pasaka in the ‘pook

As I pulled on my fanciest Tanzanian dress early yesterday morning, I tried to mentally prepare myself for what was undoubtedly going to be one of the longest days I’ve faced yet…Easter Sunday in the village. I had promised this mama that I’ve become friends with that I’d go to church with her on Easter Sunday, and since my absence had been prayed for at church the week before I thought it would be good to make an appearance. I had also convinced Carol (my devoted site-mate and sanity who teaches at the secondary school in my village about 3 km away) to come with, as I figured these things are usually better in pairs.

We met at the mama’s house at 9am. Learning on the way there that it was going to be impossible to  successfully ride my bike in my flowing dress without flashing unsuspecting Tanzanians along the way, we decided to walk to 5km to the neighboring village where the Easter service was being held. We set out on the path leaving Sepuka, mama in her Sunday best, and Carol in her swearing-in outfit, and me carrying the essentials in my bag- water, granola bars, sunglasses, sunscreen, and my offering. Now, Singida gets a crap for not necessarily being the most breathtaking place in Tanzania (as we’re situated in a desert where it rains twice a week for 6 weeks out of the year,) but I guess it takes a certain appreciation of this place to really see its bush-like beauty. I for one, have grown to accept the scarce terrain, sand, dust, and thorny bushes as a unique kind of lovely, and this hike to church was all of the above. I had to stop almost every 10 feet to shake thorns out of my sandals as we crossed dried up river beds, passed fields of sunflowers, and slightly rolling hills, as the path led us into the neighboring village of Msungua. With the ‘rainy’ season just ending, the area is actually quite green with fields of tall grass and leaves on the trees, but carol warned that this was about as green as it gets, and I braced myself for the coming drought.

About an hour later we arrived at the substantial German-built Lutheran church where all the neighboring Lutheran churches were gathering to celebrate ‘Pasaka’, or Easter. It was a packed house, with bikes lining the outside wall and kids chasing each other. I longed to be one of them, lucky to be young enough to have the excuse to escape from what we all knew was going to be a long service. But fortunately for us, my friend Samueli saved us seats right up in the front with the choir meaning an escape was going to be very difficult. Our seats really could have been a lot worse, we were right next to the window and could lean back against the wall behind us, so I couldn’t complain too much.

The service started with each of the choirs from neighboring churches dancing and singing, our group from Sepuka being my clear favorite. The service went on with singing and dancing, announcements, praying, and more singing and dancing. At one point the pastor made a point to recognize each tribe that was present at the service, Carol and I being no exception. Then he made a quick comment that he wanted each tribe to sing their own Easter-esque song at the end of the service. We looked at each other and laughing I hid my head in the large woman’s back who was sitting in front of me. The pastor quickly moved on, I however did not. I looked at Carol and said ‘seriously?"’ she said she’d heard of Peace Corps volunteers having to do this before and didn’t seem quite as phased as me. I decided that he’d forget about it, that we wouldn’t have to do it, but in between my little naps during his sermon we brainstormed songs from church camp as kids and came up with some pretty hysterical ideas. Trying to remember the words to ‘this little light of mine', ‘he’s got the whole world in his hand's’, and a few others kept us entertained for most of the service. I purposely didn’t wear a watch for fear it would make the service feel even longer, but as I checked Carols watch and learned it had been 4 hours since the service started, I was beginning to get a little antsy. Approaching the 5th hour and assuming it had to be over soon, I though we were in the clear and had avoided our duet. I was wrong. Before I knew it we were standing in front of 300 people singing ‘Our God is an Awesome God’ and performing the appropriate signs we learned in Sunday School. We finished our second round of the chorus, which was actually the only part we knew, I gave a quick curtsy, and the crowd went wild. We took our seats, laughing, and I played the moment over and over in my head, and couldn’t wait to tell my mom and dad. I knew they’d be proud.

I lasted about 30 more minutes, my granola bars had long since been devoured, and it was just time to be done. When the choirs switched we made our escape. We stopped at a milk co-op near the church and had chai and a quick snack. Had I not been completely starving, the chunky, fat saturated hot milk would have bothered me a bit more, but desperate times call for desperate measures and I downed the cup before the trek home. We got back to Sepuka around 5 in the evening, replaying the days events in my head I sat down in my favorite café and enjoyed my Easter feast of rice, beans, and orange Fanta.

my counterpart Samson getting’ down with the choir

our easter monday easter egg hunt. thanks for the eggs amy:)

alli goes to the mall.

