M&N’s blog

Peace Corps talks about community integration, but now that we’ve been in Tanzania a year, I’m unsure what it actually means. At first, Peace Corps tells stories about volunteers who have some trouble and their villagers come to the rescue. Some of these stories are quite dramatic. Does it mean that your villagers consider you part of the village with all the rights and rescues they’d offer to their own? Mike and I have certainly been the recipients of kindness here. The District Executive Officer sent a driver to pick us up in Makambako at 2 a.m. when the bus we were on ran so late that the driver stopped and checked himself into a B&B to sleep. Makambako is only about 40 minutes from Rujewa. If the DED had not sent the driver, we’d have been on the bus until 4-5 AM waiting for the driver to wake up and drive the last stretch to our stop. My bibi group welcomes me, gives us food, respectfully calls me “teacher” since I am teaching them how to sew. The little boys from the neighborhood show up daily for a balloon that Sara brought or a hard candy apiece. They’ve started to try to manipulate me into more than one balloon or a balloon and candy too, so they are no longer on good behavior. Today, they started fighting in front of me for the first time with the more aggressive boys trying to take the balloons from the younger, smaller ones. My counterpart, doctor in charge of all health services for this whole district (like a big county), offered his car to Mike to take wherever and whenever Mike wanted to go. We are not allowed to drive at all given the numerous accidents volunteers used to have before the no-driving rule was in place. Right now, Mike is gone with the pastor from the church behind us that blares music so loud I don’t know how they are all not becoming deaf. They have gone to the bare bones, sometimes working sometimes not, internet café in town to download virus protection for the church computers. I wonder what they use them for if their knowledge of computers is so minimal that almost every computer in the whole town was crippled with viruses when we arrived in January.  Is any of this community integration?

My bibis (grandmothers raising AIDS orphans) group has decided that the vendors at the market overcharge me so some of them or their relatives are negotiating our food prices now.  Yet, I was getting overcharged for most items by 100 shillingi, about 8 cents, which is double the price of many items. They do not do that to the locals, at least not with the regularity they do it with me. We are asked often for money, although it is a curious thing here. Even those with money ask others for money, even askiing those who have much less than they do. It seems to be almost an automatic thought that just gets expressed. I don’t like it and I get asked often since I speak Kiswahili better than Mike does. My Kiswahili seems to give them license to ask me for money, although I’d think by now everyone would know that I don’t give money to anyone. It is impossible to tell who needs it and who doesn’t. Additionally, I could not give money to all who ask, or I’d be broke. Still the children call us “wazungu” although they know our names as “grandma Nancy” and “grandpa Mike”.  The children call to us in the few words of English they know, wanting to say “good morning” about 5 times in a row, followed by giggling. They are delighted we answer and their parents smile. Still we are the only white people in this town.

Mike recently met some Iranian descent families that migrated to Tanzania at the end of the Shah’s reign. They are land owners given their mind for business in contrast to the  African-descent Tanzanians and their lesser interest in business. They own all the rice fields here and one of them has a hardware store that is a venue for all the men to gather and talk daily. They are Shiite Muslims and are very welcoming with excellent English. They are some of the few people here that have cars. When one of them died, his family from other countries in the world hired a plane from Dar to fly here. I didn’t even know it was possible to land a plane here. There must be some ancient air strip that the British or the Germans built.  Mike’s new buddy wants to take us to show us their enormous rice fields, which we’d like to do.

Yet, my Home Base Care Training would never have happened like it did here in the United States. The teachers would have been fired within the first few days and they are the regional facilitators, commanding a good wage for showing up. Since I did not want to pay them for days they did not work and complained about their use of lecture as the only teaching modality, they became angry and refused to take the pay I did offer them. They want the district to pay them since their contract was with the district, not Peace Corps, the American Government, or me. I will have a meeting this coming week with my counterparts to discuss the training and say that it will have to be very different for me to be willing to fund volunteer training for other villages. It isn’t that I mean to impose American standards, but common sense is common sense. You have to prepare before the training starts, not when the volunteers are sitting there waiting to be taught. It sure doesn’t feel like I am very integrated since I have so many objections to so many facets of the training. An interesting side note is that I became very upset when the regional facilitator asked me for glasses and if I’d paid the driver to run me around the block. I react to the people who make good money asking me for money or things, not the poor people. My counterparts were fully supportive and apologized for the facilitator’s conduct, saying they were going to complain to the RMO, the doctor in charge of health care in this whole region of Tanzania.

