besos!!

Earthquake

2010-01-23T14:49:00.003-05:00

Thank you so much for all of your emails, facebook messages, wall posts, and calls to my parents over the past weeks. I very much appreciate your concern and it meant a lot to me once I was able to get online last week to feel your care.

The earthquake itself was very scary, but our school, the volunteers, staff, and all of our students fared relatively well. Several students were injured when walls around the perimeter our property fell, but they were immediately rushed to the hospital and are all recovering quickly. The worst part for us has been the staff and students' losses, both of loved ones who were in buildings that collapsed as well as many homes that were destroyed.

We spent the first week following the earthquake kind of like an IDP camp of sorts, cooking and serving two hot meals each day to the more than 400 people (students and their families as well as people in the surrounding neighborhood) who took up refuge on our soccer field. We pulled mattresses and blankets onto the field for people to sleep there, as there were originally questions about the structural integrity of our buildings after the earthquake.

Early this week, we had several engineers check out our buildings and they all declared them safe, so we began a slow transition back to school-mode. Since nine of the teachers at Louverture Cleary school are US American volunteers like myself, we were able to begin some abbreviated and low-key classes on Tuesday. I spent each of my science classes discussing earthquakes, building safety, evacuation safety, and fielding lots of questions. I also asked the students to write reflections on returning to class and we had discussions about their feelings, which are very mixed...some are glad to return to class, some are hesitant but understand its value, and some are opposed for varied legitimate reasons. For now, we are trying to do what seems natural and good for the kids, who have now returned to the buildings to sleep. Many students have returned home to be with their families in the city or the countryside for awhile, but there is a core group of about 100 who have no place to return and so are staying at the school even through the weekend (usually all of our students go home on weekends).

We are mixing class with tangible service at organizations in Port-au-Prince where we can be useful. On Wednesday, three students and I spent the day with the nuns of the Missionaries of Charity, where they had set up a makeshift clinic under tarp. We spent the day with Haitian and US American volunteer physicians, cleaning and bandaging wounds, translating, and helping people onto buses to get to a hospital in the Dominican Republic. Then on Friday, I took three other students to Food for the Poor, where they spent the day translating for volunteer Jamaican doctors who spoke English but not Creole. Especially for the older students, it has been very important to them to be helpful outside of school to those who are suffering.

Many of you have queried about how to help, both specifically at our school and in Haiti in general in the wake of the earthquake. The big need for now is definitely money, as the most needed items in my experience are diesel fuel, gas for stoves, and bread, which really cannot be sent. If you are interested in direct relief, I would suggest Catholic Relief Services or the Red Cross...I have seen and heard about both of these organizations doing good things in the city. However, I would definitely encourage you to consider making a donation to the Haitian Project to support Louverture Cleary School. Our school's mission has always been "We are ready to rebulid Haiti, are you?" and now we are embracing that in an even more tangible way. In order to move forward, Haiti needs talented, educated young people who are dedicated to working and improving this country...which is exactly the profile of our graduates. The cost of running our school has definitely increased in the wake of the earthquake, making donors even more essential to our continued existence. In addition, we are greatly increasing our community outreach programs, employing even more people from the neighborhood to help rebuild our walls and cook for our students, feeding more children and adults in the neighborhood than ever before, and we have plans to go out into the neighborhood with groups of students to help rebuild houses that collapsed in the earthquake. While direct relief is assuredly important, our school will continue to serve Haiti long after other organizations have left once the immediate need for food and lodging has been met, making your donation meaningful in a lasting way.

Thank you again for all of your warm wishes and for all of your generous donations thus far to the Haitian Project and other organizations in Haiti. If you would like to get weekly email updates from the Haitian Project or want to organize a larger fundraiser for our school, please email our Director of Community Development, Elizabeth O'Connell (e.oconnell@haitianproject.org), and she will help out. To make a donation, you can send a check for The Haitian Project to:
The Haitian Project
P.O. Box 6891
Providence, RI 02940

Or you can donate online via the Haitian Project website (http://www.haitianproject.org/donate.htm). Either way, let them know of your affiliation with me so that they know how you heard about us!

Thank you again for your thoughts and prayers in this difficult time for Haiti. As always, I would love to hear from you! Eventually, I hope to put up photos here...it is unfortunately not working now.

What happened in September?

2009-12-27T16:07:00.008-05:00

Good question! Yes, clearly I have not posted in months and people are writing friendly reminders to do so on my facebook wall and my father is making not-so-nice threats about updating now that I am home for winter break. The thought of explaining the last three months in one enormous post is a bit too overwhelming for me, so I am going to break it up by month and share some (hopefully) entertaining and relevant stories, experiences, thoughts, and photos from each.

My last post was a week into the school year; I have learned a lot about teaching since then. My biggest shift in mentality has been really embracing the idea that it is much preferable to teach a smaller amount of information well, so that the students really get it, as opposed to trapsing through some predetermined amount of material and losing the majority of the kids as you go. In September, I did not understand this. And you might say my ambitions were a little too high. It is my Twazieme plant biology class that first taught me this. The combination of personalities in their class makes them more inclined to have loud conversations in Creole across the room with each other than to listen to my lectures. At first, I was kind of treating the learning and the discipline as separate issues, which worked okay. Then, once teaching began to get a little bit easier, I started really trying to get to all the kids in my presentation of material and incorporated more warm up activities, partner/groupwork, notebook work...and it really worked! The majority of the Twaziemes are now actually wanting to and believing that they can learn when they come into my class, the superfluous talking has stopped, and a lot of them are a lot more excited about biology. That class is probably my biggest improvement. Really thriving with them was more of an October accomplishment though.

My favorite class from the start was (and probably still is) my Senkyems. They are the youngest group I teach, and little kids (11 - 13 year olds) are much more cute and charming than teenagers, even when they are doing the exact same annoying things haha. They originally impressed me a lot with their inquisitiveness about science...a few weeks in I started suspecting that they realized I could not resist answering their great questions and some of them were playing the "distract the teacher from the topic at hand and we won't get through the lesson!" game, which I was also very guilty of in high school. (I later made an "on topic" rule about questions which works better.) This class is interesting because sometimes I have a translator, and sometimes not; they have only been at the school for a year (and a half, now) and so they are in the midst of actually learning English. Class is probably more interesting without a translator, as I resort to creative tactics like drawing pictures on the board and making ridiculous motions with my body when I forget to bring a French dictionary.

Hmmm...it is hard to remember times without weather indicators; it has been basically 82 - 90 degrees F since my arrival. I think in September Corey, Meg, and I started going to the downtown clinic run by the Sisters of Charity on Saturday mornings. I have now cleaned out more festering wounds than I ever imagined, mostly leg ulcers due to untreated diabetes, but some crazier things, too. The sisters are hilarious. Sometimes I would help out in the "pharmacy" (where they distribute free medicine to sick people) and they would test my Creole by sending me to talk to patients and telling me to get them things in Creole. After my first couple of times at the clinic I was pretty motivated to improve my Creole...unfortunately, that excitement has since abated.

One final point of interest is the work that we began on Rue National 3, the nearby national road near our school. When I first arrived in Haiti, one of the most disconcerting things was the huge amounts of trash piled on the sides of the roads. Rue National 3 was no exception, with things like plastic bags, bottles, old clothes, food wrappers, shoes...really anything you can imagine...all strewn on the sides of the road. In some places, it was literally deeper than your ankles. Since there are no major construction projects going on campus, cleaning up this road became our major project. Taking about 120 students out to the road each day, picking up, raking, burning, burying, and carrying trash back to campus, we have actually made a huge change in the stretch of road near our school. Not only are the 5 miles around our school unrecognizable from their current lack of garbage, we have also made an impact on the community. People often stop in their cars when they see us picking up the trash, asking what we are doing and/or thanking the students for their work. Some people from the neighborhood now meet us out on the road each afternoon to help clean up. We also painted large signs on the roadside asking that people do not dump their trash there, and the signs or the example of our students picking up the trash or most likely the combination actually seems to have worked, as the amount of trash now present to pick up each day is tiny and we have to keep going further and further to find it. Below are some photos of students doing Rue National 3 clean up!

Elev yo la!

2009-09-19T09:20:00.003-04:00

School started on Tuesday! It has been great so far…the whole feel on campus is different; busy and colorful and always a dull roar outside. Walking around, I am accosted by continual greetings of “Good morning/afternoon, Ms. DeAgostino”. Learning names is overwhelming and the students expect that you should know their names after hearing them one time. My largest class is 30 senkyem students (8^th grade), and I have no idea how I am going to learn all of their names, yikes! I made them some desk name tags so hopefully those will help me out. Their English is not stellar so we have been going very slowly/using a translator sporadically. Luckily the class is a very basic introductory science course with a smattering of many topics in not much detail, so we will be okay. Overall, I LOVE teaching. Standing up in class talking for 80 minutes during double-periods is quite tiring, however. It makes me hungry. One of my favorite parts about teaching is actually the planning and the organization between classes. Thus far I have really been pouring myself into it, using any and all free time to hash out details of specific lessons and plan overall units with objectives and methods laid out weeks in advance.

The students leave every Friday afternoon, so campus is quiet again now. I think the weekends will be a much needed respite, especially as the year goes on. I am living in one of the girl’s dorms with another volunteer (since there is not enough room in the volunteer house for all nine of us), and this makes things a little bit awkward with the students who live there. Not having a place to retreat away from the eyes of my students is not ideal, and the girls also use up the running water very quickly so I have been taking bucket showers all of this week. It is funny when I show up back at the dorm at 5:30 am after running and the girls see me all sweaty and dirty and think that I am crazy, haha.

And now, an appeal…this year the school is having a lot of financial trouble mostly because of the US economic problems. Many less people are donating and are donating less money. Louverture Cleary School is dedicated to keeping its students through all 7 years of their secondary education and properly feeding them, giving them a strong education and spiritual formation, and instilling in them the importance of hard work. Obviously to do all of these things, donations are imperative; it costs U$950 to house and educate one student for a year. Part of my job as a volunteer is to raise money for the school, and so far as a group we have not raised many funds. I am sure this is because people in the states are struggling themselves somewhat, but I would urge you to think about making even a small donation to help the school and support the work I am doing. Without generous donors, the school could not function…and right now LCS is one of the few bright spots in Haiti, a place of hope where the children of Haiti learn that they can change their country. Please check out their website (http://www.haitianproject.org) and make a donation, even if it is small. I would very much appreciate it, and the students here would even more so. Donations can be made online or be mailed to: The Haitian Project, P.O. Box 6891, Providence, RI 02940. If you have an idea for a fundraiser or would like someone from the Haitian Project to come talk to a group, feel free to call Elizabeth O’Connell, Director of Community Development, at (815) 484-8623 or email development@haitianproject.org. You can also let them know your connection to me so that your thank you note will be personalized!