Earlier this week one volunteer representative, deemed '”warden", from each region here in Tanzania gathered in Dar es Salaam for a two day training on the safety and security plan. Little did they know that when they selected Alli, Rebecca, Sarah, Cameron, and Duncan to represent our hoods, it can get a little crazy…

It was Monday night and a bunch of us decided to go out to the mall in Dar for a little dinner and a movie. This place is incredible, and looks like it was plucked straight from suburban America, complete with a fast food restaurant called Marrybrown’s (a wannabe Wendy’s). After a fine meal of chicken sandwiches, french fries and FOUNTAIN SODA with ice cubes, I was standing in line waiting to get a brownie when it happened. Now I should mention, two people had gone to the bathroom, abandoned their belongings with me so I was not only carrying my bag, but Natalie’s purse on my shoulder, Dan’s huge backpack on my back, and his cowboy hat sideways on my head. As I was waiting in line, I noticed two fine young gentlemen sitting at a small café-type table. One was wearing a hot pink satin shirt that was unbuttoned very low with pants so white they glowed. The other was wearing a polo shirt with his collar popped and skinny jeans or something. They were both drinking oversized cappuccinos from white mugs. Now this might sound a little funny, but mind you, people that look like this don’t exist in my life. Dirty village children and saggy grandmas are all I know, and I guess I’ve been in the village for too many moons…Anyways, I guess I spent just a little too long ‘admiring’ them and how ridiculous and out of place they looked (when in reality I’m the one that looks ridiculous at this point) because when I came out of my trance and I looked up through the glass wall that separated us from the rest of the mall, Sarah and Cameron were standing outside watching me…watch them. They had long since lost it and were laughing hysterically at me, and I soon followed. As soon as I looked up and saw them laughing at me, I realized how ridiculous I probably looked, like a dirty bag lady who is in the big city for the first time and in shock at people who look like this. I started laughing and couldn’t stop, I had to remove myself from the brownie line, exit the restaurant and proceeded to squat down to keep it in until I could gather myself and stop laughing….instead, I completely peed in my pants laughing so hard. Now this isn’t the first time uncontrollable laugher has led to peeing in my pants, especially not in this country, but this time was one for the books…

peace

uhuru.

eating mangoes with cessie while watching mama cessie get braided

my neighborhood boys made me this motorbike and radio out of the clay in their fields, I also am the proud owner of a clay land rover as well.

my other half. or halves. this family keeps me together:) above, elli shells rice they collected from the farm, elli and cessie study my world map, cessie gets back from the farm with jemsi on her back, mama cessie and cessie looking very sassy, on the rocks with elli and fabi, the love of my life maria me and jemsi, and mama cessie cooks vegatables

Just returned from a two-day training in Dar es Salaam as new safety and security wardens in our regions, but still had time for a dance party (as usual), fast food in the mall in Dar, and chocolate ice cream all over cameron – followed by well deserved naps on the way home.

evening with the boys

One of my favorite days in Sepuka during these first few weeks is the one where my (only) friends discovered I had a camera and took me on an incredible adventure, in my back yard. I should mention that this particular group of friends consist entirely of 13-16 year old boys….

I had just gotten back from a trip to town with Elli, my 16 year old neighbor (above, in the red shirt), when all of his friends show up at my house. Elli learned I had a camera earlier in the day when I had to charge the battery in town, and he couldn’t wait to show his friends. I taught Elli how to use it and he started teaching the others how to use it. After a series of mugshots taken in my courtyard against the bright blue wall, they asked if we could go to ____ and take pictures of the ____. Neither of these words were in my kiswahili vocabulary at this point so I really had no idea what I was getting myself into, but I was intrigued so I agreed.

We walked out of our courtyard and around the side of the house, down a path through a cornfield. With visions of Children of the Corn starting to go through my head, the path opened up just in time to cut through a group of enormous boulders. I looked up at the 3 story high rocks, and then glanced behind me at Fabi, Elli’s younger brother, who just nodded his head and said, ‘yup, we’re going up there.’

The boys started running up the side of the first boulder, but Fabi (orange shirt) stayed behind to show me the easier path. There were trees growing on the side, and together with smaller rocks that lined the side getting to the top was no big deal. After stepping over the last crevice, I stood up and did a 360. The view was absolutely breathtaking. The area is mostly flat with gentle, rolling hills and during the (not-so) ‘rainy’ season, corn grew in rows that traced the curve of the land and grass poked out of dusty mounds. From the top I couldn’t believe how far I could see, a man walked along a path in between two farms that seemed miles away, and women lifted buckets on their heads, walking in a single line from the well to the path that connects to the next village. As I kept turning around and around, taking in all views, the boys had started their photo shoot. They were posing on rocks, with the soccer ball, in fighting poses they could have only learned from the generator-powered movie show each night played in the village, there were solo shots and group shots, and even a shot that will make me smile for the rest of my life…

It’s kind of small, but the boy in the far back has one of his arms out of his shirt with a stone cold look on his face, pointing at the ball, the smallest boy is just holding the ball with an equally serious look on his face, and the one in the front looks like he just got to the end of a runway wearing my khanga like this seasons hottest trend.

