Two months in Review: Pictures

This is where I ate three meals a day. 7 am 1pm and 7 pm, mzungu time.
















This is cipatti. The best meal ever. Its fried bread which you eat with a variety of veggies and guacamole. Yum.









This is the grain that they make the local alcohol out of drying in the sun. I think it is millet.
















This is Mary. Behind her is the hole CelTel is digging to put a 50 meter cellphone tower.










The Tanzanian sunset that sent me on my way.











My friends-- Amani, Living, and Kileo (wearing sunglasses I gave him as a present). This is in the main living area of the homebase.

The Last Week

The last week was the hardest because of the feeling of finality. I was certainly not ready to leave and this made saying goodbyes and wrapping up my experience very difficult.

On Wednesday, I made a crossword for my students using ideas that they should have known from all of the things I had taught them. This activity expanded into two days because they had never seen a crossword and struggled with the format. Had I put the questions into fill in the blanks, they would have had no problem, but the crossword was a bit much for them. We managed though. After class on Wednesday, Amani and I went on another home visit to Jumani's house (the man with late stage AIDS). We were accompanied by some people from a local NGO that is supporting Jipe Moyo so there was quite a group of us in his one bedroom house. It was cool to be able to visit the same man three times and to get to know him and his mama. Amani was able to sit him up in bed which Jumani wasn't able to do at the previous visits.

On Thursday, we continued with the crossword during class. We found out that the mama we had visited a few weeks earlier that had her leg amputated had passed away. This was upsetting, especially knowing how different the whole situation would have been in America. Because of this, the women were going to attend the funeral the next day and skip our last day of support group. On Thursday evening, a bunch of friends and I went out to Rau village to go to the local bar out there, Dao's. We had a great time hanging with the locals, although I was sad because it was my last night.

Friday was an intense day, to say the least, and my last in Tanzania. I had gifts for each of the students, bracelets for the girls and marker pens for the boys, and khangas (fabrics) for the main two women and a calculator for the group. I brought with me sheets of construction papers that i had made into "postcards". They were to draw a picture on one side and on the reverse write me a letter about themselves and anything else they wanted to tell me. I told them that this was how I was going to remember them. When we got to placement, we discovered that the cellphone tower project had taken over most of Mama Zainabu's yard and we were displaced to Mama Bruno's veranda. This worked out pretty well because she had a table for the students to draw and write on. They were excited for another art project but were sad that I was leaving. I had grown pretty attached to my students and they were pretty attached to me.
This is Mama Olivia, me and Mama Zainabu.

The main two mama's of Jipe Moyo, along with some of the members, surprised me by showing up with a gift. They had purchased me a new khanga, which they lovingly wrapped around me. A khanga is a long piece of fabric with a message on it that is the main piece of clothing worn by the local women. I was completely shocked and so flattered that they would give me a gift. They had no resources as a group or as individuals and I certainly didn't feel worthy of such a present. They thanked me for working with them and the kids. Later, a mama who was my student, gave me a card and a khanga as well. This was a used one and is soft and dirty, and I love it. I was again beside myself that this mama would give me something that belonged to her. She had wrapped it in wrapping paper and made a big show of handing it to me. It was an incredible moment. I gave them all their presents and some candy and got myself out of there before I could have a royal breakdown. I think about my students all of the time and continually hope for their success.

About half of my students and I on Mama Bruno's veranda. I have no idea who the kid is on the bottom right hand corner.

I am wearing the khanga Jipe Moyo gave me, the fabric above me is what the mama on the right gave me as a gift.

Hey Friends

Hey friends,

I am now in London and will finish my blog when I return to the states!

Thanks!
Chelsea

Living and I at the bar across the street.

A fellow volunteer's pic in Zanzibar, so I good I just had to steal it.

Amani and his coach Isaac.

Final Safari Day

Today was my last day to take the kids on safari. We have been planning for a while to go to the "forest" nearby the school, which is actually a plot of government owned wilderness. It is about a 45 minute walk to the forest from where we teach. The students were really excited about the trip. There was some debate about whether to go or not because we didn't really have anybody (other than Amani) to keep the kids in line. But with the addition of a few of the mamas that we have been teaching, we decided it would be okay to go. We walked down to the forest and when we got about 15 minutes in, two women sitting on the side of the trail stopped us. It turned out that I was supposed to have a permit in order to go into the forest, as a mzungu. I was supposed to get this permit from the government office in town. The amount of bureaucracy here is astounding. Amani sweet talked us in, saying that I was here to help with a women's group and that I was just a volunteer. They gave us thirty minutes in the forest.

This meant that the kids, who wanted to show me this giant tree, had to run down the path in order to get to the tree in time. There were some monkeys jumping around too which were cool but mostly we were there to see the tree. It was really tall, not as wide as I have seen, but incredibly big. The crazy thing about it is that the kids were PETRIFIED of the tree. They only took their picture by it after a bit of coaxing and immediately ran away from the tree after touching it. They were screaming and running around like it was going to jump up and bite them. Behind the tree we saw laying on the ground a piece of white paper with an egg and two bits of sugar cane on it. One girl just pointed at it and said "witch craft!". We were only there for about 2 minutes until the kids got so freaked out we had to, literally, run away.

It turns out that this tree is thought of to be possessed by demons. It is thought that at noon, demons come running out of the tree and will kill you. The tree is also thought to be impossible to cut down (you will die if you try) and it is also rumored to bleed. On the flip side, the trees leaves have healing powers. Local witches (they exist around here) bring people there to be cured. It was an enlightening experience, for sure. People are very superstitious around here. On the way out, the women who had stopped us before sat all the kids down to explain about all of the tree lore.

Pics

Kileo running for the ball.










My class working on "their" life maps.











This is a dala dala, the local transportation. No one has their own cars, these guys just roll around the city on some sort of route. The rule is if you can stick one limb and your head in, you are good to go. We have seen more than 30 people piled into them, with goats and other supplies shoved in the back. Pretty crazy.

These are my friends (Kelly, Haley, Brittany,

and Jen) at Deo's, the pub in the village of Rau. This is the inside of the pub.

