I'm Hungry or Mostly Just Random Anecdotes

We have entered the month of Ramadhan, which means food during the day is scarce in the predominantly Muslim areas, but dinner invitations have sky rocketed! I am interested to see society decay as people starve themselves everyday for a month- my bet is that chaos will run rampant as the month nears its end and people have had enough of being hungry. Well, you know, more hungry than normal, in my undernourished village.

Personally, what Ramadhan means to me is a battle trying to educate pregnant women that they really shouldn't be starving themselves for a month- they are already undernourished and they should be increasing the amount of food they consume, not obliterating it! Its a rough argument, though, because its me, who they know is not Muslim, a white stranger, telling them to go against their religion and not make this sacrifice to the god they believe in. I may have science on my side, plus my very verbose mama, telling them their babies will come out underdeveloped or mentally deficient, but these women's lives are much more influenced by the religion they interact with daily than some science the white girl brought with her from America. I'm surprised at how frustrating I find it when women refuse to stop their fasts. Not that anyone would blatantly refuse, that isn't Tanzanian, but I hear a lot of “I'll eat tomorrow,” “I'll stop fasting tomorrow.” In Tanzanian culture, that means no. It shouldn't concern me so much- these women are used to not eating a whole lot, hopefully the effect on their babies will minimal, and I don't have to take care of whatever problems that baby comes out with it if there are considerable effects- but I find it so disturbing when women refuse to make a concession to their religion for the health of their babies. Maybe if I were more ardently religious, I would feel differently. I've tried using the argument that don't you think God would want you and your baby to be healthy rather than you make this sacrifice, but I doubt that hit home with anyone. Its not my place to interfere with another's religious choices, but it is my place to be educating people on making healthier choices, and when it comes to Ramadhan and pregnant and nursing mothers, this conflicts.

Other than my current struggles with Ramadhan, I want to share some little anecdotes and thoughts, that haven't really merited their own posts, but I really want to share. Scarcity is the mother of invention I have found in Tanzania. My mama was making nyama choma for me one night, which is basically BBQ minus the sauce, and I told her about shish kebabs. She wanted to try it, so she goes over to the roof of her chicken coop, where she stores random things, which is also hidden in the dark so I can't see what she's doing, and comes back with skewers which she proceeds to use to skewer and cook the meat. I am amazed that she has skewers, and my first thought is that she must have purchased them somewhere, in a nice set of 6 in a pretty plastic wrapper... Yeah, forgot I was Tanzania for a minute. I ask her where she procured her skewers, and she replies, “Umbrella.” She was using the spokes of an umbrella to roast her meat.

Another occasion of scarcity inspiring brilliant creativity took place before the rainy season ended. I had already realized that my water catchment system acted just like a faucet of running water, making it perfect for washing dishes. I had a few dishes collected that I had been putting off washing because washing dishes is the most evil house chore in existence, but really the thing that was bothering me was how nasty my hair was. Its not uncommon for me to feel like I need to wash my hands after touching my hair, but this time it had gotten to the point where I never wore my hair down, not even while sleeping, because it was so gross. My hair was so nasty, it made my skin itchy and uncomfortable. I stopped touching it because it was not just oily, but there was definitely dirt mixed in. Why had I allowed my hair to get so gross, one might ask. Washing hair in a bucket bath sucks is the answer. It doesn't actually make your hair any cleaner, and you have to hang over, bent in half, in order to get your head into the bucket, which causes all the blood to rush to your head, and if you have a cold, all the snot in your sinuses to readjust in an uncomfortable manner. So, one afternoon, it begins raining, and I rush out with my dish soap and dishes, but half way through rinsing off the one bowl I own, I realize that I could wash my hair. At first I hesitate- how weird would that look if someone walked by and saw me washing my hair in my water catchment system- but probably no one would walk by- nothing is worse to a Tanzanian than walking in the rain. So I run for my shampoo and proceed to wash my hair, standing outside of my house, in sweatpants, my head under a concentrated downpour of rain water. I have never felt cleaner while in my village.

Dancing is often considered a large part of African culture. It certainly is in Tanzania. Little girls come out of the womb being able to shake their asses. There is a teacher at my secondary school, Amina, who, although she may be a very conservative Muslim woman, shrouded in head covering and black gown, she can move! Its surprising, though, how diverse the styles of dance can be sometime. There is a club in Dodoma of which I have frequented many a time, where women come in surprisingly culturally inappropriate apparel- knees, shoulders, oh my!- and exhibit their skills on the dance floor. The favorite move by far, you may ask? The Electric Slide. Tanzanians will, no exaggeration, line dance for hours. It never seems to get old for them. Any music becomes line dancing music, once one person starts with the side step-ball-chain. If the dance floor wasn't full before, it will be when its line dancing time. So, my question is, is this a case of southern revival, or the Out of Africa Theory?

Village Situational Analysis or I Took Pictures In My Vill!