Mesi anpil!

Moun bel yo

2009-08-30T18:32:00.002-04:00

Bon swa (good evening)! Exactly 3 weeks in Haiti now…they have not exactly flown by, but we have been super busy so there really is not time to be homesick. Today some of us took a car ride up to a quite nice suburb of Port au Prince to pick up a couple of the director’s kids from some family friends’ house and were fed chocolate truffles and cupcakes; it made me pause and realize that I had not had any chocolate in three weeks. And it was gooood. This morning was pretty amazing food-wise actually, as we went to Mass at a nearby seminary celebrated by an Italian priest who then shared some homemade gelato with us afterward, yum!

Because we have been working so hard during the week (this week featured me wielding a pickaxe and a machete), the weekends are a much looked forward to event. The only jobs are cooking and kitchen clean up on a rotating basis, and otherwise we are free to do pretty much anything we want. This weekend was the best yet for sure. Friday afternoon most of the volunteer yo and some of the Haitian staff played sport together for a long time. It was hilarious trying to convince some of the young Haitian women that they would not die if they ran more than two laps around the basketball court. I was surprisingly decent in the following pickup futbol game (and I have not played any sort of soccer since 6th grade), and then Jon and I won in a game of half court 2-on-2 basketball that was relatively intense under the beating sun. Yesterday I successfully did all of my own laundry for the second time – finished before 9 a.m. – got some more lesson planning done, busted out Betsy’s water weights for an afternoon workout, and officially received my first Haitian sunburn after sitting outside reading for about an hour. My arms are already browning up nicely, but my legs are still tomato colored, unfortunately.

I have been getting a lot of reading done here. So far the pace of life reminds me of high school (which maybe makes sense since I am working at a high school?) when I put in a reasonable amount of effort and did my work well but always had plenty of time for things like eating and exercising and reading for pleasure without ever feeling guilty about not studying. Lavi se bel (life is beautiful). So far I have read The Uses of Haiti (Farmer), The Botany of Desire (Pollan), Sense and Sensibility (Austen), Night (Wiesel), Blink (Gladwell), and am almost finished with The Sparrow (Russell). I think I am going to tackle Atlas Shrugged (Rand), which should slow me down a bit. The jokes about my ridiculous reading speed are already rampant…I had forgotten in college how fast of a reader I am because I never had time for non-school books.

Last night I was invited over to Patrick’s family’s home (the director and his family who live right across the road from the school campus) to meet some alumni of the school. There were four grads total, two of them were physicians, and they were all good natured and fun to be around and successful and completely fluent in English. It was quite inspiring to see the long term results of being educated at this school. One special thing about LCS is the scholarship program that they offer to graduating students, paying their tuition for college or professional school – all four of these young men had received a scholarship after graduating 10 years ago. The scholarship program is in a period of expansion right now, with the goal of sponsoring 150 graduates every year by 2011. I spent time talking with the doctors, who were great. One is simultaneously the director of a hospital in a rural part of Haiti and is working on his MPH (Master’s of Public Health) and the other is working for a French non-profit group that sends physicians to especially violent and war-torn areas; apparently they are leaving soon since Haiti has become relatively stable (good news).

I was pretty successful in lesson planning this past week, but I still have a way to go. Other highlights of the past week include killing a tarantula that I found in our room (actually less gross than the cockroaches, in my opinion), micromanaging students who are sent to the school to help clean up the grounds (seriously, if you turn around for one second they stop working…teenagers), and a sobering visit to a local orphanage run by the Missionaries of Charity (it was wonderful to hold babies and play with young children, even though the situation was sad). Also, the phone is apparently fully functional so if anyone wants to call next weekend email me and I will send the Rhode Island number!

Ayiti, cheri

2009-08-20T22:36:00.001-04:00

A little over a week has gone by since I arrived in Haiti! The flight down was uneventful and blessedly short compared to trips to Tanzania. I was surprisingly far underweight for my two checked bags (my Dad would be proud), which at first worried me a bit but after living here for a week I think I probably did manage to bring most of the things I might want. When we arrived Sunday afternoon and drove through the edge of Port-au-Prince in order to get to the school, the roads and the driving were reminiscent of Tanzanian streets with the exception that buildings are much closer to the road and things seem a bit less dusty here in Ayiti. Also, no one is wearing any “traditional” clothes and the U.S. influence in music and dress seems to be greater, which makes sense proximity-wise. After a tour of the school Sunday evening and a late dinner, I moved into my room to find that some others will already inhabiting it. Unfortunately, I was not okay with sharing living space with cockroaches, so I had my first roach killing experience within hours of my arrival (after the first week, my count is up to 14…most of those occurred in the first 4 days though). I live with one of the other volunteers in one of the two girls’ dorms on campus instead of in the main building where all of the other volunteers live. Being over here has challenges and perks…but now that we have running water (!!!) I really have nothing to complain about.

We woke up early Monday morning to begin working, which is how we have spent every weekday morning since. At 6 am we gather for morning prayer, then eat breakfast, then begin whatever physical labor needs to get done (so far lots of cleaning, painting, moving rocks, etc.). The group includes 9 volunteers and around 15 Haitian staff…all of the Haitians who live here are great and much more desensitized to U.S. Americans than the Tanzanians I spent time with, so interactions thus far have tended to be more genuine I think, which is refreshing. After work, we eat, then have a couple of hours of Creole class – grammatically very similar to Swahili – then hopefully a bit of free time, dinner, group activities, bed…and then start all over again. Before I got sick, I had been getting up every morning at 4:45 to run around the soccer field and basketball court which is monotonous but makes me feel much better.

The heat has been nice! It has been between 85 – 95 degrees the whole time (maybs a bit cooler at night) but the humidity seems really low and I LIKE the warmth. And I especially like that it is all year round. Around 6 pm it usually starts raining, anything from a light drizzle to an all out thunderstorm – very pretty.

I wasted no time in getting sick, erlack. From Saturday until yesterday (Wednesday) I was vomming on and off…it did not get too bad until Tuesday, when I starting voming uncontrollably; that is when the director over here decided to restrict me to a white bread and Coca Cola diet, which has worked wonders. Today I managed to eat some corn grits for breakfast and some peanut butter for lunch and kept it down, so I am hopeful that will continue and I can be done with being sick in Haiti forever.

School starts in about 2 weeks!! The first year students came for orientation this week, and they were very cute. I found out that I am teaching computers [all grades], Sanciem Natural Science [7^th grade], and Twaziem Biology [10^th grade]…so so excited to teach science! Before I came they were not sure if it would be feasible, but it all worked out. Today we are visiting the book depot so I hope to start lesson planning soon!

Internet access thus far has been less regular than expected...desole (sorry). I think once the school year starts and things are one more of a schedule I will be able to use the nets more often. In the meantime, hopefully I will continue to post a bit, and I would love to hear from you thru comments, email, or snail mail! Hand drawn pictures by children are especially appreciated and will be added to the collection already on my wall (mesi, Nicole!) which has plenty of space for more. That reminds me, children from the neighborhood are often invited into the school to use the playground, and last week I had the opportunity to play with them; very, very cute. The community around the school is very poor (as most of Haiti), but the director and especially his wife do a great job of local outreach so relations seem quite good from what I have experienced thus far.

Barack Obama and Haiti

2009-05-23T22:55:00.010-04:00

I GRADUATED via an exciting ceremony that received national attention. And I was a small part of that...this fox news story was apparently shown around the country as my friend in Albuquerque commented that she saw me on the evening news a couple months ago. Here is the local written report: Fox news report

Anyway, senior week and graduation went by in a blur. Despite my premeditated boycott of most of the planned activities I only managed to get in about an hour of actual relaxation (sitting in the sun reading a book, which cost me my first sunburn of the summer). Thursday started the awards ceremonies and departmental functions which continued through Sunday morning, Friday night my entire family arrived, and then Sunday afternoon was the actual graduation ceremony. Security was a mess...I had to wait in line for over an hour and a half just to enter the ceremony. Luckily I was standing in line with my friend Patrick Tucker, the recently crowned College Jeopardy champion, so he helped to pass the time. While I was not exactly surprised to make it to graduation from Notre Dame, it was still surreal to be sitting in the JACC listening to the President of the US send us off and then bless us alongside Fr. Jenkins.

Graduating may not be surprising, but having definite plans for the next five (potentially six) years is notable. There were times when I seriously doubted if I could have everything figured out by May 15, but I pulled it out. After a long, difficult discernment process I like to call "Vanderbilt vs. Dartmouth" I finally decided that I will attend Vanderbilt University Medical School. They are also wonderfully allowing me to defer matriculation for one year, so I will begin med school in the fall of 2010.

For the next year I will be volunteering as a science teacher at Louverture Cleary school in Haiti through a Catholic misssion called the Haitian Project. It is a rural area just northeast of the capital Port-Au-Prince called Croix-des-Bouquets, about 13 kilometers away. After careful consideration, I decided that now was the best time to actual try living in a developing nation for more than a couple months...I also wanted a life-shaping experience that will inform my medical education for the long years of study ahead. I do not want to forget my committment to global health or lose my idealism prematurely. And I figured this is my last chance to volunteer in a non-medical setting. I am excited to become a physician, but I do have other talents and interests, too, so I am going to use those for a bit. I am going to start looking for donations of lab supplies as the school is trying to revamp a laboratory science program that I will be helping with...any ideas?

I have orientation in early July and then I leave August 9...I will update with new information as I receive it. Haitian Project

"we're doing the best with what we've got"

kwaheri tena

2009-01-12T00:38:00.003-05:00

Kind of a twist on the more common Kiswahili saying of "karibu tena"...actually almost the opposite. I leave tonight and again, it is a mixture of emotions. Even though I was only here for two weeks this time, I miss people at home a lot more. It was kind of a lonely trip this time, doing fieldwork by myself instead of actually teaching. I did very much enjoy spending time with my family here and I met up with many of my Tanzanian friends from last year on Saturday and we had a great lunch together. Two of my favorites are actually dating now, which is exciting! But I am definitely glad to be going home too, back to running water and toilets as usual.

Yesterday bibi (grandma) came over and she thinks I am a riot. She breaks into this huge grin whenever I say anything in Kiswahili to her, which I have to pratically yell because she is pretty deaf. She also falls asleep constantly in her chair while we are all sitting around and talking or whatnot. She is amazing, I wish I had met her sooner.

