Polepole
Well, slow and steady wins the race (or here’s hoping anyway!) in Tanzania. Life is good but work is progressing quite slowly, as expected. Everyday we face frustrations of partners canceling meetings, showing up late, or not showing up at all. Time is definitely valued differently in Tanzania and things run on a more cyclical relaxed schedule compared to the very linear and punctual schedule we tend to run on in Canada. Hakuna matata, we are adjusting and getting into the flow of Tanzanian time.
A typical day starts, not by choice, around 4:30am when the roosters start crowing. This is about an hour or so after the neighbourhood music finally dies down for the evening. Then we hear the Muslim prayers at 5:00am and children are playing, women are cooking, and people are generally being loud by about 6:00am. We usually have a meeting of some sort in the morning that requires us to leave the house around 8:00 or 8:30am anyways. On Friday mornings we attend the weekly staff meeting at the Faraja head office. For the mostpart we are lost as the meetings are conducted in Swahili with minimal translation, but it’s a good way to pick up some vocabulary. The Faraja office is about a half hour walk (at Tanzanian pace) from our house and it is very close to the shule where we teach ESL, reading, and health classes. We hold ESL classes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for an hour and I teach a reading class every Tuesday and Thursday. Sidenote: If you know anything about literacy or teaching kids to read- let me know! As well, a nurse from the youth centre assists with health classes every Thursday and Friday. The kids range in age from about 8 to 14 and they are all former street children who are preparing to (hopefully) be reintroduced into the public school system. We are also involved in teaching ESL at the Kilakala Youth Centre which is about an hour away from our house reachable by walking, taxi, or daladala. I am not directly involved with these lessons, which happen on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, but it is fun to sometimes go hang out with the youth and make some connections. We're hopefully going to initiate some more projects at the youth centre and do something big there for International Women's Day.
A number of my projects take place at Home-Based Care, which is only about 15 minutes away from home. I have scheduled 2 play days to happen there for children living with HIV/AIDS in March. These days generally involve different activities for the kids (who range in age from infants to early teens) as well as workshops for the caregivers. I’m hoping to have a speaker on psycho-social support for the caregivers as well as a drama performance for the kids. The caregivers struggle a lot with depression and a lack of support, and the kids face stigma and difficulty getting an education. Hopefully I’ll be able to get going on some workshops and projects for the 2 income generation groups I’m working with soon too. I'll be working on marketing, and effective monitoring and evaluation for the Batik group and the group of Community Based Care Givers who sell used-clothing.
We have also learned a bit about the Legal Aid Department at Faraja as well as the Traditional Medicine Department. Some of the departments have some great programs running already, they just need some guidance in terms of monitoring and evaluation, and sustainability. Hopefully we can make some kind of mark here!
As for life in our humble Morogoro home, all is well. We were feeling a lot better once we bought some bleach and went on a sanitizing mission in our kitchen! The food is repetitive but good but all the girls are feeling a little off due to the lack of protein in our diets and the overabundance of starch and deep-fried everything! But overall, we are all healthy and haven’t had to make any more trips to the clinic in Dar. We are getting to know the community a bit better and, even though we still stick out like blazingly White mzungus, we at least know our way around the town a bit more and are establishing some relationships. There are dozens of kids in the neighbourhood that flock to us whenever we’re outside wanting to say hi, play football, read, or just generally hang out with the mzungus! As I sit and type this in our living room there are a number of them with their faces pressed up against the screen of our front window. They are so adorable- they even gave us all new Tanzanian names. My new name is Asha! We’ve also met some pretty cool youths up at the youth centre including a guy named Calvin who is a young PLWHA and an amazing artist. He is friends with Marko and has some really great, thoughtful, and progressive ideas about youth, HIV/AIDS, and incorporating music and art into raising awareness.
We are also looking forward to a visit from our fellow volunteers from Zanzibar maybe next weekend. We will hopefully be able to do a hike in the Uluguru mountains (God knows I need to do something to prepare for Kili!) and a day safari in Mikumi National Park. It’s supposed to be an amazing place to see all the big animals in one day.
Our longer term project goals include some kind of crazy events for the week leading up to International Women’s Day (March 8th) and something for International Water Day (March 22nd). We are kept pretty busy during the work week even though it often feels like we don’t get a whole lot done. We spend most of our evenings watching movies and Grey’s Anatomy DVD’s on our unreliable and sketchy DVD player. On Valentine’s Day we went out for a romantic dinner (6 Canadian girls alone in Africa!) at a hotel owned by a Canadian woman. Even though the power was out it was a nice taste of home to have spaghetti and pizza for dinner! After our dinner we went out to a bongo flava concert at Bwalo stadium. We arrived around midnight and it was 3000 shillings to get in (around $3). They played canned music til around 1:30am when the openers came out. They were some really young Tanzanian guys doing some pretty bad lip-synching but it was okay. Then, just after 2am the main act finally came on. The group is called Wanaume TMK and they are amazing! Apparently there used to be about 30 of them but there were only 8 of them that night. They do bongo flava music which is like a mixture of rap, hip-hop and reggae- and the music carries some pretty good messages about HIV/AIDS, stigma, and political issues. They did lip sync some of the performance but they were dancing the entire time. It was so cool! We headed home around 4am but the party continued without us. Definitely a very different Valentine’s Day!
