we're the same age for a few more days. He hopes to go to college to study economics, and was apparently the "Head Boy" at his school, which I think equates to Valedictorian in some way. He, along the other guys, really really like playing Football...which is Soccer. So we've played soccer a few times. I haven't really played in 5 years, but I remembered enough to get along. Although I am clearly out of shape. Especially when our days our spent sitting in a classroom all day, eating A TON for every single meal (learning this stuff is quite emotionally and mentally exhausting), getting up with the sun, and going to bed with the sun. We're usually tired by 8pm and ready for bed.

* * * * * Interesting Side Note * * * * *

So a few days ago, we (and by we, I mean a few of the Tanzanian guys) discovered that there was a TV hooked hidden in the cabinet of our dining room. So now, every meal, especially dinner, the TV is blaring and there are several Tanzanians glued to the screen. We watch a lot of news. For example, the other night, we watched a half an hour news break about the construction of buildings in surroundings areas. We would see a few minutes of a political figure talking about the building, then a flash of the building being built, maybe some footage of construction workers sitting around eating lunch, then back to the public official speaking about the building. So funny. There as another program about a barbershop during which we watched a three men get their hair cut. Yep, that's all. A continuous shot (with infrequent zooms in and out), of three men getting hair cuts.

We also watch the Indian channels sometimes, featuring all of your favorite Bollywood music videos, and some soap operas, particularly one called "Generations," an Africa-wide drama featuring both African and white actors, all dreadfully awful actors, speaking in Swahili and English.

* * * * *

And now we're back in Arusha. I'm a pretty good mood, because I've recently had my first shower that was both hot and had pressure since arriving to Africa. Everything here smells like burning trash (there is no garbage disposal system in Tanzania). We are being pestered once again at every corner. We see the T-shirts of every American sports team you can think of, every other person greets us with an open hand. And it is no longer safe to walk around at night (last night we took a taxi to go half a block down the street from a bar to our hostel).

This is my last blog post before we move into our villages, which are in the wards of Mikiba and Mataroni, and thus from now on my internet access will become quite few and far between (or at least unpredictable...I'm going to try for once every other week, but we'll see).

On Thursday our actual HIV/AIDS work in the communities begins. It's what we've been waiting for, it's why we're here. I can't wait to meet my homestay family, find out my teaching group, talk to my village leaders, and start teaching in the classroom...and tell you guys all about it as soon as I can.

Love you and miss you all,
Poa kabisa,
Devon