More of my favorite things

Some more favorite moments recently:

Girls Empowerment Conference:
-Taking fifty girls to the beach (most of whom had not been to the beach before), especially when they freaked out at the sight of boats, and when they picked up and tore apart some jellyfish trying to figure out what they were,.
-When some high energy and some hand-clapping games at dinner spontaneously turned into a two-hour singing and dancing party, with no other music besides their voices and buckets being used as drums, and relieving PCVs of the responsibility of having to plan a night activity to entertain them.
-The girls singing for the entire three-hour bus ride back home, and comparing that to the first-day bus ride which was completely silent

Making a difference? A month or so after teaching budget-making and saving money to my PLWHA group, I was sitting with a couple of the members and one was saying how she took my advice and started putting a little aside each day, and one day she didn't have any money to buy vegetables for lunch so she looked in the place she had been keeping her money and discovered she had saved 2000 shillings. (Around $1.50...But enough to buy food that day, anyway).

When my neighbor who has known me for almost two years and who is much more educated than most people I know here, asked me if America was in Europe (I gave him a map later).

Learning about devils and possession:
-According to my students:
1) Incense is the cure for possession; it makes the devils go away, at least temporarily.
2) "Wanachangamka wakiona bahari." (They get excited when they see the ocean).
-According to my neighbor:
1) Only Muslims get mashetani (devils)
2) Only females get mashetani
3) "A lot of people get possessed when I am the teacher on duty, but not when the other teachers are on duty. I don't understand why."
4) Only Muslims get possessed because they believe in possession; Christians here don't believe in it.

Boys Conference:
-When a photographer showed up at the beach and at least half the boys wanted their picture taken with me and another female PCV... Glad to know I am popular with male Tanzanian teenagers.
-Having some good discussions about the meaning of love and if girls & boys can be friends without having sex
-Having the students cook dinner the first night, and one group somehow managed to make their white rice look a very non-appetizing shade of gray. They then said that they had cooked pilau (a spicy rice dish which is usually brown). It did not taste like pilau.
-Teaching yoga, and hearing the boys compare the cobra position to "popo bawa," which is, legend has it, a large bat that lives on Zanzibar and rapes men.

Some favorite things

Some of my favorite moments lately:
-Exact quote from a secondary school debate: "Please explain your truth."
-Some members of my PLWHA group looking at the pictures in my photo album and exclaiming about how beautiful I look... in my graduation cap and gown
-While staying at a hotel in town with another PCV: It's about 7 pm and getting dark. My friend goes to shower, comes back and is confused why I am sitting in the room in the dark...I have gotten so used to not having electricity, it honestly didn't occur to me to turn on the light.
-Talking with a traditional healer in my village, and getting some medicine from her that is supposed to bring me good luck
-My PLWHA group and their chicken-building project: the members are super-motivated and have been doing a lot of work, like walking 5 kilometers to talk to someone that sells bricks, carrying water in order to make the cement, making food for the carpenters
-Having a serious conversation with some secondary school teachers about what they can do to help prevent teen pregnancy and STDs

Not-so-favorite moments lately:
-Village politics in all aspects, particularly when it makes getting things done a lot more complicated than necessary, and even more particularly when people accuse me of doing sketchy things with money.
- Going over budget on projects: Do chickens really need a seven-foot tall house with a metal roof? Pretty sure they wouldn't notice if they had a grass roof... But what do I know.
-Fourteen hour bus-ride to Dar that should take 8 hours... It's amazing that they have been working on that road for say, the past five years, and it still seems like not much has been accomplished
-Planning for conferences = stressful, particularly when water is suddently unavailable in the town were are doing the conferences in and we are probably going to have to spend over a hundred dollars just on water for bathing and cooking

Indicators of success

For Peace Corps, and any development agency I presume, it's necessary to have ways to determine whether or not you are making an impact, "indicators of success" and ways to "measure outcomes." The health project has its own set of indicators that presumably show whether or not volunteers are doing successful work (ie reduced rate of teen pregnancy at a PCV's school). After some consideration though, I have come to the conclusion that these indicators are not adequate for determining my true level of success in the village. I have come up with some indicators of my own that I will use to evaluate how good of a job I am doing in my last five months of service:

