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)