FOOTBALL!!!!! (and some racism)

On Saturday, I went to a football tournament that the local guys (Living, Amani and Kileo) were playing in. I was there from 8 in the morning until 6 in the evening. It was hosted at the International School in Moshi where the ambassadors kids and Presidents kids go. My friends weren't on a team but they are "well known" as they modestly put it and were quickly absorbed into teams. Their street team from last year won this tournament and so they were excited to be back playing. All three are excellent players, Amani actually getting sponsored on a competitive team in the region but having to quit to go to school. They played with 7 players on a side, in 15 min games, and with no offsides. It was so great to be watching great soccer with such talented players. There were a couple teams of mzungus from some of the local international schools but they were quickly eliminated. The team Amani and Kileo were on won two golden goal games--Amani actually scoring both of the golden goals. The team that Amani and Kileo were on made it all the way to the final match which was against a team from a local secondary school. It was cool because the team my friends were on is team of kids from a local neighborhood with no formal coaching or practicing, just a bunch of talented kids. The game went to PKs (which I HATE) and they lost after 7 shots each. It was a bummer but I was really happy to be able to watch them play. The other team was crazy excited about winning and they had all these dances and songs which were really fun to watch. I love being in a country where football is so big.

We also experienced some blatant discrimination while we were at the game. There was just four spectator mzungus in the whole place, three friends and I. This lady (also a mzungu) came up to me while I was sitting with Amani and his team and asked "Are you in charge of these kids?" and kept asking who was in charge of the players, a ridiculous question for so many reasons the least of which that all of the people around me were my age. I kept saying that no, I was here to support my friends, and she would only communicate with me, being the only white person around. Amani knows English well but she wouldn't speak to him. She explained that some of the kids on her team (of mzungus) had their stuff, mostly cell phones and iPods, stolen and that she would need to see all of our pockets and all of our cell phones immediately. Without hesitation, all of the players and the coaches stood and emptied their pockets and the few that had phones showed them to her. I attempted to show her my bag but she just rolled her eyes at me and pushed me aside. Later on, on the way out of the game every single person was patted down for the missing items. When it was our turn, the woman refused to search my mzungu friends and I.

The whole situation made me angry. It is frustrating how this woman felt validated by her own status and circumstance to search all of the Africans present. It was also upsetting how easily they gave into her demands. Without question, they submitted to being searched, both on the field and at the gate. The power of the mzungu still reigns heavy here. It was an embarrassing and aggravating situation.

Life Maps

On Thursday and Friday, I attempted to do Life Maps with my students. This is an art project where you draw a line on a piece of paper and then write chronologically the important events that have happened to you and then a few goals for the future. I was really excited about this project because I wanted to get to know my students a bit better. They all have such varying circumstances I thought that this would be an insightful activity. I made an example of my life, including pretty generic things that they could relate to like starting and finishing schools, visiting my grandparents, and the death of my Grandpa. But once again, the kids were completely unable to come up with their own answers, even though the activity was supposed to be a record of their own lives! Apparently, most of my students also attended Happy Valley Elementary in 1990, visited their Grandparents in 2005 and want to become president. A few got the gist of it and changed some dates and names but most looked remarkably like mine. The next day I made them present their life maps, which was a bit humorous. This was a good lead in to talking about things we would like to do though so Friday we did goals. Most want to either be politicians or tour guides, which isn't surprising because everyone who is wealthy here is associated with those two trades. One girl wanted to be a pilot and another a teacher. I try to be really amped up about the goals of my students but in the back of my mind I realize that most likely these kids are not leaving the Majengo neighborhood. But that doesn't stop me from being overly encouraging.

On a side note, on Friday we arrived to find a GIANT hole in the front yard where I teach. I asked what was going on and was told that they are building a cellphone tower in the yard, about 15 feet from the houses. I guess that the cell phone company had approached Mama Zenebu (the woman whose house we teach at) three years ago and paid her (probably a nominal fee) to put the tower in her yard and just showed up now and started digging. I can't imagine how this is going to affect the neighborhood. I was blown away at the whole situation. Obviously the cell phone company had taken advantage of Mama Zenebu and she wasn't in a situation, financial or otherwise, to make a statement about it. It was pretty shocking.

Monday's Home visit

On Monday we went to see a woman at her house who is pregnant and HIV positive. On the way to the house we stopped by a "store" and got some sugar, as per custom, to bring to her. The shopkeeper poured about a kilo into a large grocery bag and this is what we brought. This mama is 26 years old. She already has three children and recently got an operation (I am not quite sure which) to make it so that she could no longer have children. Somehow this operation was not successful and now she is pregnant. She is really upset about this because her husband has just abandoned her and she is unable to work because of complications with the pregnancy. There is no way for her to fund her family, including primary school fees for three kids. While we were there, her landlady came in to tell the mama that she needed to pay rent- 36,000 tsh (about 30 dollars) for 2 rooms for 3 months. She is unable to pay at this time. I asked Amani if he was familiar with the treatments used to decrease the chances of mother-to-child transmission of HIV. He had no idea what I was talking about, and neither did the mama. They are familiar with ARVs, which are funded by some development association and are given out for free in Tanzania, but not with MTC drugs. I am continually finding that people are at such varying levels of education about HIV. Most are aware of the dangers, some are aware of how it is transmitted, but many are so misinformed that they are unable to properly protect themselves to begin with or live their life to the fullest once infected. It was an interesting, although sad, home visit.

Possessive Pronouns!

I have two weeks left and am continually trying to decide what the most important concept is to teach. I have decided (for the sake of my sanity) to stay far away from verb conjugation. I wouldn't be any good at explaining it and I am not going to get anywhere in two weeks with it. So instead I am teaching mini lessons on random things I think/hope will be useful. So this week we are teaching the heck out of possessive pronouns.

The thing is that had someone told me that I was going to be teaching English, I probably wouldn't have come. I specifically looked for a project where I didn't have to do just that. But I am thankful for the opportunity to be stretched in a new way and am totally in love with my students. I am happy for the other activities that I do with the women's group too, but I have learned a lot by simply interacting with my students. I have been to a few of their homes now and it is cool to get to know them on an individual basis (with the help of a translator). Most live with one parent. One parent has either passed away or moved to another city for whatever reason. Others have their grandparents and aunts and uncles living at their houses. The people in one neighborhood are all connected somehow. They grow up together and some rarely venture outside their neighborhood. They are just normal (punk) teenagers who pass notes and make fun of their teachers and flirt and gossip. It is oddly reassuring that teenagers are all the same, all across the world.

