Back to the Village

Have posted three pictures here of Zanzibar, (this internet cafe won't let me upload any more). The first two are of Stone Town and the second is on Kendwa beach.

Pretty, right?

I got a warm welcome home when I stepped off the bus in Mdilidili two weeks ago and someone shouted, "Mwinyo Kwivava!" Then it didn't feel so special when I talked to Kyler and he said someone had shouted "Mwinyo Kwivava!" when he came off the bus. I guess all white people, whether male or female, really do look the same.

A day after we came back to village Mdilidili was cebrating what is called "Mwenge Day," which is where a torch that has been traveling around Tanzania arrives in the village. It's kind of like the Olympic torch but instead of celebrating athletics and world unity the mwenge torch celebrates drinking. The festivities went on for 24 hours straight. On the bright side, the festival grounds were littered in condom wrappers the next day.

We also came back to find that we have a chicken! She lays 2 eggs a day and is obviously the hardest worker in Mdilidili. Rehema told me that laying eggs is like giving birth...Imagine giving birth twice a day every day! Yikes! In other developments, the dog that lives at our house, Ndizi (Banana) has gotten pregnant, despite our best efforts to teach her about the risks of having sex without a condom.

Our first week back was quite a drag. The schools just decided not to open so we didn't have much to do. Rehema and I stared at each other a lot, I read four books, tried to do sodoku but kept messing up, and irritated the chicken by checking every five minutes to see how many eggs she she had laid.

As I mentioned in my last post, Africa has inexplicably become cold. There are very few vegetables in the village nowadays. However, it's pea season! This means that I eat peas every single day. Peas taste like poison. If there's one good thing about the god-awful food we eat it's that I've lost over ten pounds. I haven't been this light since high school and I'm really excited to go home and fit into my prom dress.

It is also baby chick season! I came back to find the village ringing with a chorus of peeps. They are so cute, but God help you if you try to touch one because the mom chickens are vicious. There's a group of rogue chickens that are always coming into the house uninvited. I'll be reading on the couch and a chicken will walk by and I'll have to chase him out, only for him to walk right back in again.

Another funny thing: Tanzanian names. It seems that Tanzanians name their children the first thing that comes to mind after birth. Some common ones:

Matatizo (Problems)

Problem (just plain problem)

Jumanne (Tuesday)

Alhamisi (Thursday)

Ijumaa (Friday)

Decemba (December)

Novemba (November)

Kwanza (First)

Mwili (Second)

Mtatu (Third....and so on, this should come in handy for our neighbors, who have 27 children)

The people with 27 children, whose mother gives birth almost as often as our chicken, are building themselves are large new house. It is interesting to watch because they create their own bricks using mud and a mold. Dry season is house-building season because the mud bricks need a certain amount of time to dry completely or else they will melt when it rains. The house building is quite a daunting process, but with 27 pairs of little hands you could probably make a skyscraper.

Daily life living with a Tanzanian in Tanzania has been a challenge in itself, though not unlike having a roommate anywhere in the world. The largest area of discontent between Rehema and myself are the cleaning duties. Rehema loves to clean: I even caught her sweeping dirt the other day. I, on the other hand, could care less about cleaning anything. I am often awakened at 7 am out of some fantastic dream about lasagna or cheeseburgers to find her mopping our bedroom floor with what looks like dirty water.

We have some sort of intricate bucket system that I have yet to grasp. Only certain buckets are to be used for cleaning clothes or for washing dishes or fetching water. But I think she switches them around on me because I always seem to be using the wrong one. A few weeks ago I got a horrific stomach flu and could barely drag myself out of bed to puke in the squat toilet. So I grabbed a bucket and put it by the bed. Rehema ran into the room while I was mid-vomit, yelled at me for puking in the wrong bucket, grabbed it out from under me and replaced it with one I thought had been designated only for dishes.