Back to school, labs, friends, work, research, interviews, boys, running, dancing, and dining halls.

last days

2009-01-10T02:16:00.003-05:00

The new mzungu volunteer, Alice, moved in last night. She is super nice but it was hilarious to watch someone else go through the transition into living with the family that I made last year. I felt a bit sheepish that I may have been ruining her moment or whatever but she seemed pretty grateful that I was there to explain some things. And the kids are very quiet and shy when they meet new people so she felt less awkward having me to talk with at least. It was funny though, we were playing Old Maid with Dorcas, Rachel, and Irene, and they were all sitting very quietly and being polite and well-behaved. Then when Alice went to bed, the radio was turned out, Dorcas started dancing around like a crazy person, there was shouting during the subsequent game of Go Fish, and mama even joined in. Irene made fun of Dory for being not shy once Alice went to bed, then I pointed out that Irene had done the same thing and we all laughed.

Also I should have known better...this is Tanzania...I was not moved into the Harry Potter room. Baba moved into the Harry Potter room and mama moved into the kids' room, and I moved into mama and baba's room! After a few minutes of protesting when I realized what had happened, I quickly realized it was a losing battle. Since it is only for 2 days I let it go. But yikes. Good thing I am leaving Monday or I would feel even more awful!

I leave on Monday...if everything goes according to plan, I will have collected 13 more interviews, bringing my total to 30! It was not easy per se, but definitely enjoyable and worthwhile. I think my thesis should be very relevant.

cheka

2009-01-08T06:26:00.004-05:00

Interviews are picking up! I have done 5 so far, and over the next few days have plans to do 8 more. And they are going very well, getting info that my original data was pointing at but did not necessarily explicitly say. So that front is good!

I also was able to call Fr. Paul’s friends in Arusha, the Krafts, and I might have dinner with them sometime before I leave. I spoke with Mr. Kraft on the phone and he sounded very friendly. Tonight I am going out to dinner with a new group of GSC volunteers who arrived last night as well as the staff at the GSC office (who have been extremely helpful and friendly to me during my stay). The funny part is one of these volunteers is apparently moving into my family’s house on Friday evening…so I am being relegated to the “other” room. I have actually never seen this room, but I think it is a Harry Potter cupboard under the stairs sort of deal. Hahaha, I am excited to see this actually. And Arusha is currently going through a water shortage (no rain in a long time apparently) so there has not been any running water in the house. More the experience that many people probably imagine when they think of Africa I suppose.

I leave Monday and I am already getting sad to leave my family. Maybe it will help that there will be anther mzungu there to distract them. This time though, I am not sure if I will be coming back. Of course I was not sure before either, but at that point I still had very lofty goals of getting my PhD in med anthro and doing my fieldwork in Tanzania. And I still have that goal, but the application process is definitely a huge reality check. And I am no longer certain that I would want to do my research in Tanzania. It is very far away from the majority of the people that I love, and spending years here alone would be intense. Not a decision I even need to think about now. But something that crosses my mind when I think about leaving.

I am so much better at getting what I need/want in Arusha now. I am not sure if that is good or bad. Probably both?

Just labeling this post as winter makes me pause. It is hard to believe it is so cold at home right now.

Halfway done (?)

2009-01-05T05:28:00.001-05:00

One week into my 2 weeks here…not too much has been accomplished. I kind of forgot how pole pole (slowly) things move in Tanzania. I honestly enjoy it a lot once I readjust; Tanzania is really the only place where I do not hate spending time alone, I actually handle it very well here. But the slow pace of life is not entirely conducive to cramming as many interviews as possible into two weeks. The good news is the GSC office re-opened today, so I made it in to reconnect with friends and was able to set up four interviews for tomorrow. Plus I already have two lined up. I was also able to borrow a phone from a friend (I did not really want to pay $45 to use a phone for two weeks), so I am going to text the young people I did not get a chance to interview last summer and ask them to meet sometime this week. Plus I think I will do follow-up interviews with my friends from the summer, since I now have a more directed focus and specific questions to ask. And while I will still use the semi-structured narrative style of interviews, I think I can keep them each to about half an hour or 45 minutes, which will help the transcribing process upon my return.

I did have a crisis of sorts last week when I realized that my Harvard grad school application was due on Jan. 2! Yikes. Luckily I found this random high tech internet café (which serves the multiple purposes of car wash, barber shop, and internet café) right next to the hole in the wall place I usually use. It has 8 brand new computers, fast internet, and 3 flat screen TVs hooked up to Xbox 360s that people can pay to play video games on. Whattt? I do not even know. But I was super thankful it was there as I was able to get the vast majority of the application done. And I hope that will suffice until my return.

I am also happy to have been able to go into the office today because I was able to pick up some books…I only brought three with me from the states, which is so clearly not enough for Tanzania. I have been having a great time with my dadas and kaka this time around, even better than the first. Probably because they feel like I followed through on some unspoken agreement to make sure that we see each other again? Last night we were talking about the various “machines” in America that do a lot of the things we do by hand in TZ – washing dishes, washing clothes, drying clothes…even the fact that we have mops instead of using a cloth to clean the floor. Essentially they were flabbergasted. It is strange that they have hosted so many wazungu (apparently 11) but there are still a lot of things about the states that they do not know. I hope that someday maybe Rachel and/or Dorcus at least could come to the states to visit.

I have also more or less picked right back up with my Swahili where I left off. For some reason (maybe because it is no longer high season for tourists?) Tanzanians now readily assume that I speak Kiswahili as soon as we go through the customary greetings. Unfortunately I have to quickly follow it up with “Ninasema Kiswahili kidogo sana” (I speak only a very little Kiswahili) at which they laugh and applaud my efforts, at any rate.

The food situation is going surprisingly well. Since I am living with my family I obviously cannot refuse food – the original plan was to buy only packaged food and supplement with Clif bars. So instead I am just eating kidogo of their food and then supplementing with bars. Yum. Haha actually we have only had ugali once so far (and now I just jinxed it and we will be having ugali every night no doubt).

I have two interviews this afternoon (if all goes according to plan…you never know here) and then probably another night of “Go fish” with my sibs. It was the only game I could think of that was super easy to understand beyond crazy 8s. Does anyone have any suggestions for other simple card games? Think games for 10 year olds and younger please. And maybe include a description because I might not know it offhand, I guess I did not play many card games as a child (or really ever). Thanks!

Tanzania, part II

2008-12-29T08:22:00.001-05:00

I arrived in Tanzania last night for 2 weeks of follow-up research (mostly interviews). I am staying with the same family I was with during the summer at their invitation. When my flight got into Kilimanjaro an hour late and I still had an hour ride to my family’s house, putting me there at 11 p.m. (I had originally projected 9:30), I was worried for about two seconds that I would be arriving too late and they would have already went to bed. Then I remembered that I was in Tanzania now, when within two hours is pretty much on time. Also, over the summer my siblings stayed up until 11 each night or later, so considering that they are on Christmas break, I figured it was a safe bet that they were still up…and I was right. Despite having to pound on the front gate for five minutes and the subsequent two minutes of unlocking 15 locks or so, my dadas greeted me with hysterical shrieks and hugs when I arrived.

The weather here is GREAT! Mid-80s and sunny, and it smells wonderful. I guess I have not walked by any burning piles of garbage yet though, so my opinion will probably change after that. Driving to my house last night, I fell in love with the stars again. In the states, I live out in the country, so I am used to pretty bright stars. But these ones are amazing and extend down to the horizon which is crazy. Last night, I juxtaposed my experience riding in the taxi with my first arrival in Tanzania and riding in the GSC van. I was probably technically a lot safer the first time, but I felt much more comfortable last night. And the people creeping along the side of the road did not creep me out nearly as much this time.

I will start my interviews soon, using a combination of friends from the summer that I did not have a chance to interview, snowball sampling (asking people I know for people I should interview), and approaching authority figures (teachers, directors of health clinics and HIV programs, etc.). For today I am just going to enjoy the sunshine and play with my dadas though :)

AMCAS Research essay

2008-08-08T14:02:00.001-04:00

Five days before Christmas 2007, I woke up wishing for a stellar final day of my semester abroad in Dublin, Ireland, but I was not expecting the highlight to be waiting in my inbox. When I logged into my email account, I found that I had been selected for an internship with Global Service Corps sponsored by the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame. I sprang out of bed and danced across the hall to my neighbor's room, blissfully singing "I am going to Tanzania!"

From May 29 to August 1 of 2008, I lived in Arusha, Tanzania, interning with the international nonprofit volunteer organization Global Service Corps (GSC). For nine weeks, I worked in GSC's HIV/AIDS education and prevention programs as a teacher for secondary school students and community groups of older Tanzanians. I was especially attracted to this internship due to its relevance to both of my undergraduate majors, biology and anthropology. After participating in immunology research and taking anthropology courses concerning African cultures and varied medical understandings, I was eager to meaningfully combine my dual fields of study by volunteering in HIV/AIDS programming in Tanzania.

Upon notification of my internship, I immediately realized that my time in Arusha was a prime opportunity to undertake research in medical anthropology. As an undergraduate student, I had been attempting to orchestrate research that would synthesize my interests in anthropology and medicine into a single senior thesis project. By volunteering in an HIV/AIDS education program abroad, I would be in the midst of a critical field within medical anthropology, allowing me to not only witness but participate in the response to the HIV epidemic in Tanzania.

While none of the current anthropology faculty members at Notre Dame has HIV/AIDS as his or her particular focus, I took my idea to Professor Daniel Lende, an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology. Professor Lende's research in medical anthropology focuses on behavioral health, particularly compulsive and addictive behaviors. While his research does not address my specific area of interest, I knew from a previous conversation that his experience and knowledge in medical anthropology are extensive and he is exceptionally familiar with current anthropological discussions of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. I also presented my research proposal to the Glynn Family Honors Program at Notre Dame. While the Kellogg Institute funded my trip to Tanzania and internship with GSC, the Glynn Family Honors Program provided an undergraduate research grant to finance my independent project.

Under Professor Lende's guidance, I began my examination of sub-Saharan HIV/AIDS literature in the spring of 2008. While it is well-known that the global HIV/AIDS epidemic has struck sub-Saharan Africa the hardest (over two-thirds of all HIV-positive people reside in this area and it was the site of more than three-quarters of all AIDS-related deaths in 2007), it is less understood that a significant majority of those living with HIV in this region are women. Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, 61% of infected individuals are women. In Tanzania, an apparent disparity also exists between young men and young women's understanding of HIV/AIDS and engagement in prevention behaviors. A recent study showed that significantly more young males than females could correctly identify and had engaged in HIV prevention methods.