Me in front of the Kili sign at the Marathon. This is the popular brand of beer around here.

This man (who has no arms) ran the half-marathon. He came in at about 5th place, about 15 mins after the leader.

The stands at the Marathon, which was (obviously) sponsored by Vodafone.

This is Bruno and I. He is one of my favorites, and quite a punk.

Kili Marathon

On Saturday, after a long night of "shakey shakey" a bunch of us got up early to go watch the Kiliminjaro Marathon. We watched the half marathon and the marathon winners come in. The runners had to run on the "road" with the crazy cars and on rough dirt roads. They came into the stadium which was at the local University. It was really interesting watching the runners come in because they looked all looked so different from the runners back at home. We saw runners without socks, without sports bras, some running without shoes at all, some running in pumas, some running in sandals, some running in jeans. A few finishers were in wheelchairs. We probably saw only one or two pairs of actual running shoes in the whole place. We saw the first place marathoner come in at the course record of 2 hours and 15 minutes. Later that day, the local volunteers took us back to the course to go to the festival. I can honestly say I was one of five mzungus in a crowd of about 2,000 people. But perhaps that is because all of the entertainment was in Swahili. Who knows. It was cool to be a part of the festival and see everyone come together and get really excited.

Lean on Me

On Friday, after a week of rehearsing, Amani and I sang Lean on Me for the class. We had told them all to be there for a special treat so we had quite the crowd. Amani actually has quite the voice and so we sounded pretty fantastic, if I do say so myself. The students LOVED it. We just did two verses and the chorus twice. We handed out the lyrics and had them identify words that they knew and words that they didn't know. We talked to them about what the phrase Lean on Me meant. Then we had them sing it with us three times. I have to say that this was probably one of the most amazing moments I have ever experienced. I taught them all actions so that the rowdy boys would get involved. They were all so happy and just beside themselves to be singing. And I think that my very obvious excitement at the whole thing helped too. It was amazing to look out at their beaming faces all joined together in singing. When I pulled out candy at the end of the class session, they all went a bit nuts. We are going to sing again on Monday and I am going to try to take a video of them.

The lyrics we used:
Sometimes in our lives we all have pain
We all have sorrow
But if we are wise
We know that there's always tomorrow

Lean on me, when you're not strong
And I'll be your friend
I'll help you carry on
For it won't be long'
Til I'm gonna need
Somebody to lean on

So just call on me brother, when you need a hand
We all need somebody to lean on
I just might have a problem that you'd understand
We all need somebody to lean on

Lean on me when you're not strong
And I'll be your friend
I'll help you carry on
For it won't be long
Till I'm gonna need
Somebody to lean on

The rest of Week 6

The rest of the week was really tough. My lessons didn't go over very well and I think I got a bit ahead of myself. I am attempting to teach question words (who, what, where, etc.) but they don't have the vocab to either complete the sentence or answer the question in a sentence. On Wednesday I gave them words that either started or ended a sentence and asked them to complete the sentence. On Thursday I put them into partners and told them 8 facts they needed to get from each other and had them write the questions that they used. Both of these activities were a bit of a stretch because they are not used to creative thinking and having to come up with their own ideas. They will copy anything and everything that I write down but they struggle hard to come up with their own sentences, even if it is simply asking them what they like and don't like. On Friday we backtracked a bit and I gave each student a different question word and told them to stand up if their word worked in a sentence that I read. This didn't work at all. They are all afraid of being wrong and speaking up. They freaked out when I told them they didn't need to copy the sentences. I let them copy them in the end, although they are useless to the students because they don't comprehend what they mean.

The other goal I had for this week, which was a lot more successful, was to teach them that it is okay to struggle and ask for help. It is important that they learn that it is okay to ask for help and that they aren't expected to know everything right off the bat. This has actually worked and now they are asking more questions. I have told Amani that he has to speak to them in English which also has worked out well. So even if they aren't really learning the material, at least they are okay with asking questions and getting help.

'more pics

A rad giraffe.

A maasai mama and her cute daughter.

My good buddies Amani and Living and I in the back of a taxi.

A New Motto

This is my first week teaching by myself and the 6th week that the kids have been coming to class. I am feeling a bit stuck because I am at the end of my repertoire and am being forced to start the nitty gritty, by which I mean the dreaded verb tenses. Because I only have three weeks left, I don't really want to get into it with the kids.

It occurs to me that I need to take moment to define two key words in the last few sentences.

Class- This is three or four "benches" (pieces of wood) set in a semi circle under one tree in the front "yard" (dirt plot) in front of Mama Zenebu's house. Some days when there is a large class the boys run to the neighboring "houses" (mud and stick shacks) to get green plastic lawn chairs. There are NO resources other than what I bring with me. I write sentences on paper and hold them up to my chest so that the students can copy them.

Kids- These vary every day and it isn't fair to use the word 'kid'. Most range between the ages of 13 and 17 but there are now four mamas that have been coming to class that are probably in their late twenties. Sometime they bring their babies with them. The size varies depending on the day and the often wander in a half hour late.

At first I got really nervous about teaching by myself and overwhelmed by the sense that something had to change with the way that class was run. It has come to the point where the kids don't know why they are there and they are getting bored. So I have decided that the most important thing I can do is to attempt to teach just the things that they specifically want to be taught. I have passed out note cards that they are writing Swahili words on that they want to know in English and I translate them into English with the help of dear Amani everyday. I am also doing my best to make it as fun and exciting as possible. We are doing speaking exercises everyday by drawing questions in English out of my cheeseball safari hat (sorry dad). And on Friday Amani and I are going to teach the kids to sing Lean on Me. This was the consensus after about 4 hours of hard core thinking on which song to teach. I had the whole house debating what the best song to teach a bunch of punk teenagers was.

The moral of the story is "you can only do what you can do". I am excited about it.

So if anyone has a good idea about what would be fun and informative (not necessarily an English lesson either) that I can do without electricity or any place to hang or write anything, I would appreciate any advice I can get. I have very limited funds as well but I am open to suggestion. My email is chelseahowes@gmail.com. Thanks!

List of firsts, take 2

Before this trip, I had never....