We don’t eat Tanzanian food all the time. Everyone supports and organizes our runs to Mbeya to buy “wazungu food.” When we need bus tickets, one of the hospital lab techs who runs specimens to Mbeya weekly is happy to stop by the bus office to pick them up for us. They are quite accommodating. There is a local stray dog that we resisted feeding for awhile. We are on hospital grounds and are not allowed to have pets, but he has been around for months. We see him walking on the outside concrete corridors in the morning as everyone shows up for work at the hospital. He is quite young and playful, throwing plastic bags from the trash pit up in the air and jumping to get them like they are the enemy. Now, he comes when I call him. A few bones go a long way in the animal world here. Animal care is not a high priority. Now the dog sleeps on our front step and growls when anything unfamiliar happens.

On Monday, I am going to the next town with a doctor and some local NGO people to visit home base care patients in their homes. I will take pictures and Mike will probably work them into some audio-visual program to use here or perhaps send to the U.S. to raise money for the effort here. There are so many very sick people being cared for at home. The NGO people are happy I am willing to go. I did assist them get several thousand unexpected dollars from an international funder.

I guess I’m saying the longer we are here, the less I think I know what community integration is. It really doesn’t feel like we will ever really belong here as we are set apart in so many ways. The fact that we are viewed as rich Americans will never diminish. Yet the kindnesses are touching. Thanks for reading my recent thoughts.  

We have been here a year! Last week we went to Kilosa, our training site last year, to prepare with PC staff and country partners for the arrival of the new training class. We were asked to go by PC/T staff. I thought it would be interesting to see what all goes into preparing for the arrival of 51-52 Americans in a small Tanzanian town. They will have 10 language classes with 5 trainees in each class. The trainees will stay in numerous villages up to 1/2 hour away by car from the town where we stayed. This is a huge class. The training director is a great guy, but greeted me by saying he was nervous about having so many come at once. He'll do fine.

We went to visit the homes of the families where they will stay. Some are beautiful; some will shock the new Americans.Some of the bathrooms are rustic Tanzanian, always a worry to new American arrivals.

Our homestay "parents" (younger than us) split up at the swearing in ceremony last year. Tiger, the dog I liked so much, ran off because she was not being fed by Baba George once Mama George left for university. Baba has a new woman and a new baby. His brother's family greeted us warmly and had us to dinner twice. Our young Kiswahili teachers of last year beamed when they saw us. Esta, age 9 or so, wants to learn English so she can be just like me. I'm unsure if that is a worthy goal, but it is flattering. Marta, age 15, is doing very well in her English class and interpreted anything that I said in Kiswahili to others who could not understand me. The water level of the river has risen so they cannot use the front entrance of their home. They enter through the back, stepping on some stones to get through a big puddle. The mosquitoes are everywhere; no wonder Esta had a serious bout with malaria in February.

We saw the teacher whose class last year hosted us for our day of teaching. He is such a nice man.

It is the first time for many months we see other PCVs. They have come to work on the plan for this year's class too. I end up being the emcee for our "cross culture" training of the Kiswahili teachers. We have 2.5 hours to help them learn how to offer emotional support to Americans, understand American sarcasm, why young American women don't want to be complimented on gaining weight (the best compliment here), why Americans want to be treated like adults although their behavior is immature, and how to manage classroom behavioral problems which they will undoubtedly have. The PCVs get together at night to eat dinner and laugh. In some ways the younger ones have matured; in some ways they still seem unable to appreciate that their behavior is seen differently by the Tanzanians, whose culture is so different.

It really was a good week. I have sent out an email to the 5 50+ year old volunteers that are arriving today to welcome them. A pharmacist, an educational specialist, a nurse, a returned PCV who served in Jamaica in the 60s, with volunteer experiences ranging from hospice to farmer's coops. There are 2 arriving from Ohio. One went to Ohio State and one went to Miami at Oxford. It will be fun to see Tanzania through their eyes when we return to Kilosa in  late July.