-For me not to be called mshamba again (see March blog entry)
-For someone to name their child Raula after me
-For at least 25% of my village to be able to do the hokey pokey
-For at least 25% ofm y village to be able to identify which continent America is on (ie for them to realize that I am not, in fact, from Europe, and that Europe and America are not the same place)
-For at least one person in my village to understand sarcasm
-For people to be able to identify which mzungu is me if I show them a picture of me with other wazungu
-For little kids not to bawl or run away screaming in terror when they see me

Another list

I was making a list of random things. Not sure what the list is of exactly, but these things are on it. I think it's things I like. Or things I am grateful for.

-The other day I was on my porch and I saw a complete rainbow in the field in front of my house. The entire arch was visible. I've never seen that before.
-Two health workers I have been working with asked me to give them a test on what I have taught them. And then spent five minutes talking about how excited they were to take the test and how well they were going to do.
-New-found appreciation for: toast and hot chocolate. (Ie you know you are in Peace Corps when toast is about the most delicious food ever, and something you look forward to, like I can't wait to get home tonight and eat my toast for dinner and listen to the BBC).
-Had a good conversation with my neighbor the other day. And realized that we are actually in really similar situations. That is, neither of us are from Nanganga but we came here for work. We are both often frustrated and confused by some of the customs in this area. And we both miss and fantasize about food from home frequently. (Apparently food in Northern Tanzania is better?)
-24-box of crayola crayons I bought on the street
-Walking through my village and randomly stumbling upon a guy selling hundreds of organic flavored instant oatmeal packets
-The boys from one of the schools that came to our boys' conference started teaching the other students what they had learned at the conference, with absolutely no prompting from the PCV at their school
-My PCV family, especially the volunteers in my region. And dance parties and bonfires and smores on the beach.

Things I find interesting

One of my minor but more enjoyable activities in the village is posting answers to health-related questions that people put in the question box I recently installed at the dispensary. It's interesting to me to see what people ask questions about. Here are some of the questions I have gotten so far:

-Who gets more enjoyment out of sex, men or women?
-My wife cheated on me with someone who has HIV, but since I found out I have not had sex with her. If I have sex with her will I get HIV?
-If a person does not have sex for a long time does it lead to any damage or sickness?
-What should we do to stop the spread of AIDS?
-What is the relationship between TB and AIDS? I have had TB twice and now people are saying that it is possible I have AIDS. Is this true?
-In Nanganga there are a lot of HIV-positive people but they hide and are not open about their status. Try to educate them.
-A lot of people say that condoms don't prevent HIV. What should we believe? Or are there people that have had sex with an HIV-positive person without being infected?
-Can a person that has not yet gone through puberty still get HIV or STIs?
-If a lot of communities are affected by HIV, why aren't all people just given ARVs in order to prevent infection?

Things I like

Recently I was hanging out with several other volunteers, and a friend of a PCV who had just come here to visit. We were doing what most PCVs do when they get together (complaining), when the visitor from America asked, "Is there anything you all like about Tanzania?"

I don't know about the others, but I was kind of embarrassed by that question. Surely we don't complain THAT much right? We just don't get to see each other or speak English very often, we need to vent, etc etc. But could I come up with a lot of things I like about Tanzania? I could probably name hundreds of things that annoy, anger, puzzle, frustrate, worry, bother, perplex me, and/or make me want to commit violent acts. But could I come up with ten things I really, truly, without qualification, like about Tanzania?

Well, I am a master at making top ten lists. This task cannot vanquish me!