• Been sneezed on by a lion
• Almost been trampled by an elephant
• Recovered from Malaria in Zanzibar
• Ground my own coffee
• Been inside a house made of cow dung
• Seen a cameleon change color

We will see what the next three weeks has in store...

Safari pics

Brittany and I on a CAMEL. We got to take this guy for a ride around that ring behind us.















A great hippo and his friend.

















An elephant. This was about 15 feet from me
















A Maasai hut















Me and some zebras. Check it.

Safari!!!

So I have had a bit of a change of plans. My original intent was to go on a week long safari at the end of my trip. But for a variety of reasons, I decided to extend my volunteering stay and go on just a weekend safari and volunteer for a total of 8 weeks.

This weekend I went on Safari with 16 other volunteers from my group. Most of these are new arrivals and a few were veterans. We went with a local company here that has a good rep with CCS. On Friday, we drove about three hours to the west to just outside Lake Manyara National Park. This is located in the Maasai mara and the Rift Valley. We went to a local Maasai village as our first activity as the sun was setting. There were twelve huts in a circle. The village is one man's family, each of his wives has a hut for the wife and her children to sleep in. The man then rotates weekly to each hut. As the sons grow up, they make their own villages and the daughters are married off. The whole livelihood of the people revolves around the cattle. They eat the meat, drink the milk and the blood, and use the dung for various purposes like to build houses and as fuel. The cattle sleep in the huts with the women and children in order to protect them from night bandits. We got to go into a hut which was tiny and had two beds- one for the man and his guests and one for the women and the children. There is a fire set up in the middle of the hut. Now a days the Maasai burn containers of kerosene using fabric as wicks.

It was a bit awkward being there, taking pictures and observing their culture so close up. I attempted to put myself in their shoes and couldn't even imagine strangers coming in to my home to take pictures and ask questions about my way of life. The kids had flies in their eyes and were covered in cow crap but I didn't feel necessarily sorry for them. Every one of us had a different reaction to their lifestyle. My thought is that it is not up to me to judge the way that they live. While I of course want the best for each individual, I can not say to them that their way of living is wrong. Others felt pity for them, but again I think that pity and judgement are closely linked. It was an interesting experience, that is for sure.

Day two-

We went to the Ngorongoro Crater. This was at one point a large mountain that has now collapsed in on in itself creating a lush environment for animals. We saw whole herds of zebras and wildebeast, many elephants and a few (about 15) lions. We were really excited to see the lions as many other groups have gone and not seen any cats. At one point, the van was parked on top a culvert that a lion was under. He was on a "honeymoon" with a lioness and they were, uh, living it up. We came back to the same culvert after lunch and he was there, lying on his back. We got to watch him from the top of our car, about 10 feet away. At one point he sneezed which made us all jump. We also saw 3 Black Rhinos which are also very rare, there are only 24 left in the crater and they don't know if there are any others out side of the crater.

Day Three-

We went on a half day game drive to Lake Manyara and saw lots of hippos and elephants and giraffes. At one point, the van that was parked next to us had an elephant approach and stand there blowing sand at it. We all had to be dead quiet because the elephant was trying to see if it was a threat. At one point, it put its tusks right up to the window. It was a crazy experience, for sure. We were all a bit scared.

It was such a cool experience hanging out in the wild with these giant animals. It is absolutely surreal to have giraffes and elephants just walk past your car nonchalantly. The hippos are my favorite. They just lay in the water all day and eat a whole bunch of grass. What a life. There is such an obvious balance to the whole thing, with such great predators living together. I totally felt like I was visiting another culture and stepping into a whole new world. What amazing animals.

Too Many Bandaids

Today we went to one of the Mamas from Jipe Moyo house . In her "house" lived her mama, her two grand children, and herself. The room was about five feet wide by ten feet long. Her mama has diabetes and just had one leg amputated from the knee down and two toes amputated on her other foot. The wounds were really infected and their was flies and other bugs living on the bandages. The whole thing smelled really foul. The mama needed desperately to go back to the hospital but didn't have money for the 4 dollar cab fare to get herself there, let alone the fees to pay for the hospital visit. The woman who we had come to visit, Mama Perpetua, just had a tumor removed from her neck. She is HIV positive and has her HIV meds paid for by one of the non-profits in town but doesn't have money for other hospital visits. She relies on Jipe Moyo for food. Her daughter-in-law had just recently come from Arusha to dump her grandchildren off and leave without a word. So this Mama, mama perpetua, is living with her two grandchildren that don't have any parents, her own mama who can't move around because there are no crutches or wheelchairs and can't run her own business because she spent the capital on the hospital visit.

This is just one of many opportunities I have had here to slap a bandaid on a desperate and depressing and overwhelming situation. I could have easily handed her twenty dollars and made her so happy. But this is just one bandaid among many that is needed and that is just too many bandaids for one person to handle financially and emotionally. The biggest struggle I have here is, ironically, not doing anything. It is a miserable feeling knowing that you can't do anything. But even if I were to help one woman with her cab fare, what effect am I going to have? So I do what I can. We brought sugar to the woman (whose mother turned out to be diabetic....) as per custom, we teach their children, and we try our best to spread hope and optimism and to let them know that we have come from across the world to say that we care and that we are thinking about them.

How to Get to Mr. Price

The last few days we have been working on prepositions in order to get the kids to know how to ask for and give directions. We made a nice map of an imaginary town and photocopied it and gave it to them and asked each kid to give directions to get to a different spot. (I guess to be fair I should stop using the word "kid" to refer to my students. We have random mamas from the neighborhood that wander in and out of the class now.) The thing was that people do not use maps here and there are no street names. Giving directions involve things like "go to the Memorial market and then take a left and then go for a while and you will see a big tree and across from that is Mama Helen's house". These could be directions that would take one 20 minutes or 2 hours to walk. They do things in vague terms of time and distance and don't have concrete logical steps to their directions. So basically we rocked their worlds by giving them maps and had to teach them how to use them. But the lessons went over well and they learned some good prepositions, although I am not quite sure they will ever use their phrases in real life.

Today we gave them each a paper with the first letter of their names written on it in big block form. We wanted them to draw their favorite things inside and we were going to have them describe them in English, for example a soccer ball or their brother or pineapple or whatever they like. This didn't go over as planned. All the girls drew flowers and all the boys drew Mt. Kiliminjaro. Most had never drawn with colored pencils before and it was the first time that they were dead silent, concentrating so hard on the task at hand. A couple got it and drew their houses or shirts and a few even drew Katie and I. Tomorrow we do explainations and I hope it goes well.