I just couldn’t take it anymore. I probably have mentioned that riding in Tanzanian public transport is like being in a can of sardines. Personal space is non-existent. Your nose ends up in an armpit. You can’t lean up as then 5 hands will use the top of your seat to steady themselves and forget ever leaning back again for the remainder of your trip. The more passengers they can pack in, the more money they make. Since this is a developing country, every shillingi counts.

Mike and I just finished going to Kilosa to plan the training for the new volunteers; they are arriving today! There will be 51-52 new Peace Corps Volunteers here by tonight. We are all very excited. Mike and I will be with them the 7^ththrough the 9^th weeks, including the day when they find out their site in Tanzania. The Peace Corps staff in Dar said they wanted Mike and I there since it is an emotional time for all! Guess us old guys can soothe some nerves, or at least that is the hope.

Back to public transport. When we arrived back at the village on the Tan-Zam highway that you have to change from a bus to a smaller bus to get to Rujewa, we entered what seemed like a reasonably packed bus. I don’t even know where these other people came from, but all of a sudden, many more people wanted on the bus. The conductor began rearranging everyone. Some people had to hold our packages (Can you believe we found good bed pillows in Iringa, after a year of using lumpy pillows that bottom out to nothing? We bought 4 since we will have guests soon.) Babies were passed around. I was asked to change seats twice. A younger woman was asked to change seats, although I don’t know why since she was only taking one seat with her 6-7 year old child. As she attempted to comply her dress got hiked up to a socially unacceptable level and several women, including myself, had to pull it down for her since she could not reach her skirt to do it herself. Then, she realized she lost a shoe, which was retrieved and handed to her by another woman. Then, the conductor asked me to scoot over so the woman’s child could sit in the 5 inches that was available if another passenger and myself almost sat on top of our neighbors.

Imagine the setting. Mike is still standing in the front of the bus. We are the only white people. Suddenly, I just cannot stand it anymore. It is too crazy. I stand up and say in Kiswahili, “I’m getting off the bus. This is crazy.” The conductor presses towards me through the people in the aisle and says, “Oh no, mzungu.” My decision is irreversible. I offer the seat I just vacated to a younger woman and turn to the passengers behind me and say, “Have a good trip” in Kiswahili. Everyone breaks out laughing. The conductor is still trying to make me stay. I push through the people towards the exit of the bus. Mike has seen what I am doing and is trying to retrieve our pillows from the Tanzanians that have them on their laps. The conductor is now trying to stop Mike from exiting the bus. He forces his way off the bus by basically diving between two people. I push my way through 4-5 people to get to the exit. Everyone is laughing.

Interestingly, the conductor asks us if we know we will have to wait down the street a bit for another ride to Rujewa. I answer, “Yes, we live in Rujewa and know where to wait.” They give up on getting our fares. We are off the bus with our packages and luggage. The bus heads off, still packed like a sardine can, but minus two wazungus who just can’t take it anymore. The Tanzanians probably think we are crazy. What was the fuss? Everyone around here knows that Rujewa has two wazungus living there now. I wonder how many people will be told tonight over dinner that those crazy wazungus got off the bus.

I am just thankful we did not have to wait but about 15 more minutes to catch the next bus. It was a saner bus. Only about 6-7 people standing in the aisle, not 15.

I felt like I’d made a statement. But who knows what statement they think I made? ;-)

Since you've all been wondering about the cockroach population here, I have sad news to report. Very few. No more cockroach stories. One of the docs here said that cockroaches come in many other sizes here than the big ones we know. His view of them is medical: they are "vectors" for disease. Trust me, if you were a doctor here, you'd think of them as vectors too.

Actually,  Mike is quite fond of our ants. In the courtyard we have these great ants that live under the back building. They are truly amazing. You can kill a large bug and put it in front of their site and the whole thing can be gone in 2 hours. They are quite adept in moving insect wings--reminds me of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade and those balloons. We really enjoy seeing their activity. Numerous sizes of ants all come out of the same hole, so we assume they are all relatives,  but what do we know.

My favorite pets are the geckos. The kitchen gecko Sara liked so well when she was here got his tail cut off somehow, so now he just has a shriveled knot of tissue there. I think lately it must be gecko breeding season.Lots of tiny little geckos. I try to welcome them to our home. I just love the way they eat bugs. We thought we only had one big kitchen gecko for a long time.  Now, we have many more, both on the walls outside the house and here and there in the house.