I also manage to screw up the cooking on a regular basis. I feel kind of stupid...I mean, how many times can you mess up rice? But I can make a fire really well now, which will probably come in handy....never.

Speaking of puking, I don't think I've really described my health situation in Tanzania. I've actually been extremely lucky because I have yet to be very sick with malaria or typhoid, (most of the other International - and Tanzanian - volunteers have gotten ill with malaria or typhoid at least once, if not several times). I got tonsilitis on my birthday, but managed to drink a good amount of beer through the pain. Also, (and this is gross) a bug laid eggs in my foot. The bugs are actually little caterpillars called "funzi" and they are quite common. You just have to dig them out with tweezers! I've been careful to wear closed-toed shoes after that.

Another thing about Tanzanians, (and most Africans in general, I believe) is that they are extremely superstitious. I've touched on this before, but everybody, (even Rehema) believes in witches and wizards. If anything bad happens, it's usually because a wizard did it. One of our students has a bad leg and Rehema explained that it was because a wizard had cast a spell on her. In a recent conversation, the Village chairman asked me if we had wizards in America. I was like, "uh...no."

T

hey also are very unspecific about causes of death. Rehema has told me of two people who have died from headaches. In my friend Ali's village, a man died because he was crazy. The village then held a meeting to determine who cast a spell on him to make him crazy. The village drunk stood up and declared that the spell had come from Europe and that they should hang the person who was responsible. At this point, Ali, who is from England, started to get nervous. Fortunately, the village chairman told him to shut up and the whole case was eventually forgotten.

Another friend of mine, Gwen, was just evacuated from her village on Saturday because the local schoolgirls have become possessed. It all started a few weeks ago when young girls began fainting in the classrooms. As the days went on, more and more girls began fainting and going into violent spells. Last week, many of them started attacking people and cows. Gwen had rocks thrown at her and the night before she left, there were eight girls outside her house chanting and screaming. This all seems very salem-esque to me...a case of bored, repressed pubescent girls who are acting out their aggression.

I was hoping to be able to post more pictures, specifically a photoshoot of me in my African outfits that I wear every day, (I look like wallpaper!). However, my verbal descriptions will have to do for now.

Vacation

I'm on the last day of my three or four week vacation. I actually don't really know how long it's been, but I'm headed off to the village tomorrow for my last six weeks of the program. My vacation was pretty good - I had lots of grand ideas about going on safari and seeing Mt. Kilimanjaro but I ended up just sleeping and drinking beer. We first headed to Dar es Salaam, which is extremely hot and malarious. There are lots of beaches, so we rented a banda on the beach, (which is just a hut with a mattress on the floor) and didn't leave for a week. Dar is a little sketchy at times, three people we know got mugged in the space of that week. It is much more modern than the villages, of course, (they have SUBWAY!) but I still couldn't find a decent bacon cheeseburger. Dar is also a big mix of Indians, Muslims and mainland Africans.

We finally dragged ourselves off the mattresses in the huts and took the ferry from Dar to Zanzibar Island. Zanzibar is beautiful, as expected. It is a Muslim Island and was used as a main slave port from Africa to the Middle East and Asia. Like Dar, it has a huge Middle Eastern influence, (it was ruled by a sultan for a while, I believe). Stone Town, which is the port into which you arrive, is incredibly charming. It is a winding maze of tiny streets that looks vaguely European, except for the throngs of vieled women and intricately decorated doors, (Stone Town is famous for its doors). We then got a ride an hour up the east coast to a place called Kendwa, which is famous for its Full Moon Parties. We hitched a lift in the back of a van with two Rasta men who were smoking pot the whole time, (even when we were stopped by the police - "we're all friends here, so they don't care," said the rasta man) a wacky Masaii warrior named Kilimanjaro, and an enormous box of fish.