Me in Mama Jennie's shop

Cute babies in my courtyard

Sassy girls in the madukani

 The soko, market

 Mama Jennie sewing clothes

 Dada Asha making chapati

 My mama and baba at the clinic

 Twins I saw born! My mama is giving them polio drops

Women selling food in the madukani

Projects, Packages, Partying, Oh My! or If I had known PC would be like being in puberty again I might not have signed up

Ok, so returning from IST has been rough. We were warned that most people experience their lowest low right after IST- which makes sense. You spend two weeks with Americans, speaking English, experiencing American culture again, you aren't alone all the time, eating safi, American-esque food instead of the random food you can find in your village or manage to cook for yourself, and then you expect to start all these projects and get things done when you return to your site, becoming the amazing PCV you imagine yourself to be.... but that doesn't happen. In reality, you return to your site, you miss Americans, it is shocking to be so alone again, it is shockingly quiet in your house, and it takes a really long time to get things started. Or, at least, I feel like I am taking a long time to get things started. Talking to other volunteers, they are accelerating, they are starting things. People are starting to teach life skills at their secondary schools, or starting sports clubs, or starting tree nurseries... and I am doing the exact same thing I have been doing since I got to site. Granted, I work at my clinic three days a week, but I want to start my projects- it just takes so much time, and I need resources that I don't have in my village- like internet, and electricity. Also, internet is becoming more expensive, and it still sucks. Its like Comcast in Berkeley. It is the necessary evil in one's life, but it is so evil!

Ok, being more positive now. Friday was a really good day. I went to the clinic in the morning to clean with my mama and baba, and I told my mama all my ideas for projects and she told me that I was such a good child- she calls me her child- and that I have such wonderful ideas. Even if I accomplish nothing in my village, having the approval of my mama makes me feel so much better. I go back later in the day when clinic starts, I set things up, and I'm about to start asking the mamas for their cards to write their babies weights on, and my baba comes up to me and asks me to teach. I haven't prepared anything. I would be teaching in Kiswahili. I ask if I can teach Monday, at the next clinic, and he asks if I could just teach for ten minutes. Some background: my clinic is really understaffed, so even though we are supposed to teach something every clinic day, we don't. We are also supposed to do outreach to other villages, and don't, because only two people work at my clinic, and me. So, I give a lesson on family planning, off the cuff, and it is amazing! Women are answering my questions- which is really difficult to get them to do because of the Tanzanian education system and the use of corporal punishment in schools, which all these women are products of- they are laughing, I did a condom demonstration- condoms are a sensitive topic in my village- and my favorite part was blowing a condom up like a balloon in front of all of these women to dispel the myth that “condoms are too small.” Then we continued with a busy clinic day. By the end of it, I was exhausted- speaking Kiswahili all day is exhausting- but I felt so productive, and so good about what I am doing in my village. You can experience so many emotions in one day- when people describe PC as being a roller coaster, they are not lying- its kind of like being in puberty again because all of the emotions you experience are so intense.

I received a package from the girls that I lived with in college! It made me so happy! They sent me a portrait of the seven of us that hung in our house for two years, and wrote me a colorful letter with pictures. They sent me magazines, and bacon, and hot chocolate- with marshmallows!- and Sponge Bob mac and cheese! I miss them so much, and this package came at just the right time.

Which brings me to... This is what would be in the ideal care package from home (I have put a lot of thought into this)

1. Pictures from home to hang on my walls or show people in my vill. They make me so happy to look at them, and Tanzanians are fascinated to see America.
2. Dark chocolate. It does not exist in Tanzania. Chocolate is really expensive, a luxury, so really, any chocolate is appreciated, but especially dark chocolate.
3. Any and all cheese products that could survive the trip across the US, Atlantic Ocean, and most of the continent of Africa. Cheese is really difficult to find here. If I travel for two days to So High in Southern TZ, I can find real cheese, and sometimes I can find a cream cheese-esque thing in my regional town, but that isn't guaranteed.
4. Mac and Cheese- not easy mac because I don't have a microwave, but old fashioned mac and cheese with the boiled water.
5. Tuna packets. My friend brought one back to me from the States, and I cut the package into pieces so I could lick all of the tuna out of it. It was so good. I do not get enough protein on a daily basis. The Tanzanian diet is heavily reliant on carbs, and the most common protein source is beans.
6. (I now have more deorderant than I can use before I am 30. I have made good use of them as presents for PCVs, though) Deodorant. It is not in Tanzania. Tanzanians don't use it. I like Dove, powder scented, but any brand would be acceptable, but just no strong scents- the point is to not smell my armpits, even if they do smell like oranges. Considering how rarely I shower- and how I expect it will get worse when the rainy season ends and I stop having water- deodorant will be much appreciated for my own sense of wellness.
7. Wet wipes- too lazy to get a bucket of water to shower, or need to wash your feet before getting into bed? Bam! You're clean! Cat brought a lizard into your house and left blood on your floor, but you don't have cleaning products because you live in a third world country? Bam! Lizard blood gone!

For Jodi- this is a shout out to Little Amy. And nighties, and spritzers, and throwing cucumbers in people's eyes. Sometimes, I really love Peace Corps.

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

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

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.