In the past, many studies have examined the personal risk behaviors associated with HIV infection, but the cultural and socioeconomic contexts of the virus have been increasingly cited as crucial factors in addressing prevention. Many investigators have correlated high HIV prevalence in females of sub-Saharan Africa to gender-based inequality and violence. A joint study by UNAIDS and UNFPA cites three key factors as contributing to the escalating HIV epidemic in sub-Saharan African women: a culture of silence surrounding sexuality, the prevalence of exploitative transactional relationships and intergenerational sex, and violence against women within relationships. Young women are especially vulnerable to the impacts of gender socialization on HIV prevention, as gendered power imbalances tend to limit their autonomous control over sexual health.

While youth HIV/AIDS education has been a focal point of many prevention programs throughout sub-Saharan Africa, a range of factors (such as low levels of perceived threat of infection, social norms concerning sexuality and condom use, gender inequalities, and economic constraints) challenge the effectiveness of such programming. Another key problem at every level of HIV prevention is a tendency among all people to conceptualize HIV/AIDS as someone else's problem. Although community education is typically held as a pillar of HIV prevention, researchers have pointed to the need to examine the disconnect between rhetoric and the realities of attempting to change behaviors within particular social contexts. Also, the impacts of sociocultural gender inequalities on HIV prevalence in young women and men require much further characterization. Therefore, I decided to direct my research in Arusha, Tanzania toward answering the following inquiry: how do young women's understandings of gender roles and sexuality influence their engagement in HIV/AIDS education and prevention?

Based on my review of recent literature and considering Tanzania's typical socioeconomic structures and cultural norms, I hypothesized that gender inequalities may hinder young women's active participation in community HIV/AIDS education programs and young women may lack the perception or reality of sexual autonomy needed to effectively implement HIV prevention methods. Additionally, I hypothesized that young women in Tanzania may not have a sense of ownership of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, making them further unlikely to engage in HIV prevention.

In order to examine the influence of female conceptions of sexuality on HIV/AIDS education and prevention in Tanzania, I utilized qualitative methods in a dynamic observational multimethod assessment process, including participant observation, interviews, and archive collection. Qualitative methods were particularly useful in my study as this was my first trip to Tanzania, and the active nature of this paradigm allowed me to tweak the project as my research progressed.

During my first three weeks in Tanzania, I taught at a day camp for secondary school students in Arusha. In this time, I focused on participant observation, in particular examining power dynamics and participation differentials between males and females, as well as students' feelings surrounding gender roles and sexuality. I recorded my observations in structured observational checklists and unstructured field notes. I also began my archive collection, seeking out and gathering materials concerning HIV education and prevention in the Arusha area.

Once day camp was completed, I began facilitating GSC's HIV trainings for community groups throughout Arusha. I continued participant observation and also began conducting key informant and semi-structured interviews. Key informants included GSC staff and other youth educators in Arusha, selected for their principle roles in HIV/AIDS education and prevention in the community. Fellow GSC volunteers and, most importantly, young Tanzanian females and males (between 18 and 30 years old) participated in semi-structured interviews.

As my field research advanced, new themes emerged as crucial to the treatment of HIV in Arusha. Specifically, current changes in gender roles and potential shifts in ideas about female sexuality were repeatedly mentioned by Tanzanians in both day camp and community trainings. Interviews highlighted an apparent problem that had not emerged regularly in current literature: a lack of familial ownership of the HIV epidemic. With the family as a key social unit in Tanzania, and youth education crucial to decreasing infection rates, the majority of Tanzanian parents' unwillingness or inability to discuss relationships, sexuality, and HIV with their children leads to a large gap in HIV prevention. I added my observations to interview scripts and observational checklists, making sure to follow the data and include topics that Tanzanians themselves emphasized as important.

Now, upon my recent homecoming to the United States, I am beginning to code field notes, transcribe and code interviews, and organize and code my archive collection. Additionally, I am returning to the literature to further explore shifts in gender roles and conceptions of female sexuality, as well as family dynamics in Tanzania and impacts for HIV/AIDS education. This process will continue into the fall semester of 2008, when I will finish my senior thesis on this research. After its completion, I will present my research at several meetings and will submit my paper for publication to an appropriate anthropological journal. My research should have practical implications for improving HIV/AIDS education in Tanzania, potentially playing a part in alleviating the current crisis. In the future, as a physician and social scientist, I will be able to conduct research in medical anthropology while practicing medicine, enhancing both the immediate and long-term health of communities. My interest in the integration of biomedicine into other traditional conceptions of health plays an important role in the study of sub-Saharan Africa's HIV epidemic, as real change will not be affected until education and prevention programs adequately consider unique cultural contexts.

Re-entry, real life

2008-08-08T13:34:00.003-04:00

I spent my final few days in Arusha scrambling to buy gifts, finishing interviews, spending time with friends, and figuring out how to get to the airport. The last one turned out to be a bust, as I lined up a shuttle that I was going to ride there, only to check back early Thursday morning to find out it had been canceled. I ran around Arusha for an hour or two looking for another shuttle, but apparently there were no others that day that would get me to the airport in time to make my flight (at least none that I could find). I eventually admitted defeat and decided that spending $40 on a taxi for the hour-long ride to the airport was probably worth it to ensure that I actually did make it onto the airplane home. It actually turned out nicely, because my mama knew a taxi driver who let my dada Rachel and cousin Erick make the trip to the airport with me, so we got to say goodbye at the very end. Saying goodbye was awful...Rachel and Erick were both crying, and I was tearing up. I felt guilty too, because while I was very sad to be leaving I also had things and people to look forward to in the states, so I definitely had some positive emotions mixed in with my sadness. But for them, it was just me leaving - nothing particularly good about it. When I got here, there was already an email from Erick making sure that I got home safely. I will miss all of them very much, and hopefully will get to see them again in the future.

The trip home was long: Kilimanjaro to Nairobi, Nairobi to London, London to Detroit = 27 hours total. Plane rides do not really bother me though, and I was especially content because both long flights had personal TVs for each passenger and an array of movies to watch. I arrived in Detroit on Friday afternoon to discover my luggage was missing, which did not surprise me too much. My dad and sister Sarah were waiting for me, and even though I was kind of self-conscious about looking like some dirty wild jungle-woman, I was happy to be home.

Being back in the U.S. is still strange...it has not been especially hard for me to pick back up with my normal way of life, but it makes Tanzania seem surreal, like an elaborate dream. I am having some food issues - not stomach problems, but taste bud problems. It is super weird, they are all ragged and you can tell by looking at them that something is seriously wrong. I think the fact that I ate mostly tasteless ugali, rice, etc. for two months made them hyper-sensitive to more flavorful foods? And I have been eating a lot of textured and seasoned foods that I could not get in Tanzania...now it hurts to eat a lot of things so I am regressing back to bread, cheese, and apples for a few days, hopefully they heal soon.

Meanwhile, I finally submitted my AMCAS application for medical school yesterday! Overall, I am pleased with it and I think it represents my collegiate career well. Now I am studying for the MCAT again, which I am re-taking on August 22 (two days before returning to Notre Dame for my senior year). My first batch of MCAT scores were not awful, but I feel that I can do a lot better so I decided to take the test again. The only downside is that I now do not have much time to spend outside, so my current extremely pale state is probably not going to significantly change. People find it hilarious that I came back from Africa paler than I left. Explaining that it was winter in Tanzania does not seem to help much; after all, it was AFRICA.

As part of my AMCAS application, I had to submit an essay describing my significant research experience for MD/PhD (in anthropology) programs that I am applying to. I am going to post that essay in this blog (see above post) in case anyone who read this over the summer is interested in the specifics of my medical anthropology research that I conducted in Tanzania. Otherwise, feel free to skip it :)

Back-entry...Maasai village!

2008-08-08T11:46:00.011-04:00

This post is a little late, but visiting my friend Isaya's village was an amazing experience that I want to share.

The last weekend before I left Tanzania, I went with some of the other volunteers to Isaya’s Maasai village (Isaya works for GSC, see previous post for more info). After a Friday night of fun with our whole volunteer group and an interesting breakfast at a local restaurant where we were gratuitously overcharged, refused to pay extra and walked out, and then returned and forked over the extra cash because some of us lived in the neighborhood and did not want to be mugged, we were finally ready to meet Isaya on Saturday morning to make the trek out to the village. This began with a packed hour long dala ride to the nearest town where we stopped and got some food – I had chai and a donut for 50 cents. Over lunch, Isaya taught us some basics of Maa, the Maasai language which is still spoken in Tanzania today. The Maasai are one of the tribes that still use their own tongue instead of Kiswhili, which many Maasai people do not speak at all. After he was satisfied with our attempts at Maa, Isaya then led us to a pick-up truck, the bed of which was already full of Maasai of various ages. In Tanzania there is always room for more when it comes to vehicles, so nine more of us piled into the truck. Isaya sat on the roof while we braved the crowded bed. Claustrophobia ended up being the least of our worries, as the lack of personal space and bumpy road provided perfect excuses for some molestation by the men on board…luckily I was surrounded by our group, but those on the fringe had an interesting experience. Forty-five minutes up the steep dirt road, we came to a large village…where we were surprised to see two small children of obvious mixed ethnicity. Their light skin confused us until we were approached by a white British woman, who apparently was married to one of the Maasai men in the village and was currently teaching a group of American students studying there. We did not press her for details, but I suppose she was an anthropologist? At any rate, very cool.

Our journey continued for 20 more minutes up the hill, where thorny trees suddenly began encroaching on the road and we had to regularly duck to avoid be pricked. Finally, we arrived at Isaya’s boma (cluster of huts) and were greeted by his mother and younger siblings. He led us into the hut where we would stay that night, and began to give us a lesson on Maasai culture. I was familiar with the majority of it from my anthropology coursework, but it was fascinating to hear it from a Maasai warrior himself. During the course of the discussion, as he is talking about traditions and the importance of preserving culture…his cell phone goes off and he answers it and talks for 10 minutes! Nice, haha.

Later, we went outside and Isaya and his fellow warriors danced for us. Usually they dance at night, but since there is awesome jumping involved that cannot be fully appreciated in the dark, they decided to give us a preview while the sun was still up. And it was STELLAR! If you are not familiar with the type of dancing done by Maasai warriors, watch the youtube video at the end of this post to get a general idea. But to see it in person was so great, and some of them were jumping significantly higher than the warriors in the youtube video. Also, the singing/chanting that they do is so cool! Everyone has different parts and they glide seamlessly from one type of song to another, with specific people playing different roles in each one.

