199!

My week started out really busy and ended the same way. Monday we were suppose to have a community teaching in the early afternoon before teaching for our primary school kids. So Sunday evening the 5 of us walked around the small market in our village and spread the word about the teaching. I walked with Gertrude, one of the teaching partners and she made me speak to everyone in swahili. So i said the phrase: we are teaching about HIV tomorrow at the field near the primary school at 11am. Tanzanians think it's really great when you attempt the language or even know a few words so it went over really well. We were really pumped for the teaching and prepared what each of us was going to say and got all the supplies ready to do a condom demonstation. And then no one showed up. Actually, one guy came and my mama Zena came so we had two people. Turns out there was a death in the village on Sunday night so lots of the town was in mourning.

On Wednesday we went to the funeral after our primary school teachings. We got there almost at the end, but were given a place in the very front of the field where they were holding the services. IN Tanzania, guests are treated very well and are always given prominant spots. We were even asked to "say some words" in front of the crowd (there was about 200 people there). We declined this. Completely awkward. After the funeral we were then invited to eat with the priest and the family of the woman that died (she was 110!). We ate corn and rice with our hands sitting next to the oldest and most respected members of our village.

On Thursday we had our first testing day in our village (we will have more testing at our closing community day in two weeks) and we tested 199 people!! It was a record for all of the villages. All five members of our group also got tested. I can honestly say that now I know what it is like to wait for results and I believe this will be beneficial to empathizing and teaching those around us. We also tested ALL of our secondary girls school students and they sang the ABK song that we taught them! It's kind of like a rap so they are really into it. We got a great video of it as well. (SIC uses the ABKs to teach about keeping yourself safe from sexually transmitted HIV. A is abstinence, B is Be faithful and K is use a Kondom. If you pick one of them you greatly reduce your chances and in the case of A, eliminate your risk). We were all so happy at end of the day!

Today we went to the Masai market to buy gifts since this is our last weekend in Arusha. It is so draining to shop there. Bargaining takes so long and it is so mentally draining to argue in swahili.
Next weekend is our long weekend so a bunch of us are going to raft the Nile!! We travel to Uganda and then raft down the Nile for two days, staying overnight in a camp by the river. There is also bungee jumping available so I am going to jump! Anticipate cool pictures and maybe a video.

Time is waning..

It is hard to believe that we only have a little over three weeks left as HIV educators in our program. we have had such success with our teaching and this week we are having a testing day. the true testament to whether the students and adults in our community are taking our teaching to heart is how many show up to be tested for HIV. we are hoping to test around 60 people. we have taught at almost all of the flower farms in the area now and hope that they will come out for the testing.

Walking to the flower farms are very far (more than an hour each way) and so this week we hitched a ride on the back of a massive fruit truck so we could get home in time to eat lunch before our afternoon teaching. we used the giant wheels to step on to get into the bed of the truck and the girls were all in skirts. it was quite unlady-like but great fun! Tanzanians are so friendly; we had at least two cars ofter to pick us up but neither of them had enough room for all of us.

Hope you enjoy the pictures, sorry i dont have time for a longer post.

A picture is worth a 1000 words...but i still put captions

here is a picture montage of my trip so far:


















me on our 9 mile waterfall hike. in the mud.


















my two english roses. kate on the left lucy on the right. this was the day we moved into the villages after orientation.














my host family!
kaka (brother) Damas on the left
kaka Dennis (they are twins) in the back with the orange balloon
dada (sister) Mariam with the blue skirt
dada Rehama in the yellow.
The rest are our neighbors kids ( i think, sometimes it is hard to know who belongs to whom)




















my host mama washing clothes. we try to wash our own but she just does them over again anyway so we have kind of stopped trying. she also re-folds any clothes that we fold. we love her so much. probably makes the best chai in all of tanzania also.















this is me rolling out dough to make chapati (tanzanian flat bread/pancake). it is so amazing. we eat it with beans or with choroko (kind of like a lentil).















this is me cooking the chapati on a wood stove inside the house. i got really good at the cooking part so Lucy wouldroll out the dough and i would cook in with oil. we made enough that night for our whole family of 10.

Mzuka! (awesome)

This weekend in our three day weekend so i am relaxing in arusha town. We had a very successful first week of teaching in the village. We taught twice at te primary school and twice at our secondary school and also a flower farm. The flower farm teaching went extremely well. We taught about 200 men and women during their lunch break and did both a male and female condom demonstration. They also asked really great questions such as, "what services does SIC provide if you are tested positive?" and "why do you tell us to use a condom for oral sex if the mouth is not a door for HIV transmission?" (fyi the answers are: SIC has community health workers that follow HIV positive people and make sure they are getting antiretroviral medicine when their immune system count in below 200; it is often that people have cuts in the mouth which provide a door for HIV transmission so it is best to use a condom for oral sex if you know your partner is infected). And I gt quite the laugh when i said the fluids that transmit HIV in swahili. I think it's funny for a wite girl to say "semen and vaginal fluid". We also did our village condom assesment to find out what dukas sell condoms in order to give this information at our teaching sessions in the community. There are quite a few places that sell male condoms but none that sell the female ones. Most women at our teaching said they would never use a female condom. The male/female relationships are really different here and most women do not feel empowered enough to ask their boyfriends or husbands to use a condom. This is why we also push female condoms. This puts the woman in control and it can also be inserted a few hours before sex so she is prepared if her husband comes home drunk or something.