Kendwa is picturesque: clear turquoise water, white sand, etc. I didn't leave the beach for about a week and a half. We went to the Full Moon Party, which was on the fourth of July. It was basically a big dance party. Supposedly they had midgets doing acrobatics, but we missed that part. Anyway, I'm back in Iringa now, where it is COLD! AH! Who knew Africa could be cold? Hopefully I'll be back within internet reach in the next two weeks when I can have some wackier stories.

Village life, pt. 2

I've just managed to delete all the pictures on my memory card, because I'm an idiot, so there won't be any pictures this time which is sad because we did a photoshoot of me in my various African outfits that make me look like wallpaper. I also have have several pictures of me killing a chicken and subsequently questioning my humanity.

I'm at the start of a four week (!!) vacation throughout the northern part of Tanzania and Zanzibar. I'll document all the fun I'm having periodically so you all can be really jealous. The vacation could not have come at a better time. If anyone is interested in finding out what it's like to go crazy, just go to an African village and become bored. As a fellow volunteer described, "your brain starts to eat itself." If I had spent one more week in the village, I probably would have shaved my head and walked around with a glassy stare in my eye repeating, "the horror, the horror."

Anyway, on a brighter note:
I'd like to think I've become more a part of the Mdilidili community as time has gone on. The villagers have even given me a nickname, "Mwinyo Kwivava," which means "too salty" in Pongwe, the local tribal language. Here's the backstory: The mama that periodically stays at my house was trying to teach me new words in Pongwe. She mentioned "mwinyo kwivava" and I thought it sounded really funny so I just kept repeating it and singing it while dancing around the house. She and the other random people that live at my house were laughing so hard they almost choked on their ugali.
The next day, we had our daily meeting about nothing with the village chairman and the village executive officer. The village executive officer said something to me that I didn't understand, so instead of grinning stupidly like I usually do, I said, "mwinyo kwivava." They roared with laughter and kept saying "mwinyo kwivava" over and over. The next time they saw me, they screamed, "mwinyo kwivava!" and introduced me to their friends as "mwinyo kwivava." During the entire conversation, I just kept repeating mwinyo kwivava over and over again when anybody said anything to me. Everybody thought this was hilarious. Now when I walk down the street, people shout, "Mwinyo Kwivava!" and start laughing. I guess that's ok. The joke has evolved so that now we all shout "mwinyo kwinula," which means "not enough salt," and "mwinyo kwinoka," which means "the salt amount is just right."

Last weekend we held a community festival, (where they made me introduce myself as mwinyo kwivava) to raise awareness about HIV testing. To be honest, the festival really went off without a hitch, except that it started 5 hours late, (but that's ok, I was two hours late). I did a lot of standing around and looking confused, which is my usual job. We invited "Ngoma" dancers, which are traditional dancers. I'm not sure how traditional they really are, since half of them were jumping around blowing lifeguard whistles and the other half were chanting, "teenagers! stop having unprotected sex!"

It's been very interesting to be confronted on a daily basis with the challenges of working in foreign aid in an African country. As a white person, I'm just seen as somebody who will give away money, clothes, food, anything. I have students that come to my house and ask me to pay for their school fees because their parents are too poor. A few days ago a woman with a goiter the size of a melon on her neck asked me to pay for her medical care so she could have an operation. Last week a man came up to me and asked me to help find sponsors in America who would buy clothes and food for his orphanage. I said no. (well, first of all, I said no because this man, while he may very well have an orphanage, is well known as being kind of crazy). I told him to write a grant to a foundation and get the money himself. When I first got here and faced these types of questions I was really disturbed. We had been told not to give money to people, but when $40 can make the difference between whether a kid gets a secondary school certificate and can get a job or if he can't, then what are you supposed to do? If you can make that difference in one person's life, wouldn't it be worth it - more worth it than making the point that white people are NOT banks? I've been realizing that any amount of money I would give or help to give would just be detrimental to the problem. My mom said to me, "if the kids don't have shoes over there, can't we just send them shoes?" But if we sent everybody shoes, then what would happen to the shoesellers whose livelihoods depend on people actually BUYING shoes? Aren't we kind of messing with the natural order of things?