Then we got a surprise when Isaya told us that we had to try it out, so we each took a turn jumping with them, which clearly was quite hilarious. Some of the warriors were having trouble continuing their singing because they were laughing too hard! I already knew (from past experience taking jumping photos) that the key to maximizing your apparent height is to pick up your knees, so I looked like I was getting higher than the other volunteers. The warriors were doing the same thing though, so I was not really cheating, haha. Before going inside to dinner, I spent about 20 minutes talking with Isaya’s little brother, who I affectionately dubbed “Kaka” (brother in Kiswahili) since his Maa name was a bit too intimidating for me. He had some knowledge of English and Kiswahili, so we worked through a conversation which highlighted our running experiences (he also ran the London marathon with Isaya…and at first did not believe me when I told him that I had ran a marathon as well). The second jumping photo above features Kaka :)

Dinner that evening was beans with maize and some sort of porridge, which was actually surprisingly decent. Following dinner and socializing in the hut (with everyone – 8 warriors, 4 children, 3 mamas, and 8 volunteers – inside the tiny structure), we headed back outside where we started dancing again around the fire. The mamas taught us how Maasai girls dance, so at that point some of us started imitating them. My favorite part of the dancing was when the warrior who had just jumped would come up to one of us and offer his shoulder, which you would then turn and hit with yours. I am not sure exactly what it means, but for us it was a fun way to connect on some level with those warriors who did not speak any Kiswahili (or English, obviously).

Before bed, the warriors came into our hut again and did more singing, chanting, and some storytelling until around midnight. At that point, six of us volunteers crammed into one bed – granted, the bed was relatively large, but definitely NOT big enough for six people. We all had to sleep on our sides, and every few hours someone would announce that it was time to roll over so that one hip did not get too sore. Suffice it to say that none of us got much sleep that night, and we were up pretty early. That morning, the Maasai warriors slaughtered a goat for us to thank us for coming (we each donated $40 to their well project), so we had fresh goat for breakfast! And I really do mean fresh…

As a vegetarian, I had already warned Isaya that I would not be partaking in the goat. His first response was “Well, you can drink the blood though because that is not meat.” Haha, nope, sorry Isaya. After seeing the humane way in which they suffocated the goat, realizing that it had lived a full natural life, and noting the fact that the Maasai were going to use every single part of the goat (literally), I was very comfortable with the whole process. When the warriors started scooping out and drinking the still-warm blood from its carcass and then offered some to us, I made a game-time decision to go for it. After all, how many opportunities I am going to have to share blood with Maasai? It was pretty gross because there were organ chunks mixed in with my scoop of blood, but I managed to choke it down without gagging. Then Isaya offered us some of the raw liver, which after drinking blood was not that big of a deal – it just tasted kind of slimy. Finally, we had the meat roasted over an open fire, which was not bad.

[After this, I decided that I am going to be a full-fledged vegetarian (i.e. also give up chicken and fish) now. Seeing the sustainability of their meat usage, the respect and gratitude that they showed to the goat, and the humane way in which they slaughtered the goat, I really do not want to contribute to American meat consumption anymore. Also, I know I am over-romanticizing the experience, but it is pretty neat that the last meat I will eat is a goat I shared with Maasai warriors. My parents now think I am crazy for drinking blood but refusing to eat chicken legs.]

Unfortunately, Kaka decided it would be a good idea to share the goat’s intestines with me, which I graciously accepted. After I swallowed a large chunk, he informed me that they were “medicine”. What kind of medicine? Medicine for your stomach, to clean it out. Maybe it was just the fact that I ate meat for the first time in awhile, but maybe Kaka was right, as I definitely had some “stomach cleaning” going on for the rest of the day. It was pretty miserable actually…thank you, Kaka.

Meanwhile, we needed to return to Arusha relatively early because some of the girls had to make long journeys home to the hospitals that they were working at and wanted to get back before dark. So Isaya recruited Kaka to walk us back to the first village that we had encountered on our way up the hill, so that we could take the pick-up truck back down to the town from there. After a 45 minute walk, we arrived at the village…and the truck was nowhere to be found. Kaka talked with some people, and discovered that it was not coming. After an hour of scrambling and different arrangements being promised and then falling through, we eventually decided to just go down the mountain on foot. Long story short, after two hours of walking and talking with Kaka (and many bathroom stops for me in the bush), we made it down to the town and hopped on the dala dala back to Arusha. I held a little mtoto on my lap for the entirety of the ride, and I tried to stop her with limited success from playing with the fresh goat-skin bracelet that the Maasai warriors had made for me. While the pungent goat and smoke smell has finally been eradicated from my coat now that I am home, the time I spent in the Maasai village is definitely something I will remember for my entire life.

Almost home...

2008-07-28T07:59:00.000-04:00

I come home in FOUR days…predictably, I am having very mixed emotions. Some parts of me are ready to go home, to see my family (especially Vince who is significantly bigger now), to have a Western toilet and an actual shower, to be able to run without being harassed, to eat something other than rice, ugali, beans, and/or cabbage for dinner each night. But a bigger part of me is already missing Tanzania. I have actually had some successful pseudo-conversations in Kiswahili recently, and my mama complimented my progress – too bad I most likely will not keep practicing upon my return. The weather has gotten a bit better and there has recently been sunshine. Many Tanzanians in the street can now identify me as a mwalimu (teacher) and are respectful and do not harass me once they confirm their suspicions. (I am not really sure how they guess that I am a teacher, but I am thinking it must be my horrible fashion sense which has devolved into modesty with practicality – skirts with tennis shoes, amazing) I have gotten close with several Tanzanians, and my family here I will especially miss. All in all, I love Tanzania…and I definitely see myself back here, hopefully sooner rather than later.

My last week of community training with GSC was good, pretty routine by now. Actually, it almost seemed that the better we got at teaching for community groups, the more disheartening it became. All of the trainings I did except for one were coordinated through women’s groups, so there were only female participants. A lot of the information we shared with them was great and seemingly helpful (i.e. myths about AIDS, how to care with someone who is infected, how HIV can be transmitted from one person to another including MTCT). But when it came to protection from infection via sex, it got very sticky. The vast majority of the women were married, and many times none of the prevention methods given in the ‘ABC’ method (Abstain, Be faithful, or use Condoms) were realistic options (being faithful only works if your partner is also faithful to you, clearly). We did not get many questions about how to effectively talk with stubborn/controlling husbands in our first couple of trainings, but then it came up every time. And we never came up with a good answer. GSC never addressed this in our orientation, and really, what can we say? Especially as foreigners who want to reserve judgment on other cultures. And even if it was okay to say that their culture is bad for imparting their husbands with so much control over their lives, that does not change the reality of their current situations. Our only semi-decent answer was that they need to teach both their daughters and sons about HIV, relationships, and communication, so even if they cannot attain gender equality in their marriage, they can educate the next generation to empower women.

I had a creepster experience early last week, when a man started walking with me on my way home from town. This happens with some regularity, so I was not at all surprised, especially when he started talking about the safari company he works for and telling me I should use them for safari. After explaining that I had already been on safari and was leaving in a week, he moved on to talking about me: what I am doing here, what I study in the states, etc. Still okay. Then he suggests that we stop and get a soda before I go home – no, my sisters are waiting for me. He will not let it go, says it will not take long…I keep refusing, say that I am already late and need to go home. So he asks if we can do it the next day. Sorry, probably not because I only have a week left and I am very busy. From this point on it is just very weird…he gets up in my ear and whispers that he wants to “give me something special” (eek), tells me that I am different because I am white (I hate that one), and claims that I promised that I would get a soda and chipsi with him. Nope, I did not promise you anything; oh well, you told me you would; no, you told me that I would. He also explains that he knows, unlike most people, that not all white people have a lot of money – yes, for example, me. He says that since I am a student and “on a budget”, I should come to his house and he will “cook me a vegetable”. No thank you. He gets upset and asks “well do you have money or not?” No, but my mama cooks for me and I like her food so I do not need you to cook for me. At this point we are at the corner where I turn off the main road and start down back roads to my house, and there is no way I want to let this guy see where I live. I round on him and ask him where he is going – back to town apparently, he came all of this way for no reason other than to talk with me. Okay, fine, I am going home now, kwaheri. I turn and continue, and he keeps following me. So I stop in front of a group of Tanzanian guys who stand in front of this little shop and who know me by now, and refuse to continue on until he leaves. I tell him that we are done talking, I am going home, and he needs to go. He finally does, but not before saying that we will meet tomorrow. Luckily I have not seen him since. I think if I do I will pretend not to remember him and just ignore him. Really, he might be fine. People here seem to not have a grasp of what foreigners think of as creepy, so they typically seem more sketch than they actually are. But I am not looking to make friends with random older men anyway, so even if he is harmless, I do not want to hang out.

On Friday, one of the other volunteers with GSC, Taylor, created a surprise night for the other 11 of us girls who did day camp together and are still here in TZ. Since I worked with Taylor in community training all that week, I was able to get some information out of her and piece together a lot of the rest, so it was not that huge of a surprise for me; but I actually prefer figuring things out and turning out to be right more than being surprised anyway. We went to a great local joint for dinner (amazing veggie burgers for only 1000 TZsh = less than a dollar), she bought a chocolate cake for us to share, and she got everyone a kitenge. We went through and everyone wrote in permanent marker on everyone else’s kitenge…I am excited to read it once I get home, it will be a great memory not only of Tanzania, but of the amazing people I worked with. I came here not expecting to make friends with any of the other volunteers; I was expecting Africa to be an intensely personal experience that would not involve much reflection with others while I was here. But it turned out that the group I worked with was made up of stellar people – which makes a lot of sense if you think about it…it takes a certain type of person to want to come to Africa to volunteer for a summer. At any rate, I am very grateful for all of the girls in our group. They definitely made my experience here even more meaningful than it would have been otherwise.

Kucheza!!

2008-07-20T04:40:00.002-04:00

Wow, last night was probably the craziest and most fun night I have had so far in Tanzania! I went out to dinner and then to Maasai Camp – a pseudo-dance club – with some other volunteers…we also went with one of our Tanzanian friends who is a translator with GSC, and ran into another one there. Actually, the one we ran into at the club is Isaya, the Maasai who ran in the London Marathon. I am going to his village next weekend, and I am stoked. Anyway, once I danced with one person, I literally could not get away with dancing by myself for more than 2 minutes before the next guy would turn up and dance with me. It was fun for sure, albeit a bit overwhelming. Luckily I have not danced in a long time so I mainly just appreciated it. I think the fact that my hair was done in African style in the little braids probably did not help my cause, I got a lot of comments on it…I realize it probably looks a little ridiculous, but Rachel my dada did it yesterday afternoon (completely of her own volition and uninvited), so I could not really take it out right after she spent half an hour on it. I actually kind of like it a lot, it feels nice. The Tanzanian guys claimed to like it too… “Unapenda? “Ndiyo, ninapenda sana” was a recurring exchange. The music was an eclectic mix of stellar American hip-hop (by my standards), old 90’s music, and Bongo Flava, which kind of all sounds the same to me. I got many proclamations of love and a lot of Kiswahili practice in, haha. One of Isaya’s friends was particularly into me, so I spent a lot of the night dancing with a Maasai guy. Seriously, if I had been told my sophomore year when I was learning about Maasai culture both in cultural/social anthro and my theology course that I would be dancing with a Maasai in a dance club…there is no way I would have believed it. Both he and Isaya are actually not very good at dancing, but the sweet cultural aspect completely makes up for it…although I kind of felt like I was corrupting their culture or something…hmm. But overall, a great night, I had a lot of fun.