Behold, 16 things I like about Tanzania. In no particular order.
-Mangoes
-Pineapples
-Cashews
-Topetope (a weird fruit that I don't think has a name in English)
-In general, Tanzania is a beautiful country. Landscape-wise.
-The way Tanzanians dance. Hilarious.
-Kande: one of the few Tanzanians food I like. It's just corn and beans but it's delicious.
-Afternoon nap time. It's too damn hot to do any work at two in the afternoon anyway. Why not nap under a tree.
-Telling time by looking at the sun. I don't like wearing watches.
-The things you can buy on trees. Like a wide variety of used and almost-new clothing.
-The plethora of things you can buy out of bus windows. (See one of my other top ten lists for examples).
-Being able to just sit in silence with people without it being awkward. Sometimes it's just not necessary to fill the air with empty words. Sometimes you just don't feel like talking, and that's ok. I particularly like when you have been sitting with someone for a long time, and they will just say a random word out of nowhere.
-Tanzanian love for awesomely bad things- Music (ie Celine Dion, boy bands, soft rock radio). Dance moves. Kitenges with chicken heads.
-Not to romanticize poverty, but kids' creativity with toys. They can make a car out of a few sticks and some mud. Or they are entertained for hours chasing bike tires. Kids in the US just aren't entertained that easily.
-Not to romanticize poverty again, but Tanzanians' resourcefulness in general. They hardly ever throw anything away, use the same plastic bag over and over and over, and can fix/rig anything
-Huge generalization: People are really friendly and helpful, for the most part. Most people in my village are incredibly welcoming and generous. I don't think Americans are that nice to foreigners that move into their communities.

Year End Countdown

Top Five Reasons You Haven't Heard From Me in Awhile

5)Avoidance. Peace Corps is now having volunteers report on their activities using this Excel application that I am estimating will take me 17 years to fill out. I have been avoiding doing these reports and thus avoiding internet/computers.

4) Life/Being Busy, Part 1- Kuuguza. In November I was at the hospital for awhile helping take care of some students that were there. Let me just say that I don't know what hell is like, but I am pretty sure that being in a Tanzanian hospital for an extended period of time is like being in one of the first circles of hell. Or purgatory, if you think I am being dramatic.

There are maybe two doctors in an entire hospital of hundreds of patients, and don't know what they are doing a lot of the time; a lot of nurses do little more than yell at and berate patients; there are eight or ten patients in one room and no privacy; a quarter of the beds don't have mosquito nets, and there are hundreds of mosquitoes and flies and it is impossible to sleep; people with broken bones or other serious injuries are lucky if they get a couple of tylenol per day. It is the job of the patients' families/caregivers to essentially do everything besides dispense medicine and medical advice, such as: cook for the person/make sure the person is fed and has drinking water; bathing him/her; getting and emptying the bed pan; buying supplies that the hospital should have but doesn't; getting water for the person to take their pills with; doing anything else that the nurses don't feel like doing themselves.

If someone in your family is in the hospital and you are taking care of them, you essentially live at the hospital until they are discharged. At night you sleep on the cement walkway outside the patients' room, along with everyone else that is taking care of sick family members and friends.

I could make an entire new blog entry analyzing the problems I see in the Tanzanian health care system, but I'm not going to right now.

3) Life/Being Busy Part 2- World Aids Day Projects. One of my latest projects has been doing a series of HIV-testing days in my village and surrounding villages. Testing in the village isn't available, so people have to go to the hospital if they want to get tested, which is often impossible because they don't have the money for the bus fare to get to the hospital. The idea with the testing days is to make testing available and break down the stigma about getting tested, and to provide accurate information/education about HIV. 423 people tested so far, 2 villages to go.

2) Life/Being Busy Part 3- The First Annual "Boyz to Men" Conference. Some volunteers in my region and I just did a five-day camp about health and life skills for secondary school boys from our villlages. Highlights included: teaching them how to play basketball; having a co0k-off; having the boys pretend that eggs were babies and that they had to take care of them the entire week; doing a talent show by the light of cellphone flashlights; teaching about a variety of tuff, like: goal-setting, resisting peer pressure, how to save money and budget, what is love and having healthy relationships, how to study better, how to manage stress; and doing yoga, aerobics, and step.
All of this in Kiswahili by the way.