There is a young male dog that comes by and takes stuff out of the garbage burn pit and shreds it. He likes to play but I always play with the door between us. Dogs can get rabies here. He dug up the end of Mike's garden where he found rat holes. Guess the dog eats rats. Works for me.

Other than that, there are these fascinating huge moths. Talk about camophlage. They really look like tree bark. The ants eat them too if they die within carrying reach of the hole. The butterflies are pretty. The caterpillars are interesting. But we think the geckos and ants get the applause, although for different reasons. Ants in the U.S. just aren't interesting. You should come here to watch them, then you'd understand.

I was a food snob. I remember those good salmon salads at Bravo’s, the great Chinese at Moy’s on campus, the wonderfully tender chicken at Manhattan’s in Westerville. After being in Tanzania for almost 11 months now, Pringles are really a treat. This, from a person who would  never eat a Pringle, nose up.  Now, it isn’t that the Tanzanians don’t have good food, it’s just that they have the same foods, prepared the same way, every day. The focus is on food as fuel rather than food as entertainment. They are pleased to have a good diet, albeit prepared the same everyday. Yes, there is rice and beans, with some tough beef or chicken (let me tell you free range chicken is not all it’s cracked up to be), some spinach, tomatoes like romas year round. Such is the Tanzanian diet. Fruits are available seasonally or when you go to larger towns, also some veggies like cowpeas and eggplant (hard to fix without cheese). You can get great pineapple that you have to cut up yourself, apples in Mbeya, the best papaya, some pear like fruit that is grainy, and some cactus like thing that tastes like apples. The bananas are great. Sadly, mango season is over now until December. And we can get yogurt, which is a real plus when they have it at the one store. Not only are Tanzanians pleased with this diet, but they hate any new foods that might be offered to them to try or new ways of preparing the same foods they eat everyday. The other day, I gave an 8 year old I know a bit of cheese. She tried to throw it out the window, except that the window had a screen on it. Lucky us to have screens. Actually throwing things out the window is probably the norm in TZ as the chickens that roam everywhere will eat everything. Or the other creatures. We had cows eating our flowers today. Plus one walked through the sunflowers, carrots and lettuce Mike planted about 2 weeks ago. I asked the cows’ owners how the cows got on hospital grounds with the fencing all around. He said that they walked in through the front gate…Where was the guard who sits out there all day? I thought it was his job to keep cows and other undesirables off hospital property.

Back to food here. It is easy to get side tracked with cows and chickens, so bear with me. Mike and I are quite lucky. The hospital runs specimens to Mbeya, about 2 hours away, every Wednesday. We can usually go if we wish and pick up white people food. This way we can get cheese, apples, peanut butter, sausage, lunchmeat, shrimp, green beans, BBQ sauce, catsup, mustard, whiskey, wine, and so on.

Another thing I think is quite curious about the Tanzanians is that they won’t eat candy except for hard candy. They are afraid it will damage their teeth. This, from people who are proud to open soft drink bottles with their teeth. Another curiosity is that they will not eat peanut butter because it is too oily. Now, they eat chipsi, their version of French fries, sometimes everyday. Aren’t French fries fried in oil? Plus in the morning they have chapati which is a flour tortilla-like thing fried in oil. I have seen them cook these in a pan and they do use lots of oil to cook them. 

The problem, the medical people say, with the African diet is that it is all starch with a bit of protein if they can afford the eggs or meat. Many can’t, so they eat lots of starch. With all these chickens running around, I wonder if they are so interested in free range living that they don’t lay eggs. I wonder about it but don’t think it is interesting enough to pursue the answer.

Another curiosity to me is that in this area, papaya trees grow wild, everywhere, along the side of the road, etc. Yet, people want to plant papaya trees. Now I can understand a few in your yard for easy picking, but groves of papaya trees? However, I should remember that I am too lazy to walk somewhere out of town to get them, so I buy them at the market for about 35 cents.