On a different note, I just realized yesterday that my flight out of Kilimanjaro is actually on July 31; I had been thinking it was July 29 pretty much my entire time here. Oops. It is probably good that I have an extra two days to finish up interviews and things though, so overall a positive discovery. Interviews so far are going quite well. Everyone that I have talked with so far is enjoying the chance to talk about these things, and many of them have meaningful insights that I had not considered before. I am starting to understand more and more how important it is to get input from the people who actually live the culture, as opposed to coming in with Western ideas and blindly implementing them – I always believed this in theory, but I have never witnessed it until now. Hopefully my thesis will eventually do a good job of capturing everyone’s ideas and representing their feelings, because people have been very welcoming and helpful with interviews. The only slight glitch is that I, being the genius I am, failed to realize that I needed to put the software for my digital voice recorder onto my laptop before I could transfer interviews from the recorder to the computer. Apparently the recorder came with a cd that had the program, although I cannot remember ever seeing this. Hopefully it is sitting in my room at home…we will see. For now, I hope I have enough space to keep everyone’s interview recorded. I could always downgrade the quality of the recording and hence have more space, but I have been really happy with the setting it is on so far so I would rather not. Perhaps I will just transcribe some of the “less important” (i.e. other volunteers) interviews while I am here and then delete them? I started transcribing the other day and did not get very far; I kind of forgot how tedious it can be. At least I had practice with it last fall so I have a framework for attacking it.

I had a great last couple of days with my family…on Friday and Saturday I spent a good amount of time playing Frisbee, hopscotch, and jump rope with my dadas. I stole back one of the Frisbees that I originally brought for GSC’s day camp and took it home to them, and they love it. We have started playing a game where the three of us count how many consecutive successful throws/catches we can get…so far our record is 98, and they are shooting for 100. Yesterday, I made s’mores with my family, which they really liked. Mama was really cute: “Wait, Mary, I want to write down the recipe!”…“It is really easy Mama, I really do not think you need to write it down…” haha. The food situation also drastically improved on Friday. The chai had ginger in it, which was amazing. Then Mama asked if I liked spices or not in my food – YES – so then we had the spaghetti with carrots and peas that we often have but with some seasoning, and it was ten times tastier. Then for lunch on Saturday we had rice with beans and carrots, one of my favorite Tanzanian dishes. All of this inevitably means that dinner tonight will be ugali though. If you do not know what ugali is, look it up on wikipedia. I liked it for about 3 weeks, and then my family started eating it 5 nights a week…a bit too much for my liking.

This week will be another community training, and I also need to seriously start buying things that I want to take home. I have been holding out because it is not a particularly pleasant experience. People here have a hard time with the concept of looking but not buying. Especially if you shika (touch) anything, they KNOW that you want it, and are determined to get you to buy it. When you try to walk away, they will not let you out of their little stall, and ask you how much you will pay for it. A bit overwhelming, you definitely need to go in with the right mindset to make it. Last week I went fabric shopping though, and it was actually very fun. I am in love with the fabrics here, although I limited myself to just two. There are so many gorgeous ones though. Especially on African women, they look amazing. If the fabric I bought looks half as good on me, I will be happy.

Safari!

2008-07-14T04:31:00.004-04:00

Sorry it has been awhile since I last posted! My 21^st bday here was very fun…we went to the snake park with some of our students from day camp and saw some amazing snakes, birds, and crocs in different stages of development. I even held a snake! I was semi-froking out, but I figured it was a good way to commemorate becoming a fully fledged (American) adult. I did not drink at all, but spending my birthday in Tanzania is a 21^st that I will never forget.

Last week I did another community training for GSC for a women’s group in Arusha. It was actually called Notre Dame Women’s Center, which was special to me. They were a great group and had a lot of intelligent questions and suggestions, too. I bought a kitenge that has their name and emblem of sorts on it, and I think I am going to get a bag made from the fabric at the tailor near my house. Actually, I need to put in my orders at the tailor soon so that she has time to make everything before I leave.

I started interviews for my anthro research last week, and they are going very well so far. At this point, I am focusing on the changes in gender roles and female sexuality that are occurring right now. In all of the trainings that I have done, the idea of shifts in gender roles has come up, so I want to explore if and how these perceived changes will have an impact on HIV rates for women in Tanzania. In the next two weeks, I am going to be doing many interviews. Add in shopping for some gifts, community trainings, and MAYBE some preliminary MCAT studying…and I have a very busy two weeks before I return to the states.

On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I went on safari to the Serengeti and Ngorogoro Crater. It was amazing, definitely some of the most gorgeous things I have ever seen in my life! Highlights included the best sunset of my life in the Serengeti, a man-eating sized python in a tree, one month old baby lions, a cheetah super close to the jeep, black rhinoceros, and watching 2 mama and 5 baby lions eat a warthog that they had just killed. Definitely a once in a lifetime experience that I will never forget…while it was quite expensive, it was worth it.

Finally, I think posting photos on this blog is a lost cause for now. Once I get home in two weeks, I will go back and put up pictures that are relevant to each post within each entry. For now, I am paying for internet access and uploading photos takes a ridiculous amount of time with the extremely slow internet, if it is not completely impossible. So keep reading, but no pictures for now…samahani (sorry). My new fbook profile photo is actually from here, at the first day camp I taught. So at least you can see one I suppose.

back in the city for my 21st

2008-07-07T02:57:00.002-04:00

Well, the week in the village, called Moshono, was very interesting. I LOVED doing community training. We did our trainings in a Pentecostal church, and we had a variety of people and ages…from 17 to circa 100…the oldest woman did not know for sure how old she was. It was really cool though because she and her great granddaughter were both there, sweet. It was also crazy to be doing condom demos in a church, with the pastor and his wife sitting right there. They seemed to think it was hilarious and were totally down with it. I cannot see that ever happening in America. People here are serious about stopping HIV though, at least in theory. I worked with Summer and Edita was our translator, so the three of us lived in a room in a bibi’s house. Everyone was super welcoming and warm, and seemed to be completely concerned with making us comfortable. Different from Arusha, were you always feel like people want something from you – and you are usually right.

The bad part about the village was that it was dirtyyy. I did not shower for an entire week, lol, I was super gross. Which really was fine, I am not necessarily one of those hyper-clean people. But I actually turned out to be still sick. On Monday, when I was still in Arusha, I felt fine. When I woke up Tuesday morning and left for the village, I was feeling a bit queasy again…and then by the afternoon, I felt awful. I proceeded to throw up every single morning there, which was just really gross considering the bathroom conditions. GSC send “provisions” for food, which turned out to be white bread and peanut butter for breakfast and lunch. That got old after about two minutes, lol. But since I could not really eat anyway, it did not matter too much. Meanwhile, the bibi bought me medicine and prayed over it, and then the Pentecostal dancing group that was visiting from Kenya prayed over me…and I got better on Friday. I was kind of nervous to take the medicine, but at that point I felt awful and did not think there was much chance of getting worse, so decided to go for it. Luckily, it worked out.

On Friday after we were done in the village, we headed to Moshi/Marangu to meet up with the entire original group of GSC volunteers…everyone who is still here anyway. Some of the girls are doing an international health program and are now scattered at hospitals all over northern Tanzania. It was very nice to all get together again. And we all stayed at this AMAZING house. Two of the girls are working in Marangu, near Moshi, and there are two German nurses who work at their hospital. These nurses have a mansion that they rent out to visitors…it was sooo great. We honestly did not feel like we were in Africa anymore, it was like being in Europe – which after a week in the village and being sick, was much appreciated. On Saturday, we went hiking in the foothills of Mt. Kilimanjaro and saw some stellar waterfalls. It was kind of difficult, but it felt great to actually be pushing myself physically for once. Then Saturday night, we got to make dinner together…actually I did not do much, but a couple of the girls took the lead and made great spaghetti, omelets, and a bean salad. Plus we made legit jungle juice with these cheapo packets of vodka, juice concentrate, boiled water, and sprite…yumm. We saw Kilimanjaro both on our way there and on the way back to Arusha, which was breathtaking. Even better than the pictures on the bottles of Kilimanjaro beer, haha.

Today is a bank holiday in Tanzania, saba saba [seven seven] – also my 21st birthday. In a bit we are going to attempt again to go to the snake park, which hopefully will be a success. Last night my cousin here, Erick, warned that he is making/doing something special for my birthday…I told him not to trouble himself, but he seemed pretty set on whatever it was, so we will see. I would also like to make no-bake cookies with my dadas, but I am not sure if we will have time.

I hope everyone had a great July 4 and ate some good American food for me. And watched some American television and partook in all of my favorite American things. I will be home in just over three weeks, crazy stuff. This countdown is getting annoying, I will stop for awhile now. Let me know how you are doing please.

off to a village...

2008-06-30T10:28:00.001-04:00

So apparently my first week of community training will entail going to a small village an hour outside of Arusha and living there for the next 4 days. Not exactly what I was expecting, but it should be great to actually live in a Tanzanian village. I do not know the name of it because our program director did not know...I also only found out this morning that a group of us were going...typical Africa. It will be nice to get away from the craziness and all of the hassling that I get in the city for a week though. And then this weekend, some of us are going to visit Moshi, so I might get to glimpse Kilimanjaro! On Saturday, we will go hiking in the foothills of Kili among waterfalls.

It has suddenly gotten super warm and sunny after weeks of rain and mud, with no apparent warning or reason. I have to be much more diligent about applying sunscreen now, but it is completely worth it. It actually feels like Africa now!

I spent this past weekend throwing up and sleeping, ugh. I think I was food poisoned. Or potentially water-poisoned. Even though my family here boils water for me to drink, they have been storing it in the exact same large plastic water bottle for the past month. My dad (real one) always has warned me not to re-use plastic water bottles because bacteria will grow in them...eek. For now, I am boycotting my family's water and buying my own. I felt very bad for my family over the weekend though, they were convinced I was dying and kept trying to get me to eat. Obviously, I would refuse because I was not a fan of getting violently sick. Also, my mama seems to think that eggs are the miracle food to make sick people get better. I do not know about everyone else, but eggs are the LAST thing I want on an upset stomach. I felt better this morning though, and she got very excited when I agreed to let her make me an "omelet" (this consists of an egg surrounding raw carrots, onions, and tomatoes...not what we would typically call an omelet). They also discovered my love of watermelon since it was one of the only things I would eat over the weekend, and now they keep feeding it to me. Yummm!!