For now, life is good and there is still so much to experience here. The people, the weather, the scenery, and the culture continue to amaze me. I am so lucky to be here and I just hope that I am able to contribute something meaningful to the projects and people here. At least I know I will be bringing back invaluable knowledge and experience with me when I come home!
A typical day starts, not by choice, around 4:30am when the roosters start crowing. This is about an hour or so after the neighbourhood music finally dies down for the evening. Then we hear the Muslim prayers at 5:00am and children are playing, women are cooking, and people are generally being loud by about 6:00am. We usually have a meeting of some sort in the morning that requires us to leave the house around 8:00 or 8:30am anyways. On Friday mornings we attend the weekly staff meeting at the Faraja head office. For the mostpart we are lost as the meetings are conducted in Swahili with minimal translation, but it’s a good way to pick up some vocabulary. The Faraja office is about a half hour walk (at Tanzanian pace) from our house and it is very close to the shule where we teach ESL, reading, and health classes. We hold ESL classes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for an hour and I teach a reading class every Tuesday and Thursday. Sidenote: If you know anything about literacy or teaching kids to read- let me know! As well, a nurse from the youth centre assists with health classes every Thursday and Friday. The kids range in age from about 8 to 14 and they are all former street children who are preparing to (hopefully) be reintroduced into the public school system. We are also involved in teaching ESL at the Kilakala Youth Centre which is about an hour away from our house reachable by walking, taxi, or daladala. I am not directly involved with these lessons, which happen on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, but it is fun to sometimes go hang out with the youth and make some connections. We're hopefully going to initiate some more projects at the youth centre and do something big there for International Women's Day.
A number of my projects take place at Home-Based Care, which is only about 15 minutes away from home. I have scheduled 2 play days to happen there for children living with HIV/AIDS in March. These days generally involve different activities for the kids (who range in age from infants to early teens) as well as workshops for the caregivers. I’m hoping to have a speaker on psycho-social support for the caregivers as well as a drama performance for the kids. The caregivers struggle a lot with depression and a lack of support, and the kids face stigma and difficulty getting an education. Hopefully I’ll be able to get going on some workshops and projects for the 2 income generation groups I’m working with soon too. I'll be working on marketing, and effective monitoring and evaluation for the Batik group and the group of Community Based Care Givers who sell used-clothing.
We have also learned a bit about the Legal Aid Department at Faraja as well as the Traditional Medicine Department. Some of the departments have some great programs running already, they just need some guidance in terms of monitoring and evaluation, and sustainability. Hopefully we can make some kind of mark here!
As for life in our humble Morogoro home, all is well. We were feeling a lot better once we bought some bleach and went on a sanitizing mission in our kitchen! The food is repetitive but good but all the girls are feeling a little off due to the lack of protein in our diets and the overabundance of starch and deep-fried everything! But overall, we are all healthy and haven’t had to make any more trips to the clinic in Dar. We are getting to know the community a bit better and, even though we still stick out like blazingly White mzungus, we at least know our way around the town a bit more and are establishing some relationships. There are dozens of kids in the neighbourhood that flock to us whenever we’re outside wanting to say hi, play football, read, or just generally hang out with the mzungus! As I sit and type this in our living room there are a number of them with their faces pressed up against the screen of our front window. They are so adorable- they even gave us all new Tanzanian names. My new name is Asha! We’ve also met some pretty cool youths up at the youth centre including a guy named Calvin who is a young PLWHA and an amazing artist. He is friends with Marko and has some really great, thoughtful, and progressive ideas about youth, HIV/AIDS, and incorporating music and art into raising awareness.
We are also looking forward to a visit from our fellow volunteers from Zanzibar maybe next weekend. We will hopefully be able to do a hike in the Uluguru mountains (God knows I need to do something to prepare for Kili!) and a day safari in Mikumi National Park. It’s supposed to be an amazing place to see all the big animals in one day.
Our longer term project goals include some kind of crazy events for the week leading up to International Women’s Day (March 8th) and something for International Water Day (March 22nd). We are kept pretty busy during the work week even though it often feels like we don’t get a whole lot done. We spend most of our evenings watching movies and Grey’s Anatomy DVD’s on our unreliable and sketchy DVD player. On Valentine’s Day we went out for a romantic dinner (6 Canadian girls alone in Africa!) at a hotel owned by a Canadian woman. Even though the power was out it was a nice taste of home to have spaghetti and pizza for dinner! After our dinner we went out to a bongo flava concert at Bwalo stadium. We arrived around midnight and it was 3000 shillings to get in (around $3). They played canned music til around 1:30am when the openers came out. They were some really young Tanzanian guys doing some pretty bad lip-synching but it was okay. Then, just after 2am the main act finally came on. The group is called Wanaume TMK and they are amazing! Apparently there used to be about 30 of them but there were only 8 of them that night. They do bongo flava music which is like a mixture of rap, hip-hop and reggae- and the music carries some pretty good messages about HIV/AIDS, stigma, and political issues. They did lip sync some of the performance but they were dancing the entire time. It was so cool! We headed home around 4am but the party continued without us. Definitely a very different Valentine’s Day!
For now, life is good and there is still so much to experience here. The people, the weather, the scenery, and the culture continue to amaze me. I am so lucky to be here and I just hope that I am able to contribute something meaningful to the projects and people here. At least I know I will be bringing back invaluable knowledge and experience with me when I come home!
posted by Leah | 6:08 AM
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