I am adjusting very well to living in the village. Mama Zena is so helpful and considerate and we try to help out as best we can. On Sunday are mama is teaching Lucy and i how to make chapati, which is this delicious bread/pancake thing that we eat with beans or meat. We are trying to tell our family what we eat at home so we made french toast (Lucy calls in eggy bread and thinks it's funny that us americans like to use french in our food, like french fries, which they call chips) one morning for our family and it was a hit so now mama makes it for us in the morning!

The volunteer program that started in June finished last night and they had their closing dinner at a restaurant in town. A lot of the people that were in that program were in my pre-field training at UCLA so i got the chance to see a lot of friends before they left Tanzania. It is hard to believe that i have been here a month and only have 5 weeks left. Time is flying by.

Today i visited an orphanage in Arusha that was partially started by two SIC volunteers about three years ago. I went with two of the girls from the june program whom i know from UCLA. We walked for about a half an hour and ended up under these banana trees (almost like a forest) and visited with the 25 children that live at the orphanage. We played games like tembo, tembo, twiga (like duck duck goose, but in english the words are elephant, elephant, giraffe) and sang songs about HIV/AIDS and other nursery rhymes. I also helped thier dada (it means sister, but she is like a ired hand for the orpanage. some familie have them as well) sort beans. In Tanzania you have to sort through all of the beans and rice to check for rocks otherwise you can crack a tooth. It is really unpleasant when you bite on a rock. The teeth here are horrible. Everyone has rotten teeth and we don't see our families brushing. Also, everyone sucks on sugar cane all day in the village. I have been flossing daily. It keeps me sane. I have also gotten lots of compliments on my teeth as well as a few marriage proposals. I am quickly learning more swahili slang than actual words since white females are talked to a lot by younger men and they use adolescent slang.
Tonight i am meeting Christie Sun for dinner! She is in Tanzania working with One Heart Source and is also in Arusha this weekend. For thoe of you who don't know her, she was in AEPhi with me at UCLA and volunteered with SIC last year. Mostly this weekend i am hanging out with my coordinator Sarah. She is from Santa Cruz and went to Pitzer (one of the claremont colleges). She is working on med school secondaries right now.
This coming week we have 4 (!) flower farm teachings as well as our regular school teachings. We also picked up another primary school nearby and we are going to start teaching them tis week too. Each class has about 100 students!

Tanzania by list:
favorite food: chapati and beans; least favorite: banana stew with meat
favorite drink: tangawizi (the best ginger ale ever) and my mama's chai
favorite spot in arusha: this little hidden river we found in the middle of town.
favorite new swahili word: parachichi, which means avocado
how many times i have worn the same t-shirt without washing it: 3
number of times i say thank you to my mama a day, mostly because i can not say anything else: about 15
on a scale of 1 to 10 how awesome my coordinator is: 10 (i know you are reading this Sarah)

Warrior Princess Mama

We moved into our homestays this week! I am living with Lucy (one of the volunteers from the UK). Our homestay is in Mlangarini Juu Village and we are living with a warrior princess mama who has 8 kids. She is so fantastic and even though we speak almost no swahili and she speaks less english, we are having a great time! She is the belozi (leader) of her 10 cell (the villages are broken up into sub villages and then 10 cells, which is like a row of houses). This is unusual for a woman, but I can see how she is a leader so it makes sense. She is also the only homestay mama who is HIV positive. Her husband is dead (presumably from AIDS) and he left three wives when he died (we don't live with the other wives or anything). Mama Zena (like Xena!)'s niece comes over to help out and she speaks a little english so we ask questions and communicate desires through her. Although we have mastered "i would like, we are going, we are returning and we would like a shower" in swahili, which are really the only things you need to know :) Showers are pleasant here, hot water in a bucket in a little room next to the choo (bathroom). The choo took some getting used to (it is a whole in a cement slab) but really after you use it once, it's fine. It's hard at night though because the cockroaches come out (i saw a two headed one yesterday!) but once you scare them away they don't come back so you can bathroom/shower in peace. Lucy is freaked out by the bugs (we caught a huge spider in our room the first night) so i've learned to suck it up. Lucy and I share a nice room with a large bed and cabinet for our clothes. The food is a lot better than during orientation and our mama asks us what we want to eat practically every meal. We are always served first and usually eat alone, which makes us unconfortable, but that it their custom for guests. My favorite meal is Chapati (it's like a really really really good tortilla, but made from flour) and maharage (beans). And we always eat umchicha, which is Tanzanian spinach. And avocados and bananas and oranges, which are way better than even california fruits.

On Monday we start teaching in our village. We are teaching the primary school (public) and a private secondary school for girls run by french nuns. we have also set up to teach at 4 different flower farms in the area. The flower farms are a major source of income for the village and it is a great way to reach 250 workers at once to teach about HIV transmission and prevention. we will be using a megaphone and speaking in a huge room. this will pose problems for our condom demonstrations (both male and female condoms, since there are female flower farm workers as well), so we are working on strategies to fix this problem.

We are also in the process of scheduling community teachings that are open for anyone to attend. We are booked almost everyday for a teaching for the next 6 weeks so we are going to be very busy. My teaching group is awesome. It is me, Lucy (from the UK), Taylor (from LA) and our teaching partners Kelvin and Gertrude who both teach and translate for us.
Today is Nane Nane (8/8 in swahili) and it is kind of special today because it is 2008 so it is 08/08/08. Nane Nane is a harvest festival and so we travelled out to this fair-type thing right outside of Arusha town (we are staying in town tonight) and I bought some Masai earrings, which are so cute. The Masai tribe are stereotypical Africans with long earlobes, tons of beaded jewelry and multiple wives.

Tonight is the birthday of two of the people in our group so we are going to go out dancing in Arusha. And a happy early birthday to you Dad!!