Kiswahili and sewing

2008-06-26T01:03:00.002-04:00

I miss my Enyoito kids already. I forgot to mention that one of my favorite moments with them was when we were taking pictures and they wanted to look at them (one of the greatest things about digital cameras…instant gratification for people who will not actually get to see them later). They started scrolling through my photos, and I had some old ones still on there that I had not deleted, including some of myself from after the zombie walk. The kids thought it was hilarious, and laughed at me for about five minutes. I was laughing too; those photos were ridiculous, especially for people who do not really have a conception of dressing up.

While the first two weeks of day camp at Enyoito were great, I am honestly going to be happy when this third week at Arusha Meru secondary school is over. Right now we are working more then 40 hours a week and I get up at 6 a.m. each day – it is getting kind of old to wake up with the roosters every morning. Couple that with the fact that only a few hours of daylight remain after school because dusk is 6 p.m. (and if I do not want to take a taxi, I must get home before dark), and it explains the lack of time to do much in town. Although I did stop by the craft market yesterday, and it was amazing! I will definitely go back several times. Anyway, next week I start doing HIV/AIDS community trainings, which will be much less intense. Mondays we will have off, and Tuesday thru Friday we go from 10 – 1, so I will get to sleep in a bit and also have time to do things in the afternoons.

Yesterday the jua (sun) finally came out again! My first week in Tanzania was stellar weather-wise, sunny and in the 70s. But since then, it has been rainy and chilly…I know it is winter in the southern hemisphere, but I am basically on the equator so I was not expecting this. Even the Tanzanians are complaining that it is colder than it should be. I am now wishing that I had brought more sweatshirts. Thanks to Ruth for suggesting that I bring some at all.

Last evening I finally took a dala dala alone, mostly out of necessity…it was 6:15 and I was still a 30 minute walk from home. It turned out to be interesting when these very intoxicated guys got on. Luckily we were only 5 minutes from my stop at that point, so I ignored the fact that they were blatantly talking about me right through me (just because I am white does not mean I am completely oblivious). Then they REALLY got a kick out of me when I told the conductor I wanted to stop…I correctly knocked on the side of dala, said “simama” (stop), and poked his arm. They started exclaiming about the fact that I could speak Swahili – they could not believe it. I guess they were too drunk to entertain the idea that someone can know how to say “stop” and “thank you” without actually speaking the language. This is becoming a recurring theme even for sober Tanzanians though. Now that I have all of the myriad possible greetings and proper responses learned, and can successfully engage in the long customary exchange of pleasantries, many people assume that I can speak Swahili. When they start going off in their native tongue, I can only apologize for having no idea what they are saying and ask if they speak kingereza (English).

As usual, my dadas more than made up for any not stellar things that happened throughout the day though. I came home to Rachel and Durcas and my mama’s friend’s children (7 and 3 years old) who have actually been staying at our house for a few days now. I walked up to the gate and heard them exclaim “Mary!” and they all ran to the door and gave me hugs, and then Durcas asked if I would play outside with them. When Gamma, my kaka, got home he was going to go into the house even though his sisters asked him to play. But I implored “Gamma, njo!” (come), so he actually played with us for awhile…which was awesome because he is the shiest of all of my siblings and usually avoids interacting with me. I think this Saturday I am going to attempt to make no-bake cookies with my dadas – we will see how that goes. I am keeping my expectations low.

My teaching partner, Clare, and another GSC volunteer, Conner, are leaving this weekend (Clare home for New York, Conner for a semester at the University of Dar es Salaam). Also, the volunteers doing the health program are leaving Arusha for Moshi, so we are all going out for one last dinner together tonight at an Indian restaurant. Afterward, we are going to a club, Via Via, where there apparently will be live music. I am super excited to hear what Tanzanian music will be like…I think it is supposed to be rock or something…I will report back. Meanwhile, my one pair of jeans that I brought over are disintegrating. I spent the evening sewing up the various holes that somehow developed since I have been here. It was actually a relatively successfully endeavor – I am so domestic. Although I am thoroughly enjoying not doing my own laundry for the first time in seven or eight years. I do not think I could do it here anyway, they do it by hand without any sort of brush even…it looks complicated. Maybe at some point I will get up the courage/will to actually attempt to help.

CRAZY, my time here is almost halfway over. Eeek.

New shule and gospel music

2008-06-23T10:00:00.005-04:00

This week I am teaching a mini-day camp to a combination of Form 1 students and street “children”. The term children is used very loosely…this organization that GSC is partnering with works with people from age 1 – 25 years old, and most of our students are definitely in the 18 – 25 age range. The form 1s are circa 12 years old, so today was interesting because we had them all mixed together. We might separate them kesho (tomorrow), because it did not exactly work stellarly.

Last Saturday was graduation for my Enyoito students. I was so sad to leave them, and many of them were upset too…some girls in my class were literally in tears. The ceremony was AMAZING. It ended up running an hour and a half over its appointed time, but it was completely worth it. There were dramas (with prego women, haha), tribute songs to mwalimu (teachers :)), dances, and my personal favorite was the hip-hop act. The secondmaster brought his stereo, but the room we had to do graduation in (because it was raining) did not have an outlet. However, it did have lights, so some of the older boys decided to rewire the room so that they could use the stereo…very inventive, and also probably dangerous. Everything worked out very well though! We had a photo shoot afterward, so I literally have hundreds of pictures of myself and the students. Luckily I do not mind having my picture taken, otherwise that would have been an awful experience, lol. My dada Rachel and the cousin, Erick, came with me to the graduation because I invited my whole familia here. It was really special because no one else’s family (of the GSC volunteers) came, so I felt loved…my family is great! They both enjoyed themselves, and it was nice to walk down the mountain for the last time with my dada…it made leaving my students less depressing. I got some of their email addresses though, so we can stay in touch/I can send them photos that we took.

Later that evening, all of the GSC volunteers went to a traditional Tanzanian wedding reception. The groom was the brother of a girl who is interning with GSC, Bridget, so she invited all of us. It was sooo poa (cool)! I was probably most shocked when they wheeled out two roasted goats that had vegetables sticking out of them…they were huge, and so obviously dead animals. We paraded to the front of the room to toast the entire wedding party at Bridget’s family’s request, and then again to present our gift as a part of the gift dance. The room looked like a senior prom…there were a ton of flowers, Christmas lights flashing, and white and maroon bows and balloons everywhere. There were also a bunch of ceremonial things to do. The reception began at 7, but we did not even start eating dinner until 9:45 (everyone had not gotten food until 10:30). Such a fun experience though!

My dada finally got the guts to ask if I had a laptop with me, and I admitted that I did and got it out for them. Unfortunately, I do not really have anything on it to interest them…I let them watch one innocuous episode of Gossip Girl that I had pre-screened and knew was okay. Other than that though, I do not have any movies or other T.V. shows that I think are appropriate for 10 and 12 year old girls. They do not seem very interested in my music either. Erick got out his CD of gospel music though, so we threw it onto my computer and they LOVED that. It was a family sing-along, they all knew all of the words. It was not too awful, much better than American gospel music, but I would never choose to listen to it myself. Erick left yesterday to go back to boarding schule, so I probably will not see him again :(

I tossed around a frisbee with some of the students after day camp today, and I was very happy to have an excuse to run around, even if it was to chase after their spastic throws. I do not think I can bring myself to run here…I miss it a lot, but it would just be extremely stressful. Just walking down the street is hard enough. To run around in sweatpants would be intense. The only people that I have seen running at all are these hard core marathon-training 20-something men. I am walking a lot every day, so hopefully that is keeping me in some sort of shape. And I think I might climb Mt. Meru in a couple of weekends with two other GSC girls, which would be amazing exercise, haha. Even though I am almost always hungry here, I think I might actually be gaining weight…eeek. Thus is the nature of empty fried carbs, I suppose.

Address, finallyyy

2008-06-19T10:05:00.003-04:00

Here is my address for those of you who have been asking for it (I also put it up on fbook). I would love letters/postcards if you have time to send them :)

Global Service Corps
Plot #4 Sekei East of Golf Course
P.O. Box 16338
Arusha, TZ

I love the “east of golf course” part of that, lol.

I cannot believe day camp is almost over!! Today in the afternoon we had a photo shoot which was ridiculous. EVERY single student wanted an individual shot with me. At least Holly Rivers at the Kellogg Institute will be happy.

Also, check this out: http://www.maasaimarathon.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=c_pages.sho wPage&pageID=1&CFID=315242&CFTOKEN=56b7d80a9270e2b7-A1358846-FFA6-085F-C18992B6DDE6E7CC
I am friends with one of those guys, Isaya (on my left in this photo)...he is awesome. It is so surreal to be talking with a Maasai warrior after studying about them in both anthro and my intro to theo classes. And the fact that they ran a marathon faster than me without training, and did their jumping and yelling the whole way is also humbling.

This Saturday, a group of us GSC volunteers are attending a traditional Tanzanian wedding reception! It is for the brother of one of the GSC interns, so she invited us all to come. I am very interested/excited…apparently it will involve participation in a “gift dance,” so we will see what that is all about. Hopefully pictures will be coming soon!

My Kiswahili is stagnating…with all of the day camp stuff plus my anthropology research, it has not been a top priority. Hapana nzuri. I would probably be more motivated if I thought I was here long enough to actually make a dent it. As it is, I know that I am going to have to start in a beginning class anyway when I actually decide to learn for real. But I really should start making more of the current immersion opportunity. On a similar note, I never realized before coming to Tanzania that some of the phrases in the Lion King are real. Hakuna matata really does mean no worries, simba means lion, and rafiki means friend. That is the limit of Disney’s Swahili prowess, however. None of the other characters’ names mean anything.

day camp, safari, and other fun

2008-06-17T10:48:00.004-04:00

I had written a really stellar entry at my house on my laptop and then put it on my memory stick to throw online once I got to an internet café, but this computer is not allowing that. So I will do my best to go over everything…

The past few days have been a rollercoaster emotion-wise…but I <333 rollercoasters. We are having a graduation ceremony this coming Saturday to end our day camp at Enyoito. Many of the kids are preparing songs/skits/etc. to perform for their fellow students and their families, so it should be amusing. My dada Rachel is coming too I think, so that will be nice :) Clare is my fellow volunteer teacher, and she is super fun and energetic! One of my students, Daniel, informed me on our walk down the hill from school this afternoon that she and I are now in a Swahili learning competition, so I need to go home and practice with my dadas tonight! The Tanzanian counterpart (translator) for our classroom is Aggrey, and he is a star. He is seriously my favorite person here. He loves hip-hop, has great English and helps me with Swahili, we can joke around together, and today I introduced him to Miley Cyrus…and he loved her!!

