Sunday, April 15, 2012

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.

Kiruru juu! CBT love

Cate!
Learning about HIV
Drunken bar scenes
Doing the limbo during a drunken bar scene
Eriki and I with our counterparts with the mountains of Moro behind us



Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Wazungu na Watanzania or Americans and Tanzanians

February was a tumultuous month for me. I ate some things I shouldn't have- like maggots- and spent a lot of time feeling sick and miserable, holing up in my house, only going between my bed and my choo. I felt really guilty about not being out in my village, not being productive, and I got really homesick, missing the comforts of warm showers and hot and sour soup from the nearest Chinese restaurant and western toilets where you can sit comfortably as opposed to having your feet fall asleep because you have been sitting in a squat for so long having terrible diarrhea. BTW, I do not advise eating maggots- they cause terrible abdominal pain and other ailments.

But, after spending a week confined to my bed, with only my guilt and frustration for company, my intestines got over their unhappiness, and I made leaps and bounds in progress in my village! Or at least that is how I feel. I made a male kijana (youth) friend, which is kind of a big deal because there is a lot of gender separation in my village- I think in most of Tanzania, as well- and having this one person be my friend means I have an in to talking to the rest of the male vijana (multiple youths), and I am really excited about one day being able to talk to them about condoms and safe sex, STIs, HIV/AIDS, motivating and supporting them in trying to find work.... I started tutoring one primary school boy English- which is actually really difficult, I have no idea how to teach someone a language- but now I think the rest of the primary school children are nicer to me; they greet me, they show respect by saying “shikamoo,” and they don't tease me anymore. Yes, I do get picked on by little children. They can be really intimidating in large groups, especially when you can't understand what they are saying to you! I visited the secondary school- where the students, especially the upper forms, are pretty close if not the same age as I am- which I thought would be really intimidating, but all of the students were really nice, and really enthusiastic about me continuing the health club the last volunteer started there. I am really excited about overseeing a health club. This is my thing. Peer health education among youth in an academic setting. I want it to be very much student organized and run. I want them to decide what they want to talk about in the club, what activities they want to do, if and how they want to rely information to their classmates not in the club, and I want them to decide how people become part of the club, how they want the club government organized... A couple of students have asked me if we are going to have boys and girls conferences like the previous group of volunteers in the district had, too, which were apparently very popular. I have started my sexual health education in the village, too, except that my audience is composed of all the grandmas in my village >_> (shifty eyes). I went with my fundi friend (she makes clothes; the term for anyone who has any kind of skill is fundi) to visit her bibi (grandmother), and her bibi starts asking me if I use condoms and how many I use! Sooo, I started telling her about how to use condoms, the importance of using only one condom at a time and using lubricant or else friction will cause tears in the latex (did you know that in some African cultures women will use herbs to actually dry themselves out because they think if there is no natural lubricant, or any lubricant at all, it makes sex better? Problem. This leads to tears in the vagina and increases HIV transmission). I didn't know how to say most of this in Kiswahili, so there were a lot of hand gestures and hoping she understood what I meant. I got my hair braided by another bibi in my vill, which is a big socializing time for women, so I am sitting there with the bibi braiding my hair, my kijana fundi friend, and another woman, and the whole time she asks me questions like “Do white people or Africans know more about sex?” Who has sex more often?” “Do white people shave their pubic hair?” “Why can't American women show each other their breasts?” In Tanzania, breasts are not sexy or illicit at all- women whip them out to breast feed their children in the middle of the day, in the middle of a crowd, completely uncovered- but women do not show their knees or shoulders. So we talked about why that is and how its different between American and Tanzanian cultures. It was a really great experience of cultural exchange, and I think its really funny to talk about sex with old ladies when I would never talk about any of these things with old ladies in the States.

Another leap and bound I made was I figured out how to light my charcoal stove by myself! I have been at site for how many months and just figured it out? But now I feel like I can actually survive in this country because now I can feed myself and hopefully not make myself sick! It is a pain in the ass to light, but I can do it, and I have baked bread, made lentil curry, potato stuffed naan, lots of soups, cornflour pancakes, and bean burgers!

Now for American time. Pictures speak louder than words, but here are the highlights:
  1. Made wine in a bucket with the site mates in preparation for a birthday sharehe (party).
  2. Had first American visitors to my vill for Valentine's Day.
  3. Site mate, Maria, turned 30, so we celebrated her birthday in town with the standi guys and Maria got to use a microphone at Club NBC- it was a debacle.
  4. I got a new site mate, who is only a two hour walk from my vill! This is a big improvement over the closest person being a three hour (at least) drive and two buses away from me.
Here are some pictures

 Eriki intensely cutting mangoes for the wine.
 Eriki being creepy
 Maria being creepy

English isn't the most widely spoken language here: "Oliver oil... It good four health"
 Obama beanies; Obama is a BFD here
 Dance party. Of course.
Our bucket wine at work. This is my new sitemate Rachel! She's a really good dancer