The boys said there were more, so we climbed down this one, and up the next, one of them lagging behind each time to show me the easy way up. We through around the ball, took pictures, and they were teaching me some new kiswahili words as the hours passed of climbing up and down the boulders. I was on a serious mjusi (these red and blue lizzards that live around the rocks) when I looked up and caught them in this great moment…they were completely silent, perched on this flat space watching the sunset…

I was sitting behind them as the sun set, and tried to imagine being in their shoes; only 3 of them are in school, the others spend their days herding cattle and goats or working on the family farm, one earns money by delivering water jugs to houses using his prized bicycle. They love Manchester United and Jackie Chan, they’ve learned jerry-rig things you couldn’t imagine, and at the end of the day this moment and this laughter keeps carries us all through ‘til tomorrow.

peace.

epic update

Well as usual when I get around to posting, I have more to say than I can articulate. This time is no different…

Jill arrived just in time for Christmas, as she was delayed for about a week due to the storms in london or something. She got in late on christmas eve and was the best christmas present ever. We spend christmas in dar, then headed south to stay in my village for a while. It was so amazing having someone from home experience a piece of my life here with me, and showing her my village was so fun. We spent the majority of the days running a makeshift daycare, and between the soccer ball she brought me and the coloring book I found in dar, we were quite the entertainers. Only a few days had passed when we were caught in a ‘safety and security’ issue. After a few days in Songea with the lovely ms. veronica, we left for dar to sort out some details. Jill was able to continue on her trip, and a few days later she left for Malawi to visit another Peace Corps friend, then on to Zimbabwe and South Africa. She left in the one bus line she had heard interesting things about, but (eventually) made it safely:) I remained in Dar while peace corps continued to check on the situation in my village. On January 4th I was informed that I had two options – to take an interrupted service and return to America, or transfer to a different village, returning to my village was not an option. I was absolutely heartbroken. I had dug my heels in there, formed amazing relationships and started projects with motivated people who wanted to improve their lives and the lives of others. I remained in denial for a good amount of time and tried time and time again to convince peace corps that it was fine and I needed to go back. Being the incredible staff that they are, they provided continuous support to me, communicated with my villagers, and listened to everything I had to say. In the end they stood their ground. I asked if it would be okay for me to visit the new site before making a decision and I soon left for a short visit to get more information. The village was Sepuka, about 35 km outside of the town of Singida in central-ish Tanzania. I traveled with Cessie, another volunteer headed back to her site, also right outside of Singida. On the bus headed to Singida she mentioned that it looks a lot like something straight out of The Lion King. She was absolutely right. Huge boulders spot the dry, flat landscape, as grass peeks out of the dirt during the present ‘rainy’ season. Another great friend, Duncan, met me in Singida determined to keep me in Tanzania. We took a bus out to Sepuka the next day and after getting dropped off at the health clinic where I’d live, we spent a good part of the afternoon trying to figure out where the ‘village’ actually was. We eventually found the village center, got lunch and tried meeting some people to get a feel about how it would be. The people weren’t hostile by any means, but they were less welcoming than I would have liked. The area was also so remote, with houses spread in between farms and fields. It couldn’t have been more different that Ngadinda. I left there a little disheartened but after many pep talks from my incredible friends here, and the support of my friends and family back home, I decided to make the move to Sepuka. Still very much in denial about the fact that I was having to leave Ngadinda, and realizing traveling back to my village to pack my things and say goodbye in the 3 hour time frame I was given was going to be too much for me. Enters Sarah. She met me in dar, and endured the long ride down to Songea with me. She held my hand, laughed with me and cried with me as I had to break the news to my Mama, Baba, and closest friends in the village. The dreaded day went as well as it could have, my family, neighbors and friends reassuring me that I’d come to love my new village just as much, had a few laughs, and told me that I better come visit. With my return trip planned for April, we piled in the car and pulled out.