Geography day!

Katie has a friend in town from Germany so we decided to take a detour and teach geography. Her friend graciously brought two small maps and a blow up globe with her so we had a few teaching tools. The maps were in German which was a bit interesting, but the materials were a hit. My new roommate brought with her a old National Geographic atlas/picture book that was also a great addition. They do not have any materials in the classrooms to teach, no maps or globes, or even textbooks in most schools. So they spent almost two hours looking at every picture in the book and I did my best to point out the "important" countries on the blow up globe.

We also did a quick overview about what America was like. We tried to do our best but it is hard to come up with generalizations about how people live in America. It seems that the culture here (from at least an outsiders view) is much more homogenous than at home. We came up with about 15 generalizations. The two most shocking facts that the kids learned about America was that we went to high school for free and that there were no Zebras. We told them that we didn't have zebras, lions, tigers, rhinos, or elephants and it totally blew their minds. They pay for every school that they attend, including nursery and primary school, and the cost of education has broad effects on their lives (a subject for a different post). None of them have been more than an hour from their home and without picture books and resources in school they have a very limited idea about what life outside of Tanzania is like. I would say that geography day was a hit, although we didn't do much than let them spill over the resources.

This past weekend

On Saturday we had to send off Fiona, my roomie. I can't believe that I lived with her for four weeks, the time went so fast. She was a great roomie and now I have someone to go visit in Australia! Bringing her to the airport reminded me that I only have four weeks left and I got a bit sad. I am really starting to get into the culture and be comfortable here and I will be very sad to leave. Also, new volunteers came on Saturday and I got two new room mates, one from DC and another from Texas. My friend Meghan moved into my room too. They are all great and I am excited to get to know some more people.

On Sunday, the three local volunteers took four of us on a hike to a waterfall. It had been raining the day before and the trail was quite muddy but we had a great time. The waterfall was really great and there was a good swimming hole at the bottom. I jumped right in, knowing that the best way to deal with cold water is to go in quick. We had a good time splashing around and it was good to be cool in the heat. It was a nice hike through the jungle and we saw avacado trees, coffee trees, and plenty banana trees. A troop of local boys followed us to the waterfall, intrigued by the Mzungus.

On the way back to the car we stopped at a locals house to learn how to make coffee. They had some seeds for us which we shucked and then they built us a fire to roast them. The little boys helped us make the fire by starting a strip of PLASTIC on fire and letting it drip into the ashes and sticks. It was a bit crazy. We roasted the beans and then ground them up. It smelled so good and reminded me of home (by which I mean Starbucks). It was a good way to wrap up the weekend.

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The kids love my hair, for whatever reason. Today I finally gave into letting them play with it.









My goofy kids and the globe that they obsessed over on geography day. This is Anita, Happy, Lightness, Mwajabu, and Petite.












It was bloody cold and I was real proud of myself. That is Amani to the left and my friend Gail from the UK to the right. There was a way to hike up to those rocks behind me and jump through the waterfall.












This is the waterfall that we went on a hike to.

Sex Ed Take 2

This week we taught pronouns and then started on adjectives and emotions. The moral of the story is that the kids are very limited in their creative thinking. They can't come up with their own descriptive sentences. This is because of the emphasis on repetition and memorization in the classroom. They have many songs and series of dialogues that they have memorized but they don't know what they mean. For example, each morning goes something like this.

US: Good morning class!
Them: Good Morning Teacher!
Us: How are you?
Them: I am fine thank you teacher and you.
Us: We are fine, thank you.
Them: Thank you teacher, and you.
Us: We are fine, thank you.
Awkward pause.

They don't get that they have just asked the same question twice and haven't been corrected. We also started with comparisons (He is taller than me, I am older than her). After class on Thursday, we went back to Jumani's house, the young man with AIDS. He was excited to see us again.

Today we had support group with the women again. This time we introduced the female condom. Word has gotten out among the women in the neighborhood and we had a big crowd today. The women have never been taught about safe sex. They ask us all sort of questions about why they need to have safe sex and I have to remember that this is something that has been pounded into my brain forever and these women are just being exposed to it for the first time. At one point, one woman said that the condom was "destroying Tanzanian culture".

There are a plethora of misguided theories about safe sex and sex in general. Most of the time I feel as if support group is just Sex Myth Busters. Here are some of the ones we "busted" today.
Every time you have sex, four years of your life is taken away.
You will get really sick if you don't have sex for too long.
Men will get a fungus if they use a condom.
A condom is not large enough.
One of my favorite questions though was "why do men want sex all the time"? All of the women laughed and swapped stories along this line and it is really apparent that they all enjoy this much needed female time. The topic of sex is a very male dominated one, and culturally the men are in charge of everything that has to do with sex. Again, it was really successful. We handed out condoms (both male and female) at the end and the women clambered all over each other for them.

Kids These Days

The last two days at placement have been a different dynamic because now it just Katie and I. Today Amani, our local volunteer who translates, was sick so it was just us with the kids. Yesterday, we worked on pronouns, giving each kid a different one and forcing them to make sentences out of them. They do very little creative thinking in the school system so they had a rough time trying to come up with anything other than the sentences we provided as examples. At the end, we had them do class evaluations and told them to write in Swahili what they liked and didn't like about the class. I think that this is the first time they had ever been asked their opinion about class and they were a bit lost. One boy for the thing he liked said "football" and another just wrote joking comments about how he wanted there to be more punishment in class. Corporal punishment is actually a very serious issue that other volunteers are dealing with so we didn't find that one too funny. But for the most part we discovered that the kids really do like class and they actually asked to have more of it and to be taught math as well. This was the first time I had ever seen a teenager ask for more school and for more math.

After class, we went with a couple of the mamas to visit a sick elderly woman. It is tradition in Tanzania to either bring sugar or flour to the house of the sick. The woman claimed to be 98 years old and this fact was substantiated independently when we met her son outside the home. Her house was a simple one bedroom mud and stick room with two beds, tons of dishes and a few clothes. Her family had left her alone except one grandchild from Arusha that sends money occasionally. It is such an honor every time to be welcomed into the homes of these women, most who have so very little and are sick. It is also very humbling to be welcomed as a savior. I know full well that I can't do anything for her, but in her eyes the very fact that I bothered to come visit her means an incredible amount.

