(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
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Sunday, October 21, 2007
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?
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?
Sunday, October 14, 2007
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!
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.
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.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
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.
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.
Friday, October 12, 2007
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
# 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
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