1) This is Tanzania. This is what I do when I want to use internet: I go to the road and wait for a bus, which will inevitably be packed with 20 more people than should be on it. After about an hour and a half or two hours we arrive in town. In town there are theoretically two internet options. In actuality, there is no internet. The internet at the government office only works if 1) there is electricity (which there usually isn't),and 2) if the Japanese volunteer that keeps the internet working is there (which he often isn't), and 3) if they have paid their bill (which they usually haven't). The other internet option is outside of town and a far walk or kind-of expensive taxi ride, but they have a generator so they are (in theory) not dependent on sporadic electricity. However, most of the time there is no gas for the generator, and the place is often closed when they are supposed to be open because the people that work there don't feel like coming to work.

Lately I have been deciding it's better for my mental health if I don't even try to use the internet.


The Year In Review: Top Ten Nanganga Moments of 2009
I think the best way to sum up this year in the village is with a top ten list, of course.

10) Condom demos: Anytime I do a condom demo is hilarious, because whenever I pull out the penis model people start laughing hysterically, even if it's a group of 50 year olds, or a group of all men.
9) TOT: I did a teacher training about HIV for about 50 teachers in my area, which I was originally dreading, because I didn't have a Tanzanian counterpart helping me teach, and most of the teachers are much older than I am (so why would they want to listen to what me?), and generally expect money if they go to trainings. However, a majority of the teachers that came to my training were awesome and complimented me and the PCV helping me on doing a good job teaching, and asked a lot of questions and thanked us for doing the training.
8) Singing debut. I do not sing in public. Until I was desperate for creative teaching methods and sang a song in Swahili about STDs in front of 100 secondary school students. I don't think I will do this again. Although the students seemed to enjoy it.
7) Finding a counterpart. I was really frustrated for a really long time about not being able to find good, motivated people to work with in my village that weren't just after money. After being at site for more than a year I have finally found someone to work with that is awesome and trustworhthy. Finally.
6) Talk Sex with Doctor Laura. A lot of people in the village come to me when they have random health questions they are too embarassed to ask other people, apparently. Like when a secondary school girl came and was describing to me what I thought were symptoms of a yeast infection, but I said I wasn't sure, so she kept insisting that she show me her vagina in order for me to diagnose her. Or when a secondary school boy was asking me why people's nipples get swollen during puberty, but I wasn't entirely sure if I had understood his question so I asked him to repeat it, and he lifted up his shirt and pointed at his nipple, saying "Do you see this? Do you know what this is?"
5) My three-year old bestie using my courtyard as his choo. My friend Tino was hangng out at my house awhile ago, and I was in the kitchen and he was in the courtyard. After awhile I was like, "Tino, what are you doing?" "Nakunya." (Translation: I am pooping). Tino was taking a shit in the middle of my courtyard, the bathroom two feet away from him.
4) Bride price offer. There is this guy in my village that asks me to marry him pretty much every time I see him. The best was when he offered to give me 600 shillings (about 50 cents) and a palm tree to marry him. Another time I told him I couldn't marry him because I was worried about getting HIV, and his response was: "But there are condoms." Good answer. Still not marrying you though.
3) Birthing five kittens. I had never witnessed anything give birth before, until my cat had kittens in september. Apparently she didn't know what she was doing either, because she wouldn't chew off the umbilical cords and was dragging the kittens around in the dirt and not licking them off. Luckily, a PCV friend who knows about animals served as a birth attendant via text message, so after a lot of running back and forth between the courtyard, where the cat was giving birth, and my front door, the only place i get phone service in my house, I cut the cords with dental floss and all of the kittens survived.
2) Peer education skits. My peer educator group is ridiculous, to say the least. I wanted them to come up with skits teaching about HIV/AIDS. In one skit they wanted to teach about condoms. To do so they wanted to strap the wooden penis to the male lead in the skit and use it to show how to use a condom in the scene before he and the female lead are going to have sex. They were then supposed to perform this skit for the prime minister when he came to my village, but this (fortunately?) did not happen.
1) Ridiculous dance party at the secondary school. The teachers at the secondary school where I live had a party awhile ago for one of the teachers who was recently married. This was a typical tanzanian party, in which everyone sits at different tables eating and drinking soda in silence. Then they cranked up the music and danced for about three hours. I had never seen any of the teachers dance until this moment, and I could barely keep from cracking up the entire time. One of the teachers did the running man the entire night. One of them swayed awkwardly back and forth by himself in a corner. One of them did this weird gorilla-like walk the entire time. One of them looked like he was pretending to ride a bucking bronco at a rodeo. My favorite part was when they made the guest of honor and his wife leave, and then everyone else stayed and continued dancing for another hour.

