What am I doing here?

Note: why is Microsoft 2007 so confusing? I am going to be computer illiterate when I get back to the US.

The following is an excerpt from a report I had to write for Peace Corps, about the needs in my community and potential projects. This is a list of my project ideas:

Health

-Health clubs: There are currently no health clubs in the community or at the primary or secondary school (apart from the life skills education at Mkang’u primary).
-Nutrition education: I think that providing basic nutrition education about balanced meals and the importance of certain nutrients and vitamins could help improve the nutritional status of the community. Providing mothers with this education could be beneficial since women are usually the family members responsible for preparing meals. This education could be done on a community-level or at the dispensary when mothers bring in their children to be vaccinated
-Permaculture projects: Nutrition education would be useless without providing people with education about growing vegetables and growing food in a more efficient manner.
-Health question box/bulletin board: There are many myths surrounding sexual/reproductive health and HIV/AIDS, and these issues are not usually talked about openly. One way to address this would be to provide a box at the secondary school where students could anonymously put in questions they have about STIs, HIV/AIDS, condoms, etc, which could be answered on a weekly basis. In addition, a bulletin board (or several) placed in the center of the village could provide basic information and answer people’s questions.
-Education about alcohol abuse
-Education about water sanitation and basic hygiene (boiling water, washing hands with soap, etc)
-Start some sort of communal health resources library
-Initiate more latrine construction
-Starting a lunch program at the schools

HIV/AIDS

-Training of Teachers (TOT): This could be done on a village or ward-wide level.
-Large events/testing days to encourage more people to be tested
-Education to reduce stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS
-Encourage condom use and perform condom demonstrations
-Look into possibility of making condoms available at bars, pombe clubs, and guesthouse
-Start peer education groups at schools
-Educating men about behavior change (since most of the PLWHAs in the village are women that got it from their husbands/boyfriends)
-Show HIV/AIDS-related videos at the video places in town
-Working with OVCs: I do not know if there are many OVCs in the village, but if there are, then possible projects with OVCs include income-generating projects, psychosocial support projects (ie memory book), and making sure their basic needs are provided for
-Working with PLWHAs: Income generation and permaculture to improve nutritional status and provide funds for transportation to hospital once a month

Agriculture/Environment

-Teaching about compost-making to improve crop yields
-Starting a seed bank so that people have enough seeds to plant, and a variety of crops to choose from
-Permaculture
-Training people to build water-catchment tanks, particularly those that live far away from a water source
-Building fuel-efficient stoves, which will both cut down on the amount of trees used for firewood, and potentially encourage people to boil their water since they will not have to use so much fuel

Community Development/Other

-Literacy project: I have observed when helping out at the dispensary that many women are unable to read or write. I don’t know if this is a large-scale problem in the village or if these people want to learn how to read or write, but if they do, a literacy project could be beneficial.
-Income generation projects and vocational training for out-of-school youths

-Women/Girls’ Empowerment: Women and girls are grossly underrepresented in government and in secondary education, are often very shy and afraid to speak around men, and carry the brunt of the household work. While gender inequality is a very hard thing to change, the following projects could be done to help meliorate this gender imbalance:

-Starting girls’/women’s/mamas’ groups
-Income-generating projects for women
-Finding mentors for young girls
-Having professional women or women with businesses to speak to girls about possible careers
-Life skills education
-Educating men about behavior change
-International Women’s Day celebration
-District or regional girls’/women’s conference

Basically I have a lot of project ideas and not a whole lot of ideas about how to start these projects.

Y'all should check out my friend Meesh's blog, who I have linked on the right-hand side of this page. She already has some cool projects with OVCs (0rphans and vulnerable children) going at her site.

Also, I feel like I should say something about how happy I am that Obama was elected, specifically about the ridiculousness of watching his inauguration live on tv at my neighbor's house, in my village that does not have electricity, when I've never watched a presidential inauguration in my life.

maisha magumu

I have determined that if I were living in any time period other than the modern age, I never would have survived. How did people figure out how to make fire? I can barely get my charcoal stove started even when I douse it in kerosene. And how did people figure out what foods to eat, or what foods could be eaten after you cooked them? Like rice. Let's beat these little brown pellets until the brown stuff comes off, then shake out all the brown stuff and cook it in water until it is soft. Who the hell figured that out?

Speaking of rice preparation, the amount of time that it takes just to live here is absurd. People grow the rice on their farms, beat it so the husks come off, shake out the husks, pick through the rice so there aren't any rocks, wash the rice, and then cook it. Of course, this is after they have cut down trees and carried loads of firewood to their house, and after they have choted water to their house from the well. And this is all just for one meal. And of course, it's usually the women that do the water-choting and the firewood-carrying and the cooking and the cleaning the dishes.

A lot of people tell me that they want to go to America, because life in Tanzania is hard and they think they will have easier lives in the US and they will get more money. I usually try to explain to them that there are a lot of poor people in the US, and that life there is not easy for everyone, particularly if you're an immigrant that doesn't speak English. But then sometimes I wonder whether being really poor in the US would be a step up from Tanznia. Because even if you were really poor (but not homeless), you would probably still have running water in your residence, and electricity.