The real problem here is that there aren't enough jobs, (As my mother also wisely said, "It's not like the kid looking for school fees can just work at the local Burger King")...especially those funded by the government. Why aren't people building roads so that it doesn't take 6 hours to travel 60 km? Why isn't there a post office in my village? It seems that there are very few options besides running a shop and working in the farm if you don't have a university education, (and VERY few people have over a high school education).

There is an interesting story from last year about an SPW volunteer from Australia who used his father's inheritance to install solar panels so his village, (which is next to mine) could have electricity. SPW was pretty angry about it because they can't place another white volunteer there again because the villagers would expect something. In fact, Rehema told me that word had spread to our village and when the people saw me they were asking her which gifts I would bring.

more later...

Village Life...

So, I have finally uploaded more pictures! I'll add more in two weeks when I'm back in Iringa so you can get the whole experience. For now, here's the address:
http://www1.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=610376015/a=138243337_138243337/

I'm back from 6 consecutive weeks in the village! Living in an African village is sort of like living in a sitcom. There are so many wacky characters that you run into every day. It's kind of like Twin Peaks, third-world style. We don't have a lady that talks to logs, but we do have a crazy person that runs up and down the main road screaming.

Where to start? well, we're finally getting into the thick of things. I actually started teaching health to both the primary and secondary schools...alone. Rehema had to go home to fill out loan forms for university. She said she'd be gone for 4 days. She was gone 3 weeks. So it was pretty interesting to trudge through a sexual health curriculum in broken Swahili. On my first try, I conducted an hour-long session on "what is AIDS?" to the primary school students, complete with diagrams and posters with copied phrases from Swahili books. At the end, I asked them to write down their questions, (because I'm usually not able to understand them) and half the questions were, "What is AIDS?" So, uh, we're probably going to have to go over that topic again.

The secondary school students were a little more understanding. They all had many questions and were very accepting of my mispronounciation of bodily fluids.

I also managed to conduct a community seminar by myself on using male and female condoms. Our village chairman had organized that all the seminars take place at the local bars...which are basically collections of thatched huts where people drink ulanzi, (bamboo liquor) out of buckets. So, I managed to teach 32 people how to use condoms...and only some of them were totally wasted.

I've also started to teach English in the secondary school to Form 1 (high school freshman). The head of the school has been begging us to do this since we arrived because they only have 4 permanent teachers for 500-600 students. When I asked what I should teach, they just told me, "oh, you know, the students need to know nouns and verbs and stuff like that." So I have a lot of creative license with my lesson plan. They love verb conjugation races and also when I act out nouns and verbs because I look like such an idiot.

Kyler, another SPW volunteer who lives in a village 10 minutes from Mdilidili and who works in the same secondary school, has also begun to teach English. My favorite story of his is when one student asked what the past tense of "lion" was (lioned, duh).

The school is run pretty horribly. The students spend most of the day waiting in classrooms because there are so few teachers. Half of the time the teachers don't actually show up for class - they just give a student their notes to copy on the board so the class can copy from that. There is no accountability for the teachers because the headmaster doesn't care and there's no accountability for the headmaster because nobody ever comes to check up on him. For example, the Tanzanian government requires that all secondary schools teach the students how to use condoms, but the headmaster refuses for us to even talk about condoms because of his own religious beliefs. I showed up one day for class and apparently they had cancelled everything to give corporal punishment to all the students who had been truant that week, (roughly 3/4 of the school). The students would run through a line of teachers who would whip the boys on the behind with a bamboo stick and whip the girls on their hands. In another incident, rocks had been thrown at a teacher's house and they cancelled school for two days to do a thorough investigation. They ended up beating a student until he gave a few names of people who (may or may not) have thrown the rocks. So I'm basically teaching in Guantanamo Bay.