Processing one year in Tanzania

I came to the realization recently that I have been in Tanzania for more than a year. Therefore, I think it is appropriate to do some reflecting/processing on my first year here. I think the best way to process my year here, rather than some trite, cheasy, trying-to-be-more-insightful-than-I-actually-am blog entry, is to round up the year with some top ten lists. (Or top five lists, for stuff that I couldn't think of ten entries for).

Top 10 Favorite Swahili Words/Phrases
10) Mji wa mimba: literally "town of pregnancy." The word for uterus.
9) Haifai: It's not suitable. Said kind of like hi-fi
8) Habari za kupoteana? If someone hasn't seen you in awhile, they say this. What is the news of us losing one another?
7) Kitimoto: Pork. Literally "Chair-fire"
6) Kupiga stori: Shoot the shit.
5) Chapuchapu: Quickly! (Chop chop!)
4) Matako: Buttocks
3) Matiti: What do you think? Breasts of course.
2) Shaghalabaghala: Disorderly. Synonym for Peace Corps training.
1) Wowowo: Large butt. Said like it's written: woWOwo. Having one is a good thing here by the way.

Top 10 Books Read While in Tanzania
Honorable Mentions: You Shall Know our Velocity, Dave Eggers; Sophie's World, Jostein Garder; Lighthousekeeping, Jeanette Winterson; House of Spirits, Isabel Allende; Prodigal Summer, Barbara Kingsolver
10) Blink, Malcom Gladwell
9) The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
8) Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Richard Pirsig
7) I Know This Much is True, Wally Lamb
6) Bel Canto, Ann Patchett
5) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paolo Freire
4) The Impossible Will Take a Little While
3) The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
2) Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
1) The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver

Top 5 Forms of Transportation
5) Daladala: Let's fit 30 people in a car slightly bigger than a mini-van.
4) Riding on the back of someone's bike: A lot better than being the one who is riding the bike.
3) Cell phone company cars: Note to future PCVs- make friends with people that work for the cell phone companies. They usually have nice cars.
2) Tractor: Preferably if there is a big cart attached to the back and there are a ton of people and everyone is singing.
1) Bajaji: Small tuk-tuk like vehicle. Can hold 1-9 people.

Top 10 Pick-up Lines People Have Used on Me or My Friends
10) Unanitega: "You turn me on." Nice and straightforward.
9) Let's have sex: Also straightforward.
8) "Do you have a fiance?" "Yes." "In America or Tanzania." "America." You need a Tanzanian fiancee."
7) "I want you to take me to Europe." "I'm not from Europe." "Ok where are you from?"
6) "Raula...Raula...Raula..." "What?" "I love you." People here can't say my name.
5) You've gotten fat. Tanzanian compliment.
4) "I love you." "You don't know me." "So let's get to know one another."
3) If you marry me I'll give you 600 shillings (like 50 cents) and a palm tree.
2) I want to marry an mzungu (white person).
1) So...tutasex?

Top 10 Foods Made Using Tomatoes and Onions Because Those are the Only Vegetables Always Available in My Village
10) Regular beans
9) Tomato curry
8) Chili
7) "Spanish" rice
6) Tomato soup
5) Baylor's Bread
4) Kachumbali (basically onions, tomatoes, salt and lemon juice)
3) Salsa and Chips
2) Scrambled eggs (provided I can find eggs)
1) Spaghetti (provided I remembered to buy pasta when I went to town)

Top 10 Forms of Insect Removal
10) Not doing anything, just hiding from them in my mosquito net
9) Pretending they are not there
8) Using a lint roller to remove ants when there are a ton of them on the floor
7) When out of bug spray, spraying the bugs with bleach
6) When out of bug spray, spraying the room with PC-supplied insect repellent intended for use on your body
5) Spraying down the house with probably-carcinogenic bug spray
4) For larger bugs, attacking them with the broom while screaming like an idiot
3) Sweeping them outside
2) Sic-ing my cat on the bugs
1) Having one of my neighbors come and removing them

Top 10 Things People Have Brought To My House to Sell To Me
10) Sweet potatoes. For this and other items on the list, remember there is not a lot of food available in the village.
9) Spinach
8) Bananas
7) Charcoal
6) Candlesticks
5) Eggs
4) Barack Obama kanga
3) A live turtle
2) George Bush kanga
1) A monkey. "Where did you get him?" "The bush." "What is its name?" "John."

