Little by little...: IST or I thought a crazy person was laughing on the bus, but it was only a chicken

My first three months at site have culminated in In-Service Training (IST), which is code for a lot of traveling on buses, listening to lectures that may or may not be useful, and drunken bar scenes with Americans. That is where my title comes from: I was traveling to my banking town to meet my sitemates to then travel to Moro for the training, and I hear this inane cackle behind me on the bus as people are getting off at the standi. I turn to see who is making such a sound... and it was a chicken, being carried by its bound feet by a man climbing down the steps of the bus. Karibu Tanzania.

Anyways, in preparation for IST, each PCV had to prepare a written report on their village, detailing water availability conditions, sanitation, health, transportation....and then make a presentation about it. Really what that means is that I took pictures in my village for the first time! You will see those shortly.

My best friend here is named Cate, and we are always together, geography permitting, so people get our names mixed up all the time. Unfortunately, she lives in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania, which is really far away from me, so we haven't seen each other since leaving for our sites in December. I get to where we are staying for IST, trying to figure out what room I am in so I can put my stuff down, my gigantic backpack still on my back, and I hear someone shout “Kaaat!” I turn, and see Cate running down the hall, arms extended, toward me. I yell “Cate” and we catch each other in an embrace, laughing! Its true love between us, you can't deny it.

I am also pretty sure that I had a parasite- that I got from eating things I shouldn't- for something like two and a half months. I never sent in a MIF kit because I wasn't comfortable with sending a sample of my poop through the mail, but I had pretty bad abdominal pain and constant diarrhea for two months, and I lost a lot of weight. At IST, I developed stomach cramps that would double me over, so, after a lot of thought about the overuse of antibiotics and the dangers of MRSA, my stomach cramps finally convinced me to take a broad spectrum- perscribed by PC doctors- to get rid of Ernest, my parasite (I named him). Ernest died- rest in peace- and I had my first solid poop in 2 months! I feel so much better!

An integral, and very important, part of IST is having each PCV select a counterpart, a person to work with from their village, to join them at the training for specific sessions introducing the counterparts to Peace Corps and possible projects to do in the village. I brought my mama, the nurse at the zahanati (clinic), and got to introduce her to other Americans, and, most importantly, bacon cheeseburgers. My mama is an Mchaga, and she looooooves meat. We live in a Muslim area, so pork is a no-no in general, so whenever she gets her hands on some, she conspiratorially comes to me to whisper that she is cooking kiti moto (pork)! This in mind, I knew she would love bacon cheeseburgers... and she did. She also really liked mustard, which she had for the first time. She also saw her first African Americans. When she saw them, she asked me if they spoke English, and was amazed that there were wazungu (white people, foreigners) that looked like her. She asked me if their children would be black or white, so I explained that they were just like her, only they lived in America. She was amazed. My mama is a really smart woman, highly respected in the village, very hard working and motivated. She pretty much runs things in my village. When my mama says something, people listen, and do what she tells them to do. But she still has a limited knowledge of the world at large, and whereas I most certainly am not as knowledgeable about world events as I would like to be, I still have a broader experience of the world outside Tanzania than she does because I know how to use the internet, and I (used to) watch the news or read the newspaper. I have access to information that people living in my village may never be able to access, because of limited resources, knowledge, or both. So that is my job in my vill, to bring that information to people because I know how to obtain it.

I have since returned to my village from IST and have been thinking a lot about the work and projects I want to do there, as a PCV. This is what I have concluded: My job is to work myself out of a job. I am not a teacher- I can get around in Kiswahili, but I don't speak well enough to effectively educate people in it- and I don't want to be. My work is in bringing information and getting other people- like my mama- to teach it to more people, and the slow- but effective- dissemination of information through individuals. I have been thinking about all the ways I can make myself obsolete in my village, and I am so excited to do it. Yesterday, my mama and I made a demonstration permagarden at my house. PEPFAR has provided Peace Corps with a lot of funding to push permagardening as a method of improving living conditions for PLWHA (people living with HIV/AIDS), so that was one of the sessions at IST. We had one other girl with us- she is my age, and has a three year old. She is not married, and works very hard to support herself and her daughter. My mama taught her how to construct a permagarden and they built a couple of beds together in my front yard, while I helped, but mostly entertained the three year old. It was amazing. My mama is amazing. I didn't even need to be there. Now two other people on my village know how to construct permagardens (which is supposed to be a more space- and water- efficient design for gardens to produce more food), my mama has one at her house, and maybe this girl, Dada Sara, can use this knowledge to better provide for her daughter and herself. Yes, it's a really little thing to get excited about, but Peace Corps, and, really, I think most of sustainable development, is all about the little things. As Peter Jensen would say, “Small, doable actions!” The big thing I want to accomplish in my vill is to train a health worker staff to do health education at the clinic and other villages on outreach clinic days (My priorities might be skewed by my college work experience). Currently, health education is basically non existent, as is outreach, let alone providing health education on outreach days, all due to extreme under staffing at the clinic. With an extra volunteer staff, my mama and baba, the nurse and clinical officer at the zahanati, can focus on processing patients, while the extra staff can do the education that is currently left by the wayside. One day, they might not even need me to work at the clinic. I'll just pumzika (rest). I can't wait.