Deep thoughts, huh? I’ll try to do better the next post. We continue to be happy here. I did have a meltdown yesterday about the frequency with which we are asked for things. Our clothing, shoes, cameras, trips to the U.S., food, etc. The trainer from Mbeya who makes her normal salary plus $35 a day asked me for a pair of the grandma’s bifocals, part of the “naomba” thing (I request…). I don’t mind the constant request from poor, uneducated people, but this lady has a good job and no need to ask for anything. Rich people ask poor people for money here. Or rich people ask other rich people for money. It is just a habit. I hope the Tanzanians grow out of that at some time in the future as it really is not appropriate when they have all they need. I guess it’s their version of the depression mentality. Oh well, enough pondering for tonight. If you have been a food snob like me, try some Pringles. They are really pretty good. They’d be better here if the can wasn’t all Pringles crumbs, but I’m not complaining. Thanks for reading.

I am excited! I just got a call from Peace Corps Dar informing me that the money for Volunteer Home Base Care Training has been deposited in my account. Also, they told me that my grandmas raising AIDS orphans grant has been approved. So, ready to gear up here!

For an update on my bibis group, group dynamics seem to have set in. One grandma will not give up the sewing machine to others, some are reluctant or afraid to try to sew, some don’t feel well for valid reasons, and one has only come once—I don’t even ask why. Then a few of them think they can make the sewing machine work by forcing it to work, so it has broken I don’t know how many times in the past 10 days. But most are still gung ho, try really hard to listen and learn, feel quite lucky to have a mzungu telling them that they CAN sew. They have yet to produce anything we can sell, but they are trying and it is only the middle of the second week. These are women who have never sewed before, middle age to 76. We're still working on using the treadle properly. It is a challenge to keep it going forward rather than reverse.

Also, a mzungu from Mbeya came today to meet me. She said her church in Switzerland has given her money for the people here, but that she is unsure what projects to fund and is overwhelmed with how everyone needs help here. She gave about ½ of it to a group wanting to do an income generation project with chickens, but has about ½ of the original $5000 USD left. She is asking me if any local groups can use it wisely. She anticipates another amount soon. She also agreed to give me her bread recipe since the one in the PC cookbook needs improvement. I would imagine Swiss bread is pretty good. She lived very close to France and I know I like French bread! Plus she said she has a good recipe for whole wheat bread—I can hardly wait. No whole wheat since June, 2007. I'd love bread that has some texture to it.

She was a very interesting woman. Her husband worked for WHO (World Health Organization) for a long time. They are about our age. We even joked about learning a foreign language late in life—the brain does not work as well as it did in your 20’s to remember all those new vocabulary words. I will be meeting her next Weds to discuss in what projects she may want to invest the money.

Tomorrow, I go to the next village, Ubaruku, to pass out gifts to the school children from a local NGO who got money from the social service ministry of Tanzania. I’m not sure if it is shoes, school uniforms, or what I am passing out. Now I had nothing to do with them getting these gifts and do not particularly understand why they want me to pass them out. I really don’t feel I should pass them out as it furthers the notion that white people have all the money and/or giving ability. But they want me to, I think because it makes it special to the children in these small villages for me to hand them a school uniform because they are wearing shreds. Again, there have been no other volunteers in this area of Tanzania, other than some much younger teachers who just stayed on school grounds and didn’t get out in the district like I am doing. So, I will greet all these little tykes and teens, too shy to answer my questions about how their studies are going, how their day is, or other small talk in Kiswahili. Some of the teens will be happy to say “Poa!” to my “Mambo”, the American teenage comparable to “what’s up with you?” with the response, “Cool” although young people in America don’t say that anymore. The NGO members will say that if America cares enough to send a volunteer this far to encourage you to study, you should do your part, study hard and have a good life. I guess that is the purpose of my presence.

I am really having a good time, despite some darker moments of getting tired of the issue of money always being there. It does loom. It felt good that it was absent with the lady from Mbeya, at least not that I have money she needs for some reason. I guess it isn’t such a bad trade off though. Overall, it is a very good time.

A turkey walked through my lesson on sewing, followed by a duck and a chicken. Now the meeting was inside one of the bibi’s new room addition to her house, but there was a chicken sitting on eggs in the corner of my classroom. Must be important eggs I thought. I didn’t mind because there were 8 women there with enthusiasm, eager to learn and excited about making some money to care for their grandchildren.

