Sunday, January 22, 2012

Pictures From Training or Tardiness, I Know

My room in Dar, before I actually entered Tanzania during homestay.


Notice the super safi western toilet. Just ignore the fact that later a large piece of my ceiling fell onto my toilet seat lid.

My CBT at Halloween

The Mutant Ninja Turtles made an appearance, too.

Cate and Jamesy so excited about getting chocolate that they could shit their pants.

My favorite picture of my CBT.


My homestay mama at a harusi (wedding).

A really sassy woman dancing at the wedding. This was so much because it was just women, and I got to see them all let loose and dance and sing.


The giant spider with fingers I found in my room one night. Its dead now.

The Maandazi Mama holding me.

Me holding my baby dada in fron tof my homestay house.

Cooking peanutbutter pancakes Tanzanian style at Safi's house.

My baby dada, Edisi. I love her.

Peke Yangu (on my own) in Tanzania or Take That VSA!

I have been at site for just over a month now, and have delivered three babies, regularly take blood samples to test Malaria- of which, none have been positive, which makes me suspicious of either the test or the supposed prevalence of malaria in my area- and I just learned how to give shots, which I am really bad at. I work every day at the zahanati (clinic), and am truly gaining experience that I never would have been able to get with my biology degree in the States. Other than at the zahanati, my friend who charges my phone at his duka (shop) wants to start a chicken project. We started by talking about how his son is in school, and he has no money, and I told him that I wanted to start community groups that could make money. Was he interested? Well, yes he was! And he wants it to be a chicken group, and then he told me all about his chickens and everything he knows about them. I have never seen this man so excited! He is finding five other people- because he said that five other people would make a good size group- and my hope is that he will take over this group and make it productive with little to no influence from me. I even know a man that can come and teach this group about raising and selling chickens for profit. I had an impromptu conersaion with some women at a chai house about birth control methods and family planning. It didn't go too well because I forgot the words for "family planning" and "pill" and "types," and then the woman I was talking to got distracted by her milk, but it will go better next time. Currrently I am trying to write a lesson about Malaria and fever to teach at the zahanati. Writing the lesson in English was cake- thank you internet research in the States- but translating things like "bloody stool" into Kiswahili isn't exactly staright forward. For some reason that phrase isn't in the dictionary, I don't know why. I have also farmed, which is such a big deal to my villagers! I got strawberry plants from a friend in town, so I got my jembe (local farming tool, kind of like a hoe) and started clearing a small patch of overgrownness in the used-to-be garden in front of my house. Yeah, farming with an audience is fun. The kids were all passing my house leaving the primary school, so they all just stopped and watched while I planted my little plants, and we talked about fruit and farming. All the mamas passing greeted me a little more enthusiastically, seeing that oh, the mzungu farms kind of like us! Except they can create an entire field of future food in the time it takes me to create my little 2' by 6' patch.
My site continues to impress me with how beautiful it is, and how perfect it is for me. There have been a couple of days cold enough that I have worn my fleece in the middle of the day- and this is supposed to be the end of the hottest season. The dominating colors of my site are green and red. The grass and the leaves of trees are green, and on the days when it rains, the light filtered through the clouds makes everything look greener. But contrasted against this green is the red of the dirt and the trunks of the papaya and banana trees, which burns a brighter red on jua kali days when the near-equatorial sun is merciless. I have a beautiful view of hills from my front porch, and for the past several nights I have watched as lightning flashed in the clouds over the surrounding hills. Its like fireworks, but better!
Here are pictures of my house!

Jikoni (kitchen). Um, I will do something with this. Someday.

Choo. Very important.

Courtyard. Look at how luscious that grass is. I work so hard at landscaping (no I don't).




My favorite view sitting on my porch. There is a boy who grazes his cow in this field some days. I think he is so poetic, this lone boy with his lone black cow, that he follows close behind as the cow meanders slowly.

The zahanati and my garden.
Pretty flowers in front of my house.