The demographics of my village are very strange. There are millions of children and students, many young people and a gaggle of bibis, (grandmothers). But there are no middle-aged people. My guess is that they are either out working in the fields or they live in faraway villages and send their children to live in Mdilidili because the schools are so close. The bibis are definitely one of my favorite parts of the village. They are so old-school African. They look about 400 years old and wander around barefoot with walking sticks, looking completely lost. None of them has more than three teeth and they wear these colorful pieces of fabric called kangas. Kangas are another very African thing. Women here use them as shirts, skirts, baby slings, headscarves, towels, mops, barf bags, hell, you could probably fry a kanga and eat it if you wanted to. Rehema asked me once if we had kangas in the United States. When I said no, she asked, "well what do women use to give birth?"

That's another question I love:
"Do you have fire in America?"
"Do you have ugali in America?"
"Do you have dinosaurs in America?"

Anyway, back to bibis. The bibis love to party. They are the biggest drinkers in the village, (which is saying a lot because everyone loves drinking here) but that could explain why they seem to get lost in the cornfields so often. They also love talking to me. They stumble up to me and grab my hand and won't let go until they've greeted me about thirty different ways in Pogwe, the tribal language of the region. I always sit in the bibi section when I go to church, because I think it's funny to be a tall white girl in a sea of tiny bibis. I have started to go to church every Sunday because everyone will think there's something wrong with me if I don't. Church is two hours long and it's the only thing in Tanzania that starts on time. It's also a good way to see everyone in the community. I've also recently joined a church singing group. I just kind of mouth the words because I don't know the songs, but I can do the funny dances they do to each of the songs.

This post is only half finished, but I'll be back at a computer in two weeks. Til Then!

I'm back from Kijijini, (village)!!! There is so much to tell, yet so little internet time:



Mdilidili is a twelve hour bus ride from Iringa. It is beautful, but very remote. Our house has electricity, but other than that it's like living in the eighteenth century. We cook on a fire, wash everything by hand, collect rainwater for washing, and boil water for drinking.


Needless to say, I'm terrible at all these things, (Hey! we have machines that do this in America!) My partner, Rehema, has so far only allowed me to wash dishes because I keep using the wrong buckets or pans whenever I do anything else. She told me that I wouldn't make a very good wife. We live with two secondary school girls and another woman just came a few weeks ago and never left. But I like her a lot because she gave me a kitten! I've named the kitten Embe, (mango) because we have a dog in the house named Ndizi (banana) and I wanted to keep with the matunda (fruit) theme. Embe keeps running away to the little store by the side of the main road so every day I have to sheepishly go retrieve her.



We've had a lot of down time in the village. I spend most of it trying to translate a Swahili pamphlet on puberty, so I've become comfortable speaking only in conversations that involve reproductive organs. We've been required to meet will the bigwigs of our village, (the Village Executive Officer and the Village Chairman) in order to start planning educational activities in the community. I spend a lot of time in the meetings saying "what?" or spacing out because I can't understand anything. The VEO and Chairman also start drinking at noon, (they keep asking me to try beer with them) and I've concluded that the Chairman has fallen in love with Rehema.



Despite their sketchy work-hour activities, the VEO and Chairman seem generally supportive of our program. They routinely show up two hours late for meetings or don't show up at all, but that's the culture here. There is no such thing as an appointment, so it is very difficult for anyone to accomplish anything. Besides, people live so far away from each other that they can walk for several hours to attend an hour meeting.



We also work in the local primary and secondary schools. The primary school staff has been very supportive of our work. They've even encouraged us to talk about condoms! The primary schoolchildren are lovely. One of them brought us a bag of fruit and beans to welcome us to the village. Tanzanians are big into sharing, even if they have nothing. They say that if they give the little that they have, God will bless them with even more, (Though I'm still waiting for God to bless me with those 4 AA batteries I gave to Rehema last week).

The poverty is very evident. Most children do not have shoes and their school uniforms are dirty and ripped or about 11 sizes too big. Having no shoes is a huge problem because little worms can get into their feet and cause them to become deformed. Many people end up having trouble walking.