Another PCV who did the same project successfully in Botswana, Lesotho, and Malawi, gave me her patterns; we are going to make dolls and the animals that so many fly across the world to see in the Serengeti. Now we had met twice before, but that was in the office of KIWWAUMBA, an NGO that focuses on assisting elders effected by AIDS. This is mostly grandmas and grandpas who are raising their grandchildren, but who worry about other elders whose houses are falling apart around or on them too.

I had made 3 dolls in the likeness of 3 of the NGO officers, a man and 2 women. One woman was carrying firewood, one had a baby on her back as they do in Africa, and the man had bifocals on, which he whips out when he needs to read anything. The man laughed loudly at his bifocals when presented with his doll. The grandchildren of the bibi with the firewood doll, took her doll right away to start playing with it. Interestingly, here in this country where colors don’t matter, (the issue is having clean clothing in good repair to wear so you can show respect to others), this grandchild chose the one dressed in pink as her favorite. Do little girls world-wide prefer pink? I asked what Tanzanians would pay for these dolls; the answer: they wouldn’t buy them because they need money for their houses, like food.
 
The women are lovely. Collectively, the ten of them are raising 41 AIDS orphans. Some are worried that they will not be able to thread needles because of their poor eyesight. There are no cheapie bifocals at WalMart here. Thankfully, our friend Sheila in Denver, has agreed to buy some bifocal generics at Costco and threaders, so the group does not spend all day trying to thread needles. Today, it became apparent that only one of us can see to thread a needle easily. Of course, light is a problem since there is no electricity. Those of you who use bifocals know that low light compromises your ability to be able to see. Guess I’ll have to buy a flashlight so they can thread the needles.

They sorted through the fabric remnants donated by the local tailors, copied the patterns, and each got their turn learning how to use the treadle sewing machine. Most of them did much better than I did learning how to use a treadle sewing machine and these women probably don’t all have a 7^th grade education.

 I asked if they could teach me how to make baskets so I could make baskets for the dolls to carry. Yes, several of them can make baskets and are delighted to teach me. It only takes 2 hours to make a tiny basket for a doll to carry so white people will think it is cute and buy it! I’m thinking efficiency here, make another two dolls in those two hours and triple your income. Let’s put some other quick-to-make accessory on the dolls to make them appealing.

When I introduced the concept of making dolls to sell, they said they could buy cotton to stuff the dolls in the next town. I had spoken of using shredded plastic bags. I responded to their suggestion by saying that they could do that, but I liked “free”. Oh!! They sighed. I think they see the wisdom of shredded plastic bags for stuffing the dolls now.

One lady was sick with a chest condition, not a cold. I hope it isn’t TB. She didn’t feel well but she sat there for 2.5 hours anyway. She is one of the bibis worried about her eyes being good enough to do the work. She is raising 4 AIDS orphans.

The chicken in the corner sat on her eggs throughout the 2.5 hour lesson. The turkeys, ducks and the rest of the chickens were barred from entering the classroom. When I left, Amina, one of the bibis, gave me 5 eggs as a present. At first I refused and then one of the other women took me aside and said with a knowing look on her face, “a zawadi (a present)” I objected saying that she had children to feed. The woman repeated with a stern look on her face, “a zawadi.” OK, I got the message. I came home with 5 eggs, the first white shelled eggs I’ve seen in Tanzania. I wonder why she chose to give me white shelled eggs? I’m guessing because she thinks they are better than the brown ones and she wants me to have the best she has.

I will see the chicken in the corner day after tomorrow for our next sewing lesson.

Mike came into Rujewa in a blaze of senior glory. As I’ve written before, within a few days of our arrival he was presented with a 6M Tanzanian shilling budget ($5,200.) to fix the district computer problems. History is that they had a satellite internet connection, but that no virus protection ever occurred, so most of the computers are crippled with viruses. Staff have lost important documents. Some district computers barely start.

