I had just returned to my village from a lovely, mellow weekend called 'songea-fest' with a few other peace corps volunteers, when i was stopped by one of the nurses in my village to say hello. I mentioned to her during our conversation that I was wondering when the next HIV/AIDS group meeting was going to be since I heard there was such a group already formed in the village. She made a quick phone call and within seconds a meeting between me and the chairperson for the group was set up for the following morning at 9am. Unfortunately adapting to Tanzanian time, I was just finishing chai and planning on heading over to the clinic between 9 and 10, when Detrik showed up at my house at 8:45. He apologized for being early (words that tanzanians don't ever speak, because it doesn't ever happen...) and I welcomed him and said I'd be ready soon. oops. I began to dawn on me how important this meeting was to him and that he had probably been waiting for me since I arrived in the village to ask to meet with him since the meeting was set up so last minute and being early to the meeting, he was clearly eager for some help. We walked over to the clinic and met up with one of the nurses to start the meeting. For almost the next two hours my head spun. The amount of information about the needs and problems with these groups in the communities combined with Detrik's aspirations and vision for the group were enough to overwhelm me to tears as soon as I walked out of the office. I was glad that there is already a group in place, not surprised to hear that they don't really meet or do anything, and excited to hear how excited Detrik was to start projects and educating villagers. He is also the chairperson of the orphans group, and the sole member of the HIV home-care group (goes around helping to care for people who are suffering from HIV). He struggles to take care of 15 pigs that the government donated to the orphans group, they lack funds to pay for food, and it is physically impossible for him to get enough water for them. It didn't take long to realize that he's been waiting years for someone to come along and help him. He has a vision for what the groups will do, what their meetings will look like, and what he wants to teach villagers about HIV, he just needs a little organization, guidance, and help motivating the other group members. His ideas and goals are quite lofty, but he definitely has them and I think for the first time I got a good idea about my purpose here in the village. He openly shared about his own struggles with HIV, and about his brother dying with HIV. We talked about where to start, and agreed that meeting with the other members of the group would be a good start. We set up a meeting for sunday afternoon at my house.
On sunday I cooked banana bread while we waited for the group members to show up. We agreed to meet at my house because they felt more comfortable and less exposed about their HIV status. Eventually about 6 people showed up. I was so excited, Detrik clearly disappointed about his groups comittment. We ate the top half of the banana bread (while one of the women insisted on scraping off the burnt bottom and eating that...) while discussing the group, why they meet, what they do, where and when they meet, and what they want help doing or what they need. It took a few hours but I learned a lot about those members and we agreed to start doing basic HIV/AIDS education for the group members. Detrik joined a national organization that hosts conferences about twice a year and he agreed to teach what he's learned at those. Our next meeting is this coming sunday. I feels good to feel like I have a bit of a purpose other than just practicing swahili and fetching water, but I plan on starting slow and doing a little at a time at first while we're still re-organizing.
The following day I had my first meeting with the villagers. I'm following a plan given to us by Peace Corps to help learn about the village and get villagers to think about their resources, daily activities, and what their needs might be. The first meeting is a community mapping meeting where we simply draw a map of the community. Sounds simple huh? Well the meeting was set to start at 9am, so about 11am right before I'm about to lose it because not a single person has showed up yet, villagers started trickling over. We waited a few more minutes to start, but by about noon there were well over 100 people there. My baba helped me explain the purpose of the meeting and how we were going to split into two groups, men and women, to draw the maps. I asked them to include things such as the school, shops, water pumps, churches, etc, and handed out a piece of flipchart paper and markers to each group. Both groups started by drawing sketched in the dirt, then started practicing on smaller paper. There were too many people for everyone to participate, but it was great to see people get involved discussing and learning about their own village. After almost 4 hours of sketching, practice maps, and a final draft on flipchart paper, both groups were done. I asked one man and one woman to present their maps, which were both very different from each other. We then discussed the differences and similarities between the maps and why that might be. The women's map was much less detailed and didn't include the local bars that the men's map did. People said they thought this was because the women spend a lot of their time in the home, taking care of the children and working around the house while the men are out wondering around and seeing more of the village. This among other discussion topics were so exciting for me because it got the villagers to start talking about the gender differences between the men and women in the village. The next few meeting I have will build more on gender differences. At the end of the meeting I asked what people learned from this activity, and hands shot up, talking about how they learned how to draw a map, learned some history of the village and where a few things were that they had heard about but had never visited. I was so excited that it seemed like this activity was worthwhile, and that the villagers were participating and taking it seriously. Everyone has been so supportive and excited to help me, I truly feel luck to live, work, and do what I can to help the people that live here. Here are a few pictures from the mapping meeting...
In the next few weeks I look forward to another HIV group meeting where Detrik starts teaching, and my second village meeting. Also still trying to settle into my house that feels like a cement box, and working on my swahili...keep the emails and letters coming, I love hearing about what you are all up to!