With the events of the past 4 weeks still swirling in my head, and feeling fairly emotionally exhausted, I arrived in Sepuka the following monday, January 24th to start all over again. I moved into a duplex shared by a nurse, her 4 kids, and her house girl. The house is much smaller than my old place, and I have virtually no privacy, which I’m learning I really don’t mind so much. I’m trying not to fall in love with Maria, my neighbor’s house girl, the 5 year old boy with cerebral palsy she takes care of, or the 3 other children - a losing battle I’ve all but surrendered to. I’ve always loved being around people and in this particular situation I’m not keen on hanging out by myself all the time. My new family consists of a 20 year old house girl, Maria, and the four neighbor kids she looks after, Elias (16), Fabia (13), Cesie (8), and Jemsi (5). We all make up a pretty hilarious clan. I’ve wandered around the village a few afternoons, meeting people and getting used to the surroundings, and am still undecided about how I feel about starting work all over again. It seems like an overwhelming task to have all those meetings again, and ask all those questions again, but having done it once and with much better kiswahili skills this time, I’m hoping the process is sped up a bit.

Well that’s quite the update. Be rest assured (grama and grampa) that I’m safe and that peace corps did a great job of responding to the situation and taking care of me and listening to my needs. I’ll post pictures of the new village soon, but in the mean time, here’s my family portrait of me with my mama and baba from Ngadinda. I maybe miss them more that my real mom and dad…

Until next time,

peace

6 months in Tanzania

After being in Tanzania for 6 months now, a lot has changed. Not only can I eat ugali on a regular basis without wanting to scratch my eyeballs out, I can kill spiders the size of my hand, wash my clothes with only two buckets of water, and enjoy bathing by moonlight. I can get through conversations in Swahili, hold a village World Aids day, facilitate a village meeting, and weigh babies at the clinic. I've formed lifelong relationships not only with other volunteers, but with my neighbors in the village, who've provided me with food, family, and more laughter than I could have ever imagined. I'm figuring out what gets me through the hard times, and I'm learning that it's not a trip into town for a cold soda, but a walk down the road to sit with Mama Joshua to cook and just sit. Although at times I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing there, or how to get through an afternoon in extreme heat in another language, at the end of the day when I can look back at the lessons learned and taught, and the laughs I've shared with my villagers whom I didn't even know as of 3 months ago, I'm happy.

We just finished a 2 week training that Peace Corps calls 'In-Service Training', or IST. It takes place after the group of volunteers has been at their site for the first 3 months, in our case we all ventured to Morogoro from our various villages and were so excited to be all together again. There are still 39 of us as health volunteers or environment volunteers, and we're as close as we are strong. The training meant not only to provide an outlet for sharing experiences, hardships, and successes of these first challenging months at site, but gives us a little more technical training on topics such as safe motherhood, chicken projects, grant writing, project design and implementation, language, and making fuel efficient stoves, just to name a few. The second week of the training our counterparts joined us in Morogoro, the person we've chosen from our village to be our sidekick (or sanity) in projects and other work in the village. They learned about Peace Corps, it's history and purpose, sustainability, culture, HIV/AIDS, and how to effectively work with us and support us as facilitators in our villages. I brought my Baba to IST who really is my sanity and my stronghold in my village. He 'gets' me better than anyone, can read my moods and help me get things done. He is incredibly hardworking and respected, and even stands up for me when my mama keeps trying to feed me sardines and village meat. We had great conversations about things he was learning about Peace Corps, understanding my job better, and got really excited about the HIV/AIDS session and says he wants to start teaching about HIV in the village. We devised a plan for the next three months and talked about other potential projects.

All in all IST was amazing, we got to hang out with all of our friends for 2 whole weeks, shared about everything that's going on with us, receiving and trying to give advice, spend way to much money and time at the e-Bar, dance parties that lasted for hours, and were also able to refocus our purpose and get prepared to get down and dirty with some work in the village.

On another note, I'm currently in Dar es Salaam waiting for the arrival of Jill! who is stranded in Ireland or something. I can't wait to show her my life here and I'm sure she'll have some great stories when she comes back! Word is also that she's bringing a video camera so I'll be sure to post some videos too.

One more thing...I remember laughing at people who shared how bizarre it was to go into a grocery store for the first time after spending the last however many months buying food out of a wood cart or a shack, and now I can say that it really was as horrible as they described. I got so freaked out by all the cereal in an aisle and different cheeses that was in a refrigerated case that I actually had to leave the store, the only purchases I was able to go through with were a diet coke and a pack of gum.

merry christmas and happy new year!

me and my baba after a session at IST

the beginning of being a productive volunteer

since my last post, a couple of actually productive things have gone down...
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!