The secondary school has been a different story. The headmaster is very Christian and seems to be unhappy with our presence. First he told us that he had no idea we were coming to the village, then went on a tirade about how we should never talk about condoms and lied to us about the number of teenage pregnancies they had last year, (there were 18, he said there were 3). We finally got him to agree to a day when we could pick peer educators and when we arrived he told us he had "forgotten" about us coming and refused to let us talk to the kids because they were involved in "Environmental Cleaning and Farming Day," which is where they give everyone a hoe and send them out to the fields.

The school system in Tanzania is an unbelievable mess. The test given to pass from primary school to secondary school eliminates almost half of all students. When they get to secondary school they start to learn English and are supposed to be taught completely in English. This rarely happens as most of the teachers don't know English themselves. At the end of secondary school they must take a test in order to get into levels 5 and 6, (Tanzanians have basically an extra two years of high school and most of the time it is at a boarding school far from home). The test is completely in English, so most students cannot understand the test itself. On top of that, the questions are created by Tanzanian English teachers who cannot speak English themselves, so the questions can have multiple right answers, no right asnwers, or don't even make sense. The failure rate is so high that the government has lowered the passing grade to 30%.

Even FURTHER, if you manage to graduate from level 6, (which is where my partner Rehema and the other SPW Tanzanian volunteers are right now) you must take another test to apply for university. Rehema is awaiting her results, which should be ready next week. She has been very nervous about it even though she thinks she did well. But that's not the problem. Apparently the people who grade this test are drunk all the time, so whether you pass or not depends on whether the grader can see straight when he's marking your test.

Which leads us to drinking, which is another huge problem. Many of the villagers cannot afford beer or Konyagi so they drink "ulanzi" which is a homemade bamboo alcohol. Though I haven't noticed too many drunk people in my own village, some of the other SPW volunteers have told me that EVERYONE in their village is drunk all the time, including the Village Executive Officer, Chairman, and even the teachers, (before and during school!). However, every single day I'm offered bamboo juice from random people on the side of the road. (For the record, it supposedly makes white people violently ill).

On the up side of things, I did my first male and female condom demonstration. It was done in a mud shack with no electricity and we used a banana and a toilet paper role for the penis/vagina, respectively. We were training our Community Action Group, (CAG) which are 16 handpicked people chosen to help organize educational activities for the community. Of course only 5 people showed up, (2 hours late) and they promptly invited me out for bamboo juice afterwards, but they did seem generally interested in the presentation as it was happening.

In other wacky news, they found a female wizard in my village. Apparently someone found a woman lying on the road, screaming, just wearing underwear. They brought her back to the hospital where she started speaking "her own language," that nobody could understand. Rehema told me that the wizard has killed lots of people before, but I'm not sure how anyone would know that if they can't understand her. I'm pretty sure the wizard is just a lost SPW volunteer.

Also, it rains at least 7 hours every day. This is good on the one hand because we don't have to go fetch water from the faraway pump. Though one day, when it didn't rain, Rehema and I went to fill our buckets. All the women here carry things on their heads. They are amazing. They could carry a bundle of sticks, a bucket of water, four babies and a pot of ugali on their heads at one time without using their hands. When I first arrived in village, a ten year old girl grabbed my 25lb suitcase from me, plopped it on her head and started walking away. Rehema, always trying to make me better wife material, insisted that I carry the bucket on my head. I could barely stand up with it so they gave me a small bucket and only filled it halfway. As I walked back to the house, people stopped and stared and pointed at the stupid white girl who was stumbling (and soaking wet by that point). It was humiliating. Like middle school all over again.

The rain also creates mud, (matope - this is my most oft-used word in village). Everyone is always falling. It's like some slapstick African comedy show.