Last Saturday, I went with the other 14 GSC volunteers in my group on our pre-paid (included in the ridiculously high program fees) safari. This means that the Kellogg Institute actually paid for it, score. We went to Lake Manyara, which was sooo awesome. They call it Tanzania’s most underrated park, and now I understand why. We saw a ton of animals: baboons, simbas, blue monkeys, twige, impala, tembo, flamingos, dik dik, vervet monkeys, wildebeest, water buffalo, warthogs, hippos, banded mongoose, and zebras, not to mention a plethora of beautiful African birds. We saw 3 lions in total, and one was UP IN A TREE. This park is the only place in the world where the simbas climb trees, and we actually saw one! Poa kachizi. Sunday was the weirdest/worst experience I have had in TZ yet. Four of us volunteers decided to try to go to the snake park which is about 25 km out of town, but on one of the dala dala routes. To make a long story short, it turned out that we got on the right one but going in the opposite direction, and we ended up in a situation where I think the conductor saw an opportunity to rob us, so got everyone else off the dala and a group of his friends on. Then they were refusing to let us off, claiming that they could not speak English and hence did not know what we were asking for once we decided we just wanted to leave. Luckily one of the girls is bigger and was able to just barrel past all of the guys and more or less force the driver to stop. She then got off, but the guys were still trying to hold the rest of us back…I literally had to pry a set of their hands off one of my friends. We got off in town and everything turned out completely fine, but it was just a really bad situation. What was really unsettling is that the dala dala is the public transport system here, and no one had ever warned us that it could be dangerous…I think it was that they knew we did not have a clear idea of where we were going coupled with the fact that it is now “high season” for tourists, so people are more ready to rip foreigners off because they think they can get away with it. Going home to my family here everyday though is great! Rachel and Durcas always greet me with huge hugs, and I have been having good conversations with Irene and her friend Nora lately too. They are 16 and 15, respectively, so I have been getting a lot of their perceptions about HIV/AIDS and gender roles in these informal convos that I can use for my anthro research, yay! Also, they are all just great fun, and in some ways remind me a lot of my family at home. For example, my mama here often randomly bursts out into song, and then all of the kids start laughing...which is definitely something that my mom does and then we all tease her. And my baba has been running around in bright orange swimming trunks lately...which my dad at home does, although that makes more sense considering we live on a lake, lol. And last night before dinner, my youngest dada tried to say grace but then said something ridiculous, and we were all laughing for a good 5 minutes before we actually said prayers. They all make me feel really comfortable. Yesterday Rachel and Durcas went to a friend’s house to borrow some movies, and came home with “Baby’s Day Out”, “Crazy Hong Kong”, and “Daddy Day Care.” Last night we watched Baby’s Day Out before dinner, then I tried to watch Crazy Hong Kong with them after dinner, but I seriously could not handle it. It was about an African bushman who gets transported to Hong Kong in a commercial director’s luggage accidentally…but it is one of those extremely poorly done B-grade movies. Eeek. Plus I have a hard enough time staying up as late as my siblings…they stay up until 11:30 or midnight every night and are up before 6:30. Normally I could totally handle that, but with all of the walking and constant hassling, I am exhausted by 10.

The food here is good, but I would never eat any of it outside of Africa. The really yummy stuff is extremely greasy and I would not choose to eat it. Since my family puts it in front of me though, obviously I do :) The healthy stuff is good-tasting, but I can think of a lot of other things that I would rather eat than rice and beans, no matter how well it is prepared. So I will just enjoy the Tanzanian food while I am here, and not attempt to learn how to make any of it. They do not snack or have dessert here…actually, dessert after dinner every night is water. For real. The fact that they fry everything more than makes up for this though. My breakfast each morning is literally a pile of carbs, haha. Good thing I just told my family straight-up that I am a vegetarian though, because the meat here is nasty. Even my fellow volunteers who love meat in the states are not fans of it here.

I asked for my rubbers back this morning (tennis shoes) because my family had cleaned them for me, and they were the cleanest they have been since I first got them I think. Now they are already dirty again because of all the mud this a.m. :( Also they did some of my laundry last week (actually the cousin, Erick, did the laundry which was cool), and then they ironed everything! My jeans had never looked that stellar…my family in the states gets out the iron maybe twice a year.

The rest of this week should fly by, and then next week we are doing a mini day camp for street children in Arusha or else are doing peer-educator camp for the select kids from the current day camps we are running to learn how to facilitate health clubs in their school for the coming academic year. I will try to put up my address here in Arusha tomorrow, pole to everyone who has been asking for it…I keep forgetting to bring it with me to the internet!

First week in TZ

2008-06-09T09:21:00.002-04:00

Sorry it took me awhile to update this (pole), but now I am going to try to update at least once a week. I am at a great internet café near my house, and I plan to frequent it relatively often.

Anyway, my first week in Tanzania has been stellar! Traveling here was very easy…the only stressful part was my layover in Hartford. I was supposed to have an hour, but my flight from Detroit got in late and then we sat on the runway for 45 minutes…I was sure that I was going to watch my plane to Amsterdam take off while I was still stuck on the other one. Luckily, I got off with just enough time left to sprint to the gate and was the last one to board before we took off. Other than that, though, it was really easy. When we got into Kilimanjaro, someone from Global Service Corps (the NGO I am volunteering with) was there to pick up a whole group of volunteers, and she took us to a hostel where we stayed until Wednesday.

On Wednesday, I moved in with my homestay family. They are GREAT!! My baba is a pastor, and does not speak any English, so we are limited to the tiny bit of Kiswahili that I know…we pretty much have the same convo every day, except each time I throw in one new Swahili phrase and he gets really excited, lol. My mama speaks only a bit of English, but she is super friendly and helpful. Every other word out of her mouth is “karibu” (welcome). I have 3 younger dadas and 1 younger kaka. My oldest sister, Irene, is 16, and she was pretty shy at first. Last night, though, she really opened up and started asking me a lot of questions, which was really fun. Her English is great because she has been learning it for a long time in schule. Rachel is 12, and even though she is young her English is pretty great. She is my fav so far…she always wants to be near me and helps me with my Kiswahili a lot, which I definitely appreciate. My youngest dada, Durcas, is 10, and hardly speaks any English, but she likes to hang out with Rachel and me. We play hopscotch, jumprope, and generally just have a good time together. My brother, Gamma (??) is 13 and is painfully shy…he just started saying hello to me recently :) There is also a cousin (Erick) who lives with us. He is 19 and wants to become a doctor, so we ended up talkin a lot the other night (his English is impecable). We all watch a lot of T.V. together too, which is hilarious…the Filipino soap operas are my personal fav, they are hyper-dramatic (someone starts crying in EVERY single scene, no joke). Also, yesterday, “East African Idol” (my name for it) came on…it was just like American idol, except with contestants from Tanzania, Uganada, and Kenya…lol.

Tanzanians in general are very friendly, but they also are obsessed with my whiteness. I definitely expected there to be more white people here, but I stick out so much. Everywhere I go, I am followed by shouts of “mzungu!!” (foreigner), which honestly got old after about 2 days. I also get harassed a lot to buy things. I know enough Kiswahili to get by though, so once I start talking they back off. It is just a really strange experience to be so obviously an outsider. I feel like it is not fair, because if any of these people came to the states, it would be relatively easy for them to throw on a pair of jeans and blend right in. No matter what, though, I am obviously not Tanzanian, despite my skirts and “smart” dress.

Also, boys here like white girls a lot. I have literally been told “I love you, so much” several times. Yesterday at the market in Tengeru, a guy grabbed me and told me how he wanted a girlfriend like me, which would not have been a big deal, except he was holding onto my arm so tightly that I really could not get away. I told him I was married, but he did not believe me since I did not have a ring (smart guy). Luckily I was with other GSC volunteers, so they prised him off of me. I am sure it would have been fine, but things like that are annoying. Today I walked alone to the school where I will be teaching HIV/AIDS education and life skills, and it was a lot better than when we are in a big group. I guess I look less like a tourist that way, so I get harassed less. On my way home, though, this guy named Mosses talked with me for awhile. He was really nice and honestly just wanted to talk…it is sad that since some people want to take advantage of foreigners I tend to just shut down in general.

Tomorrow I start teaching! I cannot wait to meet my students. I am working with other GSC volunteers from the U.S. and Tanzanian counterparts, who are great. I think they will be a great resource for my anthro research. I may need/want to redirect my project…definitely something I need to think a lot about. It has only been a week though, so I have time. I should start interviewing people in my third week I think.

Alright, that is all I have time for now…much more to come! If you get a chance, shoot me an email or fbook message letting me know how your summer is going. If you want a postcard or anything specific from Tanzania, let me know!

from LJ to a "real" blog

2008-05-13T02:03:00.001-04:00

Livejournal has been good to me over the years, but I feel that moving into adulthood this type of blog is more acceptable? At least now that I am planning to write more about my experiences and not whine as much, I thought a change might be in order.

For now, this blog will document my summer of (a) applying to medical schools and (b) doing service and medical anthropology research in Arusha, Tanzania. I leave from Detroit for Tanzania on May 29, so I have a lot to do before then. Besides finishing my personal statement and writing up synopses of all of my undergraduate extracurriculars, I also need to go through the Peace Corps guidebook and decide what exactly I should be packing for Africa...and hopefully learn as much Swahili as possible in the next few weeks. Maybe I should make flashcards to get a head start...??

At this point six or seven people have reviewed my PS, and it has definitely improved from my original draft. It still is not stellar, though, so I will continue to work on it. I also need to create a more specific plan for my research this summer and email Prof Lende. I actually should have met with him before leaving Notre Dame, but finals week turned out to be crazyyy. I am very grateful that the semester is over. 18 credits, MCAT studying, undergraduate research, a job in the osteology lab, and volunteering in the ER did not make for the most social spring. I am actually just impressed that I made it through...I was definitely having my doubts before it started. We will see the first results of the semester tomorrow when our grades go up. Then, MCAT scores are available in circa one week. Hopefully everything turns out to be worth it...

The rest of the week should be fun. I am going to work hardcore tonight and tomorrow, then Wednesday a.m. I am going into Nicole's preschool class and later that evening to the math class my dad is teaching at our community college. Then on Thursday, Chicago to celebrate Sarah's birthday! She was studying in Spain for this past academic year, and while I got to see her twice in the fall (because I was studying in Dublin), I have not seen her for a long time now.

Gossip Girl tonight was good, but not as dramatic as it could have been. I thought Serena actually killed someone *sigh* I am glad that Sarah is as into it as I am, because I am not okay with watching TV alone. Must be an enfj thing...