Pictures!

This is my new housemate, Simba. I talk to her a lot and then wonder how that reflects on my sanity, or lack thereof. My VEO (Village Executive Officer) brought her to my house inside of a bag. I thought he was carrying vegetables until he went to put the bag in my courtyard.
Partial view of my house slash my pathetic attempt at gardening. I haven't planted anything yet, other than a single basil plant that another volunteer gave me. I'm going to attempt to plant corn, green pepper, carrots, tomatoes, and cilantro. My village thinks I am incompetent. They're probably right.

This is my house. The one without a satellite dish. Note that this is pretty atypical of the residences in my villages. Most houses are brick with straw roofs. And there is no electricity apart from a few people that have solar panels, and my neighbor that has a generator.

some random things

Anecdote: A man at a bus stand tells me he wants to learn English. I ask him why. He says, in English, "I want to survive."


My neighbor the other day said something I really liked. "We are just passengers in life." I made the mistake of telling him that I didn't believe in God, which is basically inconceivable to most Tanzanians, and he was trying to convince me there was one. His comment was in reference to the afterlife. But I think his comment could also have a much different meaning, referring to how little in life we have control over, ie where we are born, who our families are, our sex, our skin color, etc.


Before I did Peace Corps I wondered what a typical day was like for a volunteer. Well, I don't really have a typical day, but here are some thing that happen on a daily or regular basis:
-Boil drinking water
-Heat water for bathing
-Get neighbors to remove a large insect from my house that I am terrified of
-Block door so mice don't get in, and/or chase mice out of house at night with broom and headlamp
-Sit on my porch and hang out with other teachers from the secondary school
-Children stare at me, chase me while on my bike, and/or run away from me in terror
-Once a week, I ask people in my village to bike 1 km to my house with 5 buckets (100 liters) of water, for which I will pay them about 70 cents. Then I get angry and haggle with them when they try to charge me 1000 shillings (about a dollar). Then after we have agreed on a price and they say they are going to bring it, they don't always show up.
-People laugh at me
-I agree to things I don't understand or only half understand


Things I would like to teach Tanzanians about, in addition to HIV/AIDS/Health education:
-Basic geography: ie America is not located in Europe or Asia, and George Bush is not the president of North and South America
-Sarcasm

things on my mind

For those who were wondering, I survived the 56k bike trip and it only took around 8 hours. This included my pedal falling off halfway through the ride, walking 1 km to get it fixed; resting for an hour and a half for lunch; having a random guy try to sell me a Makonde wood carving, and then giving it to me as a gift after i refused to buy it; then taking a short nap under a tree before gearing myself up for the last 10 km of the ride. My ass was sore for about a week.

The following are things that I have been thinking about for a long time. I don't really have anyone here to discuss these things with, so I'm releasing these thoughts into cyberspace.

-Is Peace Corps, and the idea that a foreigner can come help communities "develop," inherently imperialistic? Or is it possible for Peace Corps Volunteers to effect, positive, albeit small-scale, change? Or is Peace Corps something that privileged Americans do to feel good about themselves, that in the end has very marginal effects on the communities, either positive or negative?

-For that matter, Peace Corps has been in Tanzania since 1961. What exactly has been accomplished?

-As an employee of the US government working in the Global South, on a project partly funded by PEPFAR, how am I perpetuating the very systems that I have problems with?

-Tanzania was colonized by Germany. My family heritage is largely German. Am I perpetuating the domination carried out by my ancestors? Or is it possible that I can try to rectify some of the damage they caused?

-Why are the overwhelming majority of PCVs white?

-Peace Corps talks a lot about being "culturally appropriate." What exactly does this mean? Tanzania has over 100 tribes and 35 million people. I'm still learning about TZ, but surely the idea that there is one, homogenous culture and a uniform conception of what is appropriate is ridiculous.

-Why do I get upset when people ask me for money? I'm American and a foreigner and still making more than a lot of people in my village (even though PC living allowance is supposed to put you at the same standard of living as an "average" Tanzanian). So of course people are going to ask me for money. I know I shouldn't get upset, but I still do. Is it because it happens every time I leave my house, which gets old after awhile? Or is it simply because I feel uncomfortable at my privilege being pointed out constantly?

-As part of my job in health/HIV/AIDS education I'm supposed to educate youths about "life skills," ie communication skills, decision-making skills, relationship skills, in hopes that such life skills will prevent youths from making "risky" decisions and participating in "risky behavior" that causes the spread of HIV/AIDS. I have a few problems with this approach:
1) By blaming an individual/an individual's "risky behavior" on HIV/AIDS, this framework ignores the role that structural/social and economic inequalities and inequitable access to services and resources have in affecting one's health and behavior.
2) Blaming the spread of HIV/AIDS on risky behavior ignores the fact that many girls/women are coerced/forced into sex or are unable to negotiate condom use with their partner.

So. What is a more effective method of HIV/AIDS prevention? Any input on this or my other questions is appreciated.