We finished our work early so a few volunteers and I got the chance to travel to a place called Matema Beach, which is on the northern tip of Lake Malawi. It was hell to get there, but it was one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. There are big green mountains, (the Livingston mountains, named after the guy who got lost in Africa for decades a few centuries ago) which go right down into the water. The lake is enormous, like the ocean, but it's so warm that you can swim at night.

Our journey was insane, but that's just the fun of being in Africa. It took us 9 hours to travel 30 miles. For 5 of those hours I was sitting on tire in an insanely crowded daladala being driven by a very drunk man. The driver at one point turned around in his seat to touch my friend's long hair and drove off the road, sending parcels on top of the daladala flying into the forest. At another point, we came across an enormous hole in the middle of the road. Tanzanians, being as they are, just filed out of the bus, (tossing babies to strangers from windows, strapping chickens to their backs) and walked around without blinking. The drunk driver then floored the daladala into the mud around the hole, where it tipped to a 45 degree angle, but miraculously righted itself. Then, without incident, babies were tossed back in the windows and everyone got right back in. Five minutes later we stopped at a town for twenty minutes while the driver had another liter of bamboo juice.

I think I've rattled off on most of the highlights (and lowlights). I'm leaving to go back to village tomorrow at 4 am (ugh) and probably won't reach a computer for another month. We have a meeting in Njombe on my birthday, may 26, so I'll get to the internet by then. Hopefully my birthday won't be spent in a a crowded bus with a terrified baby on my lap staring up at my white face, (they look at us and start crying) but I've got a pretty strong suspicion...

Ludewa

We finally got our placements last night. I will be going to a small village called Mdilidili in the very southern district of Ludewa. It is one of the furthest placements from Iringa town, (6-8 hours by daladala) and is placed right near Lake Malawi, which is supposed to be beautiful. I've also heard that Ludewa is the hottest of the Iringa region districts which means that I'll probably get lots of malaria. There is a rumor that my placement does not have electricity. Of course, like everything else in this country, I won't know exactly what's happening until I get there.

My Tanzanian partner is named Rehema. She's 21 and from a city called Mbeya, which is west of here. I don't think she was overly ecstatic to be partnered with me but that's too bad cuz she's stuck and now we're going to be best friends. And hopefully she'll cook everything. During a bonding session after the partner selection I allowed Rehema to paint my nails with this dark red-brown stuff that all the Tanzanian girls use. It turns out that is is henna, which doesn't come off nails or skin. She got it all over my fingers and now I look like I have some sort of disease. Everybody's been commenting on how ugly it looks.

The past two weeks of training have been useless, to say the least. We learn things like the definition of self-esteem or "resource mobilization," when they really should be teaching us how to dig our own toilets. We also have a lot of group work, which consists of one mzungu, (me) and six Tanzanians. They all speak to each other in swahili while I pick at my nails and then they hand me a piece of paper with nonsense English phrases and tell me to present to the rest of the class. I tried to present about Non-formal education techniques (in Swahili!) yesterday and just ended up talking about how I hated ugali.

A few days ago I got into a heated discussion with several Tanzanian boys when we we were told to advise a 16 year old girl on how to deal with her sexual desire. The boys kept suggesting that she fill her time with "sport and games" or join a math club because 16 was way too young for thoughts of that nature...No wonder this country has a problem...and to think that these are the kids that are supposed to be the sexual health advocates!

I'm looking forward to village since I will only have to live with one Tanzanian instead of 40. One of my roommates gets up at 6am, turns on the light and starts singing. She also asks me every morning if I've showered yet, (Tanzanians bathe at least twice a day but they still manage to smell bad...forget HIV, the real public health crisis here is the lack of deodorant). But I'm sad to leave the other mzungu (white) volunteers. We have all become a tight-knit family and it's going to be difficult to live without a sounding board...

This will probably be the last post I'll be able to write before I go to village, since I leave next Friday, AHHHH. So you might not hear from me for a month or so. I'll be back here on April 12th or 13th. Also, my address in the first post will be my address for the entire time I stay here, so please go ahead and sent letters if you'd like.

