Health Fair Pictures

150 people tested for HIV. 200 tubes of toothpaste. 200 toothbrushes. Four boxes of bar soap. 18 counterparts. 3 PCVs. 2 community theater/drum groups. 50 maandazi (fried dough snacks). Over 3000 condoms. Two guests of honor. One soccer game. One cardboard cut-out of a condom man. One pig that ran through and destroyed some flipchart stands.... Just some of the things present at my village health fair, or, as my villagers decided to interpret it, INTERNATIONAL HEALTH DAY (I don't think there is such a day, but who knew all you had to do was announce you are doing a health day, and suddenly everyone thinks it is a worldwide thing, and they decide they want to do it every year).

Ngoma group from a neighboring village

Pin the toothbrush on the mouth!

Nutrition table

Condom demo table

Flipcharts, and the awesome flipchart stands my counterpart made, prior to the pig running through them.

Condom man cut-out... if anyone working for Si Mchezo is reading this blog, it would be awesome if you would publish this picture in your magazine...

Pictures

Peer educators singing about malaria

Peer educators doing skits about malaria prevention

Kikwete, TZ's president, when he came through my village

Masasi District Health Volunteers, one year anniversary of being at site

Kittens!

Kitten!

Deep South

My friend Mirinda made this cool video about the health volunteers in our district. Check it out.

Pictures, Finally!

Pictures from our girls' conference.

Everyone on the last day. Aren't we cute?

You can stand under my umbrella. Ella. Ella. Ella.

Condom relay races.

Lindsey and me doing a skit on how to negotiate condom use.

Condom demo!

Kickboxing!

Teaching yoga. Note that a) the confused look on the face of the volunteer next to me, and b) the fact that I have never done this before.

Me and my students.

At the talent show, we PCVs sang the ridiculous songs I wrote. And Mirinda did an awesome dance to go along with it.

Talent show by candlelight. Have we mentioned we love the electric company here in Masasi?

Volleyball. Most of the girls hadn't played before. Their way of playing is similar to mine: stand there and hope the ball doesn't come near you.

Not only are we health teachers and camp counselors, but we serve the food too.

Practicing self-defense.

The human knot. AKA an american game that didn't really translate well. But they tried.

A peace corps seminar isn't a seminar without tons of flipcharts.

Pic update

This is me and one of my best friends in the village, Tino (short for Valentino, which by the way is not a very common Tanzanian name). He is the son of one of the secondary school teachers and one of my teachers. I think Tino was slightly confused by what I was doing with the camera. Also in the background is one of the secondary school students, Mudi.

I rarely use my camera, otherwise I would post more pictures. Happy Easter everyone. I'm trying to bring the fantastic American concept of the Easter Egg Hunt to my village. The only problem is we don't really have eggs.

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.