Tatu, Mbili, Moja!

The countdown is on, my time in Morogoro is almost done and it has flown by! Pole sana for the lack of blogging and for the absence of pictures- I now have a special place in my heart for African technology, including the hyper sensitive keyboard I am painfully typing on right now! Work has been crazy busy, which is stressful, exciting, and refreshing all at once. Where did I last leave off?.......Hmmmm.

Well, International Women’s Week, or Wiki Ya Kumuitaifa Ya Wanawake! We had 5 fun-filled days of workshops, performances, sports, parades, and more! The week started off at the Youth Center with a music workshop for 30 participants. It was facilitated by some local musicians as well as some more famous people brought in from Dar. The kids learned about different forms of music and saw some awesome performances by the facilitators. Some life skills facilitation was also included, something that is very much beneficial to the youth here. Tuesday was the music and dance competition where over 150 crowded the Youth Center to watch some amazing performances by the kids. There is some amazing talent here and it was cool that so many of them were rapping and singing about important issues like stigma and HIV/AIDS. Wednesday brought a workshop on gender issues at the Home Based Care department and a bit of a botched sports day. Plans went a bit awry as they so often do in Tanzania and we ended up just chucking water balloons around with the shule kids because of some miscommunications about times and places. Oh well, it was fun. Thursday was actual International Women’s Day and we participated in the municipal march where hundreds of Tanzania women (and a few mzungus!) walked the streets, led by a marching band, wearing matching kitenges and singing. It was really great to see and it was super fun to participate in. The march ended at Jamhuri stadium where there were speakers, dancing, singing, and vendors. Friday we wrapped up with a women’s only day at the Youth Center where we had guest speakers from Dar including a female youth PLWHA, condom demonstrations, and open forum discussions on women’s issues. Overall, it was an amazing week and we accomplished a lot. It was nice to see the community get involved and to make a bit of an impact. After that week it was back to a bit more of a routine for a while until we made our way over to Zanzibar to visit our fellow volunteers…

Zanzibar, what can I say? Wow, so beautiful and so incredibly and unbelievably different from Morogoro- it’s hard to believe it’s the same country! We arrived after a choppy 2 and a half hour ferry ride which we spent freezing in front of the air conditioner (I had almost forgotten what it’s like to be cold!). The Zanzibar volunteers live in a tiny house right in Stone Town across from an amazing little café. Unfortunately, we got rained out of our snorkeling trip (story of our lives in the Uluguru Mountains too!) but we had lots of time to explore Stone Town. And by explore I mean get extremely lost in! The streets are just tiny alleyways that twist and wind all over the place and all look vaguely the same. Definitely a lot to see. And fabulous shopping! I bargained my ass off in Swahili and ended up getting some pretty awesome deals on some souvenirs. We also visited Forodhani which is a night market packed with vendors selling a huge variety of delicious food including Zanzibari pizza (more like a stuffed crepe than pizza), seafood, soup, chipsi, mishkaki (meat on a stick), sugar cane juice, and chai. Sooooo good J It was Katherine’s birthday too so we had a big dinner at their house- cooked by the men!! A rare thing in Tanzania! We also had a night out on the town where we went to a reggae club which was amazing! I wish we had places like that at home- it was outdoors, all reggae music, very chill atmosphere, and the Zanzibari guys were way more relaxed and less creepy than we are used to in Dar! After the reggae joint we went to another nightclub that was thankfully air conditioned. It was pretty much like a club back home but the party doesn’t really start til 2am! On our last day we took a small boat over to Prison Island- um, hello heaven on earth. Secluded tropical island complete with a tortoise sanctuary, ancient prison turned beautiful hotel, white sand beaches, and bright blue water as far as the eye can see. Gorgeous! And I got to hold and feed tortoises! And we pretty much had the entire island to ourselves. Definitely on my list of places I wouldn’t mind returning to! On our ferry ride back to Dar we sat outside and the ride was beautiful. Overall, Zanzibar was amazing and it was super cool to see such a different culture from Moro. I think I prefer to live in Morogoro though and visit Zanzi as a mzungu!

After Zanzi it was back to kazi (work). CIDA basically through a bunch of money at us at the last minute so we’ve been crazy busy trying to spend it all in worthwhile ways. I organized my second Play Day which was excellent, I think surpassing the first in sweetness. It was complete with drama performance, water balloon toss, traditional medicine workshop (just for the “grown-ups”), and a huge lunch. The kids are so amazingly easy to please and they are pretty much the cutest things ever! Next up was a basketball workshop for the kids at the shule and it was beyond fantastic. We brought in the Tanzanian national team’s coach (our friend Obote plays for him, yes connections!) who happens to run an organization called Mambo Basketball that puts on workshops on life skills and basketball training. Perfect! Unfortunately we could only do a 1 day workshop when 4 or 5 days would have been ideal but it was more than worth it. The facilitators were amazing and the kids were so into it. And we got t-shirts (I would say they were free but nothing is free here!).