Mike was on the job right away. He asked every department to assign one person to his IT project and selected a core group of those selected to be “the IT team”. He worked up this proposal for getting the district to where the Tanzanian national government wants all districts to be, despite lack of any direction, training, or funding to get there. He indicated he wanted to interview every district employee to determine their need for and knowledge of the computer to include internet access. Mike spoke to the Human Resources Department about a personnel policy. The district Human Resources director does not know enough about computers to understand that many employees will use it for non-business purposes like downloading music and other less-than-honorable activities. Let’s face it, people are people everywhere and we’ve heard of all the troubles American businesses have with employee internet usage. Also, he spoke about giving individuals assigned to the IT project time to go to a weekly meeting on Wednesdays and core group would need some relief from some of their other assigned tasks to enable them to devote time to the IT project. So, there was much enthusiasm for the computer project; so much it was almost overwhelming. I tell you people he did not know were stopping him on the street to talk about it.

Mike went to 6 scheduled meetings, all of which were cancelled due to few people showing up. It seems many of them had other meetings that came up that they had to attend. The complication seems to be that department heads are waiting on a directive from the District Executive Director (DED-who has been very good to us and was almost ecstatic that Mike had computer skills to share). Mike’s solution: he wrote a letter for the DED so that in his busy day, he would only have to sign the letter and direct it to be distributed to department heads of the district. There are mysteries in Tanzania sometimes and one of them is what happened when the DED gave Mike’s letter to the head of the Planning Office. Nothing happened for weeks. We went to see the DED and the second time, he said that he would ask the planner what happened with the letter. He did seem a bit confused and vague about the contents of the letter. He also said that he would direct the department heads to have a meeting tomorrow, lead by the head of Planning since he was going on 2 months leave, to direct them all to do as Mike says re: allowing employees to consider Mike’s meetings as priorities above other meetings, etc. We’ll see what happens tomorrow. 10 a.m. Keep your fingers crossed.

Now, working on the district’s computer dilemmas is a secondary project. Mike is a health volunteer, assigned to the Council HIV/AIDS Coordinator. The CHAC wants to collect names of orphans, grandparents raising them, handicapped individuals, etc. I’m not sure that collecting this information is what PEPFAR wants to fund. However, since we are supposed to do what our counterparts want to do, Mike wrote a grant proposal for a pilot project of $200. It was turned down twice. The Assistant PC Director for Health instructed him to write it up as a big grant. I’m not sure why it would be funded as a big grant if a $200 grant was turned down. So, he is resubmitting it again. Now it is close to a $5,000. grant, the ceiling on grants. We’ll see where it goes this time. My position on this, although it is none of my business, is that it is well known that there are orphans, handicapped people who live in substandard conditions, etc. Why collect their names? It seems it would just be better to start by spending money on programs for them. I’m sure they would come forward if they knew a program was available.

Thankfully, there is a group of 5 people that want to learn Excel: the secretary to the hospital’s doctors, the hospital secretary, the lab technician who runs specimens to Mbeya every Wednesday, the District Aids Coordinator or Dr. Mwashala, one of my counterparts, and another individual. Now, this is Mike’s cup of tea. He started with the doctor’s secretary who is picking it up fast and seems to be loving it. So is Mike. Tomorrow he starts with the District Aids Coordinator who is working with the Global Fund and will receive $100,000. USD for HIV/AIDS if he can determine how he wants to spend the money and get a budget drawn up. Mike is hoping to help him with this $100,000. budget that he needs to obtain the Global Fund monies. This doctor asked to come to our house for his lesson because he is interrupted at his office in the hospital all the time. All these individuals are very eager to learn Excel. They write budgets by hand here. The doctor’s secretary just finished putting the entire hospital budget on an Excel spreadsheet in less than 2 days and she did not know anything about Excel the day before yesterday. Progress for sure. Think of the time that will be saved in the future.  So, Mike is happy working with these individuals.

That is the update on Mike. It seems that things just click sometimes and sometimes they don’t. Rujewa has clicked for me, but not for Mike yet. It would really be a shame if they do not take advantage of his skills and talents in computers.