Top 10 Challenges
10) Few forms of entertainment/distraction. Especially when I run out of things to run and have to resort to reading the Peace Corps newsletter.
9) Food. Or lack thereof.
8) Critters in my house. I'm getting better though. I don't freak out at spiders anymore (as much)
7) The amount of time it takes to accomplish things; meetings starting late or not at all
6) Tanzanian men
5) Trying to reconcile community needs/wants with what I personally have the desire and ability to do
4) Not having a structured job
3) Loneliness. PC loneliness is a hard-core different kind of loneliness than I'm used to. My friends in the village are great but sometimes not very helpful if I'm having a bad day, and you can only accomplish so much from texting other PCVs.
2) Trying to change people's perception about my role: ie it is not my job to bring money into the village, nor do I have the resources to do so
1) Language.

Top 10 Favorite Projects/ Work-Related(?) Activities
10) Making flipcharts for the dispensary.
9) Scolding random people for being alcoholics
8) Sort of helping my mama friends cook at their "restaurant"
7) Trying to teach my two-year old friend English
6) Playing silly games at the primary school (hokey-pokey, duck duck goose and it's variations (vegetable vegetable fruit, mosquito mosquito malaria mosquito))
5) Informal teaching in which my friends come over and look at all my random books laying around
4) Teaching community peer education group about malaria and HIV
3) Teaching secondary school students. Usually ends up being about sex.
2) Girls' camp (see previous post)
1) Condom demos- anywhere and everywhere

More than you ever wanted to know about my life...

Want to find out what I ate for dinner last Thursday? Let me tell you...

At the end of the week I usually find myself wondering, "What the hell have I been doing with myself this week?" So I decided to keep a record of my daily activities for a week and so I could see what in fact I have been doing with myself. (The conclusion: LOTS of condom demonstrations and distributions. And not much else.) Also some of you in America are under the impression that you can't email me or write to me because you have nothing to tell me, since what I am doing is so much more exciting than what you are doing. After reading this you will see that is definitely not the case.

Thursday 4/16:

• Taught about immune system at primary school; pretty sure students didn't understand me as usual.
• Took bike to get fixed twice
• Bugged fundi about when he is going to finish my furniture, and asked if he knew someone that can make me a wooden penis. Conversation was slightly less awkward than anticipated. Gave his assistant some condoms and did a condom demo.
• Went to this "restaurant" where I am friends with the mamas, and helped kuna nazi, or grind coconut. Ate lunch.
• Ran into the Village Executive Officer (VEO). He gave me some peanuts.
• Talked to this Red Cross volunteer, because after being here 8 months I still can't figure out if they actually do anything here or not.
• Came home, prepared teaching materials, made spaghetti for dinner, listened to radio, read, went to bed

Friday 4/17

• Taught HIV basics at dispensary and helped weigh babies.
• Came home and ate boiled peanuts for lunch
• Went to the village, where an NGO from a nearby town had come at my request to do an HIV testing day. Kind of got into a fight with someone from the NGO because their org is apparently funded by the Catholic Church, which I didn't know, and they apparently don't really teach about condom use as a way to prevent HIV, and he was trying to accuse me of giving out condoms without explaining how to use them.
• Showed up half an hour late for a meeting with a mama's group, which is usually on time in Tanzania, but almost everyone had left by the time I arrived. I explained for the 50th time that I cannot give them money to start their chicken-raising project, but if they each contribute money each month they will have enough money. Desperately tried to think of other things I could teach them, because they were just staring at me like I was useless, and tried to explain the concept of team-building exercises, which they didn't get at all.
• Came home. Some guy brought 70 eggs to my house. Contemplated buying all of them then only bought 4.
• My friend Omari came over. I tried to explain to him the concept of sarcasm after he was like, you know, there is this thing called HIV. I was like, no really? And he didn't understand that I was joking. Apparently there is actually a Swahili word for sarcasm: Kejeli.
• Took a shower after it got dark, had my cat kill all the roaches in the choo before I showered. Went to bed.