Next up was a week jampacked with an assortment of workshops. On Tuesday and Wednesday I organized a business workshop for the income generation groups at Home Based Care, which focused mostly on leadership, financial reporting, and marketing. The groups really enjoyed it and the facilitator was very good, athough a little money hungry, but who isn’t? Monday to Friday we held a workshop at the Faraja head office for the Youth PLWHA group. We covered all sorts of topics about health including traditional medicine, HIV/AIDS, testing, stigma, and disclosure. We also covered leadership and goal setting, and then focused a lot on business since the group is interested in starting some income generation projects but they are really (I mean really) in need of some guidance and education. It wrapped up on Friday with our massive Ushujaa kwa Uhai (Courage for Life) day at Bwalo stadium where we had free testing, condom demonstrations, a craft center, sports activities and another music competition. It’s amazing how easy (well, not easy) it is to throw something great together in a short period of time here. Tons of people came out and over 130 people got tested. It was cool to be a part of something like that and a bit of a wake-up call to see how fast a person’s life can change because of a little test. At the same time it is so great to see people empowered to get tested- it is a very empowering feeling to know your status and it really makes you realize that your health is the most important thing you can have. We were also lucky enough to have received our Ushujaa kwa Uhai wristbands from a friend who hand delivered them from China! Every person who got tested received a wristband and an Ushujaa kwa Uhai lanyard. It was a really fun day and we capped it off nicely with a dinner at our new favourite mzungu hangout, the Oasis. It’s an Indian run restaurant/hotel with amazing Indian and Chinese food. Since we’ve had to say goodbye to our fabulous house assistant, Oliva, we have been blowing our budget money on extravagant meals out every day! Love it.

That was technically the end of our work time here but on Saturday we made a trip out to Turiani, a small village 3 hours away, with the drama group where they did a performance at a secondary school. The ride there was by far one of the most entertaining and quintessential “African” experiences we have had so far. We are 30 people crammed into the usual rickety bus meant for far fewer people and the road leaves a little to be desired. Not only is it not paved, it is full of pot holes and largely washed out due to the recent torrential rains (karibu rainy season!). About halfway there, when we have already made it through numerous lakes on the road, we encounter a bit of a roadblock. The road has been completely washed out by a flood (there is now a river running through it) and there is a semi-truck filled with logs stuck in the river and mud. So we all unload from our bus, which has itself become stuck in the nearby mud, and stand to the side (alongside random Masai men who were basically laughing at us) while we watch another semi pull the stuck one out with a chain (it took numerous attempts). Then, after numerous attempts again, our bus finally makes it through the river and all of us passengers wade through and reload on the other side! When we actually got to Turiani it was beautiful. A decently nice school nestled in the mountains run with the help of a Peace Corps volunteer. We listened to some kids perform songs and raps and then watched the drama performances. There was free testing going on too and the day was pretty awesome, although long to say the least, especially since we had gotten up at 5:30am and had had no sleep the previous night due to the dusk til dawn wedding party that our neighbours had!

So that brings us to where we are now- stranded in the internet café chained to computers writing activity reports. However, they were technically due yesterday but we took a much needed (and I think well-deserved) break to finally go hiking in the Uluguru Mountains! I was most definitely not leaving this place until I got up there! The weather gods smiled on us and gave us the only rain free day in a while and our friend Magunda escorted us up. The views were spectacular and the hike was really nice, although it is easy to see why you can not do it in the rain! It took about 3 hours to get to the “top” known as Morningside where we stopped for lunch and took more than a few pics. The way down took about 2 hours and we were all more than ready for dinner at the Oasis after that!

Now we are getting ready to pack up, say some goodbyes, and head back to Dar for what I’m sure will be a thrilling 5 days of “de-orientation,” going over reports and self-reflecting. Blah. It is definitely hard to sum up my experience here so far, it has been a roller coaster with some unbelievable highs and some frustrating and unbearable lows. However, I wouldn’t trade any of my experiences here for the world. Looking into my own little crystal ball I really have no idea what my future holds but I have a suspicion it might include my return to Tanzania.

Now the work is almost done and it’s time for play! A crew of about 10 of us are off to conquer Kilimanjaro followed by a 4 day safari in the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater. It will be interesting to transition from worker/quasi-local into tourist but I am excited to start the next leg of this journey. More to come (hopefully)…