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.

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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.