Today we attempted to teach the days of the week and birthdays but it didn't really go over very well because we didn't have our translator with us. While they respect us and really do adore us, they also don't take us quite as seriously as we would like. Tuesdays are safari days and the kids led us to a river to show us where they swim and do their laundry. We were completely at the mercy of the kids because we had no translator and had no idea where we were going, weaving in and around the houses.

They were typical teenagers, horsing around and being wild. I had another "mzungu moment" while trying to get them in line. Because I didn't know how to get them to be nice in Swahili, I just kept saying "Woah! woah, woah!" trying to get them to be calm. This just made them laugh and laugh more. Well, come to find out that the word wowowo (pronounced like woah woah woah with the emphasis on the middle woah) is Swahili slang for a large butt. So I was shouting after them "Big butt! Big butt!" trying to get them to calm down. Needless to say, I got a good translation back at home to calm them down for the next time. Oh well. These kids love us, we are continually learning from each other.

While I was trying to get them to behave, I thought for a moment how different this was from babysitting back at home. Instead, I felt like they were babysitting Katie and me. We had no idea where we were and they continually have our best interest in mind. During class we always play musical seat-on-the-bench so that Katie and I can sit in the shadiest spots. These kids have been in charge of themselves from the time they could walk. We frequently see 2 and 3 year olds tottering around by themselves and walking to school by their lonesome. This is possible because the cultural standard is that a kid belongs to the entire community and it is the community’s responsibility to take care of the child. It is acceptable and expected that you punish and comfort random children that you see that are in need of either. What a contrast to home.

How all the cool kids recover from Malaria-- on a beach in Zanzibar.

This is my new friend Meghan and I with our awesome hats. Yes, my shirt says mzungu which means "white person".

This is the view from our cabin door.

No really, I took this picture. From our hotel.

This is the Dream Team on the way to Jipe Moyo. Katie- From Chicago, Amani, our local volunteer, ME! and Holly, from outside Chicago. Holly leaves today, I will miss her!

Zanzibar!

While in the midst of Malaria mayhem, I had to decide whether or not to go ahead with plans to take a three day trip to the island of Zanzibar. I decided to go for it about two hours before boarding the plane and it turns out that the Indian Ocean is the perfect cure for whatever malaria-like malady I had.

I left at about 5:30am on Friday morning with 4 other girls (Brittany, Holly, Katie and Meghan). We flew for about an hour before touching down on the island of Zanzibar, right off the coast of Tanzania. It was until recently its own nation but is now a part of Tanzania. The first day, we wandered around Stone Town which is the old part of the big city on the island. Zanzibar is about 95% Muslim and is quite different from the mainland. The Arabic heritage is quite noticeable in the people, in how the act, dress, and look. We toured a Church that was built by Livingstone on the spot where the whipping post used to be in the old slave market. Slaves were taken from Zanzibar mostly by Arabic traders who sold all over the world. We got a tour from a man who looked identical to Morgan Freeman. He took us down into the holding cells for the slaves, where 50-75 people were crammed into an unbelievably small space. It was all I could do to keep from passing out, a combination of the circumstance and not feeling so hot. It was really an interesting tour and grounding to remember the slave trade, something tourists often forget about in these regions. I spent the remainder of the afternoon restaurant hopping, not feeling up to wandering the streets. At 3 our hotel came to pick us up and we traveled for about an hour to the other side of the island to where all the famous beaches are.

Friday and Saturday were spent lying in the sun- varying only my reading material and what I was sitting upon (beach, hammock, or chair). The water was absolutely incredible, so warm and clear and green and blue. On Sunday, we went for a day long snorkeling adventure. We were in this small wooden boat with two guys who run these sorts of trips for the hotel we were staying at. The water was pretty rough and the trip was about an hour and a half but we made it to a coral reef. This reef is a UNESCO protected site and was really beautiful, although there were a lot of tourists. We snorkeled for a couple hours. I wore a life vest because I was feeling pretty tired and it was just so great, and also a bit bizarre, to be floating over so much life. We saw schools of all sorts of fish of every different color, sea urchins, and sea stars. We didn't get to see dolphins or turtles, which I was bummed about, but it was still really cool. When we asked what was for lunch, one of the guys reached into the bucket he was sitting on and pulled out a half scaled bloody fish. For lunch the guys made us the tuna fish on board and a great salad and fresh fruit. It was really really really really tasty. Although cooking by fire on a wooden boat made us all kinda iffy. We swam and played in the sun until it was time to come back to Moshi town. It was a bit of a shock coming back to the reality here after being a tourist for the weekend. The people in Zanzibar weren't as friendly as those here and I wonder if that is because they resent the tourists who come in and parade around in their swimsuits (something very much against custom) and flaunt their money at high end estates. I am really happy that while I got the opportunity to play that for the weekend, I am also able to live here in this community as a volunteer and not a tourist.

That's Africa, Baby.

Last week I got sick for the first time (and hopefully last), but no worries- I am fine now. On Tuesday and Wednesday I started feeling gross and nauseous. By Thursday I was only feeling worse and, with the prompting of the staff here, I decided to go to the hospital to get it checked out. I went to the hospital not because it was an emergency but because that is where the doctors are. I went to St. Joseph Hospital, the same place where Lindsay had her appendix out a couple weeks prior, with a couple other volunteers who were also sick, a few volunteers along for moral support and Sarah, a gracious staff member to translate and hold our hands. We were all thinking that we had malaria at this point. It was quite an experience, to say the least. The hospital consists of two main courtyards in a figure eight pattern with rooms facing the courtyard and the center hallway as the surgery rooms. First, the woman took my "medical history" which consisted of my age and my name. Then I met with the doctor who wrote down my symptoms and sent me over to the lab. I sat on a bench outside the lab (a room with a couple microscopes and a machine to sanitize) and when my turn came, I was treated by a German volunteer. The blood sample was easy enough, he pricked my finger (no worries, clean needle out of a package) and I just spread my blood on a slide. As for the other sample, well, you will have to ask me about that later. I waited outside for my results with the others outside in the courtyard. After about 30 minutes I found out that while I had tested negative for Malaria, I had all the symptoms and they are only able to test for 1 of 3 strains at that clinic. They gave me malaria pills to help it go away and some appetite inducing drugs. One of the girls in my group tested positive but they gave the drugs to all three of us. To Americans with good health and plenty of resources, malaria turns out to be basically a bad case of the flu, and is easily managed when it is caught early. Because I was on Malaria medication as a preventative measure it managed to slow things down a bit. The whole thing cost me about 11 usd. 5,000tsh for the consultation, 2,000tsh for the lab fees, and 6,000tsh for the medications.