Saturday 4/18

• Went to Omari's farm with him, his mom, and his two neices. They gave me 3 pumpkins ad 6 ears of corn.
• Me and Omari came back to my house and listened to my ipod for awhile.
• I waited for my VEO to come to take me too this meeting we were supposed to go to. He never showed up so I went to the village to talk to him, talked to some other people in the village for awhile, got my bike fixed again, came home eventually. Ate some candy for dinner bc I didn't feel like cooking.

Sunday 4/19

• Nothing much: laundry (why did I ever complain about doing laundry in the US?). Made pumpkin casserole. My boss from Dar who was doing meetings in my region came and dropped off some books for me.

Monday 4/20

• Walked to a neighboring village to pick up surveys I had given to primary school teachers to see what they know about HIV. Took bus to next village. After going to the schools hung out with my mama friend at her "restaurant" for awhile. Waited for bus again, gave some condoms to student while I was waiting. Went to another village to pick up some books from another volutneer's house.
• By the time I got back home it was almost dark. Fundi brought me my penis model. Read and went to bed.

Tuesday 4/21

• Taught at secondary school; they decided to ask me every single random question they have ever had about sex. Explained what oral sex and the clitoris are.
• Got into an argument with some of the teachers because they seem to think that if they attend a training I am planning about HIV/AIDS, then I need to pay them and/or give them ridiculous amounts of food and soda.
• Did a "needs assessment" meeting in one of the sub-villages. I am trying to see if there are any big projects that the village wants done, and if so I will write a grant to help them get money. They decided either a well or a "modern" market would benefit the village.
• Came home, baked pumpkin bread, read, bed

Wednesday 4/22

• Taught at secondary school again.
• Guest teachers at the school talked to me for a long time about American politics. Did you know what "Obama" stands for? "Originally Born in Africa Made for America." This is a direct quote. I told the guy that Obama wasn't actually born in Africa but he didn't believe me.
• My friend Zeituni who I haven't seen in ages came over.
• A bunch of students came and asked for drinking water. Then a bunch more came and asked for condoms.
• Napped
• Taught some life skills stuff at the primary school, which I swore I'd never teach, until I got dropped off alone at my village with nothing but my HIV/AIDS manual and Life Skills manual
• Came home, watched the students play soccer. Omari and another teacher decided to come over and the other teacher decided to tell me I don't know how to teach and that I am generally ridiculous. I contemplated once again how I wish that all my neighbors were not complete assholes.

Thursday 4/23

• Was about to leave to go teach at primary school in the morning, when my counterpart Esha came over. I felt bad that she had walked all the way to my house, so I went to the priamry school really late. Taught about hygeine.
• Got condoms from dispensary. Ate lunch at Mama Rama's "restaurant". Came home and napped.
• Fundi delivered my furniture that has taken like 3 months to build. I was sitting on my porch preparing some teaching materials and one of the teachers I don't like came and blathered on about marriage and other things I wasn't paying attention to. Hung out with Tino for awhile. Finished preparing teaching materials and went to bed.

Friday 4/24

• Taught HIV/AIDS biology, disease progression, transmission and prevention at a secondary school in a neighboring village. These students actually listen to me unlike the students at my school.
• Came home, made orange juice and roasted peanuts, cleaned my house, worked halfheartedly on grant for the teacher training I am planning.
• Omari came over for a little then left. Then his younger brother Yassini came and we sat in silence for awhile. Then he started asking me random questions about HIV. Apparently he is never going to have sex or even kiss anyone because that is the most effective way to prevent HIV. He thinks it's possible to get HIV if you're making out with someone and accidentally bite them and make them bleed. I tried to explain that the chances of that are very small and I don't think that generally happens, and maybe you should be more gentle if you're making out with someone. He said people should just stop having sex and that would solve the problem of HIV. I tried to explain why I don't think abstinence-only education is very effective (ie we do that in the US and it doesn't work; people still get unwanted pregnancies and STDs because they don't have the information they need to protect themselves). He asked me if I was a virgin and I got really mad and wrote "NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS" on the ground and stopped talking to him. He continued to sit on my porch for half an hour. Some students came and got condoms. Yassini eventually left. I played with my cat for awhile then went to bed.
  