Ipogoro

I'm finally back at a computer. Thank God.

This week we started our teaching training. On Sunday night we were shipped out to a part of Iringa called Ipogoro, which, I'm guessing, translates directly to "hell." We were introduced to 80 21-year old Tanzanians and told that we have a week and a half to find one who we will live with and work with for the next six months.

This is probably the most difficult part yet. It's very hard to find a new best friend in ten days, especially when there is a significant language barrier. It's like speed-dating. The Tanzanian volunteers do speak English, but they get tired after 10 hours of school and just want to speak Swahili and we get tired and just want to hang out with people we know. We are crammed four to a tiny room, (two international volunteers and two Tanzanian volunteers) and among the four showers and two toilets, (which are also showers) only one has a door. This doesn't seem to bother the Tanzanians, who wash freely whereever they can get a bucket of water, but in the morning there's a 10-person line of white girls waiting for the shower/toilet with the door.

Fortunately, I've come to find that most of the Tanzanians are very sweet and open. I'd probably be happy living with any number of them. I've had to push myself to be as social as possible, even when I just want to curl up under my mosquito net and read the January issue of Marie Claire for the eighth time. As the week has gone by I've gotten much more comfortable. We all sing and braid each others hair. It's like camp!

Most of the Tanzanian volunteers are from large cities and good schools, so they have pretty worldly views, (though a lot of them still think you can get HIV from kissing and that homosexuals don't exist).

Our training is interesting, to say the least. We have been told that we have to be incredibly careful about what we do, say, wear, etc. Apparently Tanzanian villagers are huge gossips and if you do anything wrong the whole town will know about it. Since we're teaching about HIV/AIDS there are about a million things that could potentially go wrong. We've been told to concentrate heavily on abstinence. If you run into the village ranting and raving about condoms and burning your bra they will cut off your arms. Like, really.

We also have to teach lot of female empowerment. Polygamy is pretty common in the villages, as is female circumcision and widow inheritance, (if the husband passes away, his brother inherits the wife). And as I've said before, women are very much seen as second-class citizens.

Next Wednesday I will find out who my partner will be and to which village I will be going...and in two weeks I will be shipping off! I'm really excited even though I'm fully aware that it is going to be extremely difficult. I barely know Kiswahili and nobody in the village will speak English. Not really sure how this teaching thing is going to turn out, but it's been done before so I have some faith.

In other (gruesome, so be warned) news!
Last Friday, on our last day of Kiswahili, we all went to our teacher's house to learn how to cook Tanzanian food...and we killed a chicken! Don't worry, I videotaped it so you can see it later. Ali, another volunteer, was the murderer. To kill a chicken, you have to step on its wings and legs and basically saw the head off. And it really does move around for a long time after the head comes off! The disembodied head even let out a little squawk. We were all screaming and jumping around and talking about how sick we were. After the body stops moving, you have to put it immediately in hot water and pull the feathers out. It's not difficult - kind of like plucking your eyebrows! We then learned how to disembowel it, cut it up, and fry it. It was delicious.

Also, last weekend we went on Safari in Ruaha National Park, which was beautiful. We saw so many giraffes and zebras, a few baboons, and three lions. Ruaha is supposed to have the largest elephant population in Tanzania, but we didn't see very many. I'm not sure where (or how??) they were hiding. We got really close to the lions, which was a little scary because the female was crouched down like she was about to pounce on us. But then, just like a housecat, she lost interest and got up and walked away. Our guide, Michael, was a little off his rocker. He would get out of the car and throw sticks at the hippos to get them to come out of the water. Hippos are really bitchy and they kill more people than any other animal in the bush.

I must get back to Ipogoro because our authoritarian supervisor won't let us offsite for more than four hours. We are scheduled to do something called a "Gender Roleplay," which makes me a little nervous.

Until next week...