I am mostly recovered now, after a couple days in bed watching Friends and a good trip to Zanzibar! Hakuna Matata!

Arusha and ICTR

Last Wednesday, we took a half day trip to Arusha, a bigger city about an hour and half drive from Moshi. We went to visit the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. This is where the INternational Criminal Court, the judicial branch of the UN, is trying those associated with the Rwandan genocide. This has been established since 2001. The building is a large conference center (relative to Tanzania) and the trials take place in these tiny rooms. There are viewing areas for visitors to watch the proceedings. The particular trial we watched for a couple of hours has been going on since 2003. It was the trial of two members of the military. I am still not quite sure the details of the individual case but it was really interesting to watch the courtroom. It was just a beefed up version of a regular courtroom, with a few more counsel and judges and people from all over the world. The trials are complicated and drawn out and it is difficult to tell if justice is actually being served. While it is good, I think, that the courts exist there are still many questions of efficacy. Basically it seems that the whole point of the court is to deter further acts of genocide, rather than to punish the individuals on trial. There have only been 12 people tried and there are about 80 left to go on trail. It was really interesting watching an international body at work and see in real life what I had read about back at UPS. Arusha was a hopping town, a bit more modern and larger than Moshi but with the same general feel.

Happy and Lightness

This weekend I stayed around Moshi town. On Saturday and Sunday, I went into town a couple times, mostly to get coffee and fabric. I am beginning to know my way around town and yesterday was the first day I really felt comfortable with the orientation of it all. On Monday I went back to Jipe Moyo for my second day there. We taught english for the first hour, focusing on how to make words plural. The kids are great, they all want to be there and they adore us. They are really shy though and don't like to be looked at square in the eyes. At the end of the teaching session, one girl was dared by the others to ask me a question. She came up to sheepishly, and wanted to know if I could dance like Shakira. They all laughed and laughed as I attempted to do so, right there in the blazing sun in the middle of the yard. I need to add that to my list of firsts. They know all the words (well, they think they do) to the hit Shakira song, My Hips Don't Lie and they really got a kick out of me dancing. After teaching, Amani took us and one of the mamas, Mama Olivia, to a man named Jamani's house. He is in the late stages of AIDS and has been bedridden for almost a year. We visited his home and asked him and his mother about themselves. It was really depressing and eye opening. He is only 27 years old but looks 60. His most prized posession is the radio Amani donated to him, which he listens to constantly. He had a son which he had never met and lived with his mother and sister and her family. When asked if he was afraid, he said he was not and he laughed at our attempts at jokes.

Today we did a wordsearch with the class and I was introduced to Tuesdays, which are safari days. We are going to take a safari, or field trip, every Tuesday. Today the students took us to where they went to Primary school and where they would go to Secondary school if they were to take the test again and pass. The kids are just amazing, although they make fun of us all the time. They laugh among themselves and you catch bits and pieces to indicate that they are talking about us and then they laugh and giggle some more. They like me a lot and I think that again, it is because of my name. Even when introduced to Mamas, the pronounciation of my name is aided by adding that it is a football team. When we were walking, the girls fought hard to be the ones to hold my hands. It is so fitting that the girls who ended up at my sides are named Happy and Lightness. What a privilege it is to be in these girls lives, even if for only 5 weeks.

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While on our field trip, I saw a boy with a Mariners t-shirt who turned out to be a student's brother. I tried to get a picture of the boy but a few of my goofy kids jumped in.

This is us walking on our field trip.

A few of my students, working on the word search we made for them.

This my bed, the one on the bottom. I know what you are thinking. No-- the housekeeping made my bed.

The week in Review...

Here are a few tidbits about my week that didn't make it up in the previous posts.

On Tuesday, one of my fellow volunteers Lindsay had a pain in her stomach. She went into the hospital to get it checked out, they tested her for malaria and when she tested negative, sent her home. On Wednesday her pain was even worse and so she went back to the hospital (hospital is a relative term). They gave her a x-ray and told her that she had a burst ovarian cyst. After being admitted to the hospital, another doctor came in to give her a second opinion. This time they diagnosed her with appendicitis and told her she had about an hour until it would burst. Usually, CCS would have evacuated her to Germany to do any sort of medical procedure but because of the time crunch, they had to operate immediately. After a discussion with the surgeons and her parents, they decided to go ahead with it in Moshi. She is doing okay and got to come home after three nights in the hospital. The staff was absolutely extraordinary through the whole thing. Moses, the head guy, was on the phone with her parents, the insurance companies, and the hospital all day and Mama Grace, the head Mama, spent four days at Lindsay's side, leaving her family and her job here to keep Lindsay company and to be her advocate in a hospital with one English speaking doctor. We all rotated to keep her company in the hospital as well. Everyone was impressed with both the way that the staff handled it and Lindsay says that she was never really scared about the care given to her at the hospital, given the limited resources. Get well soon Lindsay!

On Wednesday we went on a hike up at the foot hills of Kiliminjaro. It was really beautiful. We stopped at the Chagga museum, a museum about the local tribe around here. We saw a hut that was like the ones they used to live in. They slept with the cows in the hut because they were afraid of the Masai raiding their camps. They planted pineapple trees around the huts so that snakes and other intruders could not make it past the pineapple leaves which are covered in barbs. We saw so many people with bananas. The women are incredible, carrying 100 bananas on their head without any sort of stress. We also stopped at a cave where we got to go in. The cave was used by the Chagga to hide from the Masai and they even would take their cattle down there as well. The waterfall was beautiful, but quite a hike up and down the ridge. It felt great to be swimming in cold water.

Last night a group of us went for Indian food and although it took us about 2 hours to get our food, it was freaking fantastic. I am getting along really well with the volunteers. It is great to meet so many different people from so many different places that are bonded by interest and circumstance. It was a great week!