  

ridiculous things

You know you're in Peace Corps Tanzania when:

-you rejoice at rain because it means you don't have to buy/chote water, and you scramble around your house trying to find every bucket, pot, cup, hat that will hold water
-you go on a trip and buy vegetables and spices to bring back home with you, because they don't have any in your village
-you enjoy looking around markets in different towns to see what food they have that isn't available where you live
-you beep someone in America and then wonder why they haven't called you back
-you have bought one or more of the following out of bus windows: phone voucher, shoes, produce, roasted corn, juice, a hat, cashews
-you get REALLY excited about cold soda
-you receive marriage proposals on an almost daily basis
-a two hour bus ride is considered close
-people tell you that you've gotten fat after a trip
-you and other volunteers buy a cake and eat it with your hands like ugali, because that's the logical thing to do when you don't have silverware
-you're ecstatic when a meeting starts an hour late, because that's much more on time than usual
-there is an occasion at least once a month where you have to sign a guestbook of some sort
-you've started saying random words during lulls in conversation, like "Obama" or "Marekani"
-you've started doing the above with other Americans and not just Tanzanians
-your conversations with other Americans revolve around food, sex, and bowel movements (but mainly food)
-a certain level of perpetual confusion has become normal
-you're slightly weirded out when you're not the only foreigner around
-you can convey a wide variety of responses and emotions through different forms of grunting
-you drink hot tea when it's 90 degrees outside (and people think it's strange if you don't drink it)
-you have integrated the following words/phrases into your vocabulary: processing, soda and bites, needs assessment
-You know what the following acronyms mean: PST, PCT, PCV, IST, MSC, COS, OVC, PLWHA, PCMO, PEPFAR, RPCV, HCN, HBC, VAST, SPA, PCPP, PACA, PDM, APCD, VSS

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.

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.

things that matter

i'm probably the only person that finds this interesting. but whatever. so Kiswahili has noun classes. People and animals, or "living locomotive things" as my kiswahili teacher would say, are in one noun class, the m/wa noun class. Exept there are some people that are not in the m/wa class. These people are:
vijana: youths
vipofu: blind people
viwete: lame/handicapped people
viziwi: deaf people
vibarua: day laborer
vibiongo: hunchbacks
vibogoyo: toothless people
vibushuti: very short people
vijakazi: slave-girls
vimada: concubines
vimwana: pretty young girls
virukanjia: prostitutes
kisura: a beautiful girl, a looker
kifunguamimba: first-born
kitindamimba: last-born
kitoto: infant
kipusa: rhino horn; slang: pretty girl/woman
kizee: old woman

I don't think it is a coincidence that some of the people that are not included in the people noun class are women and people with disabilities.
Although then I found out that the word for leader, "kiongozi" is also not in the m/wa noun class. So maybe that blows my theory.


In other news, I dropped my phone in the choo (latrine) today, fished it back out and it still works.(!)(...gross?)

On Saturday I was hanging out at my house and a guy on a bike showed up with a letter for me inviting me to a government meeting the following day. I went to the government meeting and found out that next week I am going to be going to a bunch of neighboring villages and doing something, not sure what. I asked the WEO (Ward Executive Officer) what I was going to be doing, and he said we would walk to his house and he would explain it. He took me to his neighbor's house and left. I sat in the living room by myself for a little while and then left. I still have no idea what I'm doing next week or where these villages are.

My days consist mainly of: going on random walks in my village, stopping to talk to people, who then either: laugh at me, stare at me blankly when i try to speak swahili, offer me food, or ask me for money/food/presents. Or all of the above.