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This is the waterfall that we took a hike to and got to go swimming at.







This is our classroom, the yard in front of one the Mama's house.

These are our teaching tools.

A list of firsts....

Before this trip I had never....

• Spent a night in the airport
• Put a condom on a banana
• Melted a pair of underwear under an iron
• Played soccer under the African sun
• Been bitten (?) by a leech
• Seen wild cattle, dogs, and sheep
• Had a lizard in my mosquito net
• Been in two hit and run accidents in thirty seconds

More coming later...

Third Times the Charm!

I switched out of my placement at Kiwodea. There was simply not enough for us to do there, certainly not enough for two people to do five days a week. We weren't doing much when our interpreter wasn't there and weren't able to help in any concrete way. I am here to give what I can and I wasn't able to do so in that placement. Both Brittany and I have swapped to different groups. It was a bummer to give up on another women's group, but I wanted to be the most productive that I could given my time restraints and I wasn't able to do so at that placement.

So today I started working at Jipe Moyo with two other volunteers, Holly and Katie, both from Ill. While I was bummed that I spent two weeks at other places, I learned some valuable lessons along the way. Jipe Moyo is another women's group, this time consisting of all women who are HIV positive. They have a wood cutting and vegetable business and weekly meetings that are regularly attended. It was good because I got to talk with the volunteers before I chose this placement.

I will be teaching local kids who did not pass the english exam for secondary school. Because they are not proficient enough in English, they will not be able to go to secondary school which severly restricts their ability to achieve. There are about 15 kids that are ages 14-17, 3 boys and 12 girls. It is especially important for the young girls to be given a chance for a good education. We will be teaching them remedial english to catch them up so that they can take the exams again. I am more excited about this age group than the small kids because they have longer attention spans, want to be there, and there isn't a teacher with a stick whacking them as I teach. Additionally, we will be doing house visits two times a week and a weekly support group for the women.

Today was a support group day and this meant our first venture into sex ed. Luckily, we have a local volunteer Armani who is wonderful to translate for us. We purchased two condoms and a banana (ndizi) and a cucumber (tango) from the local market to use as tools. There was eight women present, all of them HIV positive, and only one had ever used a condom before. We spent about an hour and a half going over the proper way of putting it on and answering many questions about condom use, along with general sex ed questions. We learned a lot about the role of sex in the culture here and were able to answer some questions about the spread of disease as well as sex in America. You can ask me later for specific details about the African sexual life if you like... It was amazing to be able to directly effect these women and incredible to me that they had not yet learned about condom use. What knowledge they did have was from the Roman Catholic church, which actively tries to discourage use. There was also an obvious bias against condoms based on rumors, which we quickly debunked. Another hurdle we face teaching sex ed to women is that often women do not have a say in the type, amount, or with whom they have sex. Sexual relations outside a marraige is common, especially because the men generally work away from the home.

It was my most productive day so far and it feels great!

Assumption Busters

When I first arrived in Tanzania, I tried my best to leave, what another volunteer so adequately put as, my "cultural baggage" behind me. I gave it a good honest shot, trying to keep an open mind and remembering all that I had learned in the many books I read for my thesis. Needless to say, I still had a few cultural assumptions when I arrived here. Although it is embarrassing to admit them, I think that it is important to recognize them. One of our first lessons in the afternoon was about the culture here, and about our assumptions as westerners of the Africans, and about the Africans assumptions about westerners. Throughout my first two weeks, I have seen many of these assumptions fleshed out in a variety of episodes. Assumption #1- The African is not good at organization and lacks the skills to run a business. I never really thought about this assumption until I got here, and I realized that to some degree I had this idea engrained into me. I found myself surprised at how well run the program is and how organized and competent the staff is. Looking back, I should not have been surprised. They are just as capable as me of planning and running an organization. It is embarrassing to realize that I was operating under this assumption. I think that often Westerners blame the lack of development on the lack of organization skills, dedication, or experience in planning. After two weeks of living here I can truly say that this assumption is not true. The cultural differences that may attribute to this assumption are that nothing operates in a structured fashion in respect to time and that most people are not as educated. For example, today we had a meeting with all the women in Kiwodea. We arrived at 2 pm, the time for the meeting to begin, sweating a bit because we arrived 5 minutes late. We forgot one important thing- this is Africa, baby! We operate on TFT! Tanzania flexible time! By the time that the van arrived to pick us up at 3:15, 8 women of 25 had trickled in and the meeting was about to start. While this would be completely unacceptable back at home, everything operates like this here. The meeting will happen, the business will be taken care of, but talking with the members and being late because your family needs you takes precedence and needs no explanation. Secondly, most of the organizations are run by people with little classical education. They are simply people who want to help their community in some way. I met a woman today who ran an orphanage in her own home, which meant that she had 10 orphans living with her in addition to her own 6 children. There was no organized activities, meals, or sleeping arrangements for these children. While this may not constitute as an organization back at home, this woman, with no more than an 8th grade education, is helping her community. Assumption #2- White people have all the answers, especially in the business realm. I found this one out on day one, when we were asked for money for the dying pigs. Then again when we were told to teach on the spot. We are traveling to different businesses around the community and at every place we are greeted with complete enthusiasm and gratitude, as if by simply being there they will sell a few more chickens the next day. Each woman explains her business, raising 10 chickens or selling 4 cups of hot tea a day, and then they look to us. The first question is always asking for money, the sting of which will not fade. I know that the answer is not giving them money, even if only 5 dollars to buy 5 more chicks, but it is the hardest thing not to hand them a bill. Then they look to us to fine tune their business. We give them as much advice as we can possible come up with and then leave. The women always invite us into their homes and introduce us to their families as royalty, an answer to their prayers. Surely now their business will flourish, with just a bit of advice from the mzungus and a little money to help them through the week. We are being asked all over the place to give business seminars on how to run small businesses. This is where I feel totally lost, as I have no experience with running a business, regardless of a business in Tanzania that is focused around subsistence living. Instead we try offering new advertising techniques and tips on how to save money. But the rub is this- how do you encourage a woman to save when there is not an extra penny around and all of the money is spent on food and bills? These are just two of the new cultural assumptions I am learning about through my time here. Although they are difficult, especially the latter, I am still grateful for learning them and recognizing them in myself and in those around me.