He has also spoken of starting a class for NGOs to teach them how to structure their organization, market themselves, and go after international monies.  NGOs here are just like they are in the US; they want to do everything for everybody, which is never impressive to donors. I’m sure the line will be long for Mike’s class. They say that in Tanzania, you write up what you want to do and then sit around waiting for the money to show up for you to do your project. We are talking about fixing elders’ homes or building some modest homes for houses that are beyond repair. Some seniors here have houses that are falling down around them. And I do mean literally falling down around them. So we suggested Habitat, who has an office and is doing work in Dar es Salaam. We read the Habitat site and in Tanzania, they work with churches and teacher groups to build houses for the needy. We suggested that a church or teachers be approached as workers to build from whatever materials Habitat may offer, if they offer any at all. We emphasized that they need to organize and then present themselves differently than other groups do, just asking for money. So, I suspect Mike will be the photographer and the fill-in-the-gap person that organizations seem to need. 

Stay tuned for more on our projects and all the issues associated with them.

I am having trouble with this post. When I try to increase the size of the font, it gets all jumbled up and sentences are appearing over top of other sentences. When I try to cut and paste in a part of a paragraph, it doesn't work either. I have spent most of 1/2 hour on trying to get it to appear correctly, so I am giving up as nothing is working. I wish the font were not so small, but I don't seem able to change it without creating bigger problems. The same was true for the prior posts.

I am sorry that I have not posted more often, but Sara was here for 2 weeks and the week before and after her visit were very busy with our projects. Mike continues to work on building us hospital furniture. He is waiting on the go-ahead for his district computer project and has resubmitted his Community Development grant to Peace Corps with the changes they requested. I will write about his projects when they are in swing.

I, however, have been luckier than Mike. I have several projects going now and I’d love to tell you about them:

• My grant to fund home base care training to 36 volunteers from 24 villages of the Mbarali District was approved! It is a big grant, just shy of $5,000., but will pay for 3 weeks of training by medical professionals to teach the volunteers the necessary competencies and palliative care philosophies as well as set up the linkage between them and the health facilities for continuity of patient care. Tanzania has realized what the hospice folks in the US have known for awhile: being in a hospital is not where terminally ill people want to be or should be as the benefit they receive from being in the hospital is minimal. We will be sending a sheet on selection criteria so the Village Executive Officers can select the most appropriate person in their village to send to the training. The district has been trying to offer this training for a few years, but never received any money to do so. Dr. Mwakapalala, the doctor in charge of health for the whole district and my counterpart, said home base care was the #1 priority for the Mbarali District. I like the way he thinks. For those of you who would like to know, it is using PEPFAR monies; thank you George Bush. I’m not sure George started it as actually it sounds more like a Clinton idea, but he at least signed for it to continue. Now, we are waiting on the money to arrive as big grants like this one have to be sent to Washington, DC. The check is sent from there.

• Together, Mike and I have started my World-Wise School project.  The director of education for the district recommended Ibara Elementary School. Works for me as it is about 100 yards from our house, which is probably why she suggested it. We met with the head teacher (principal) and several of the teachers who said they wanted to be involved in this project. They were so welcoming. A bit of explanation about the World-Wise program: Peace Corps links you with a school in United States to link the two schools together, share information about each country, the lives of the students, do joint projects, whatever the schools want to do together, really. I was given the name of Gwinett Elementary in Tucker, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. Did I luck out! Turns out this school did a World-Wise Schools project with Tanzania 5 years ago and it is still running. One of the school counselors is my contact, but 4 teachers and their students are involved.

Ibara Elementary here started by selecting 16 students from grades 5, 6, and 7, representative of the student body age-wise, socio-economically, academically gifted to sports stars or artists, or kids that are doing terribly. Their ages are about 10-16; some are not on grade level because they have to drop out of school here to care for parents dying of AIDS, their own illnesses, or families are so poor that their children have to help them in their fields so that the family has enough to eat. Of the 16 children, numerous ones are orphans; the head teacher estimates that 25% of his students are orphans. So we set about to make a slide show of the children, the school grounds, the teachers and head teacher and decided to include their homes, neighborhoods and parents/guardians. Each student wrote a short life history to introduce themselves to the American children. Despite all our work with needy Americans, we were stunned when we visited 4 of the homes, those of orphans being cared for by aging grandmothers. Most live in a small room, sleep on grass mats (no pillows) and have some rickety piece of furniture to sit on. Mike did a great job making the slide show, even including African drum music in the background. We would post it on this blog, but we have to pay our internet based on downloads and uploads, so it would be very expensive. If any of you want it, perhaps I could ask the school in Atlanta to email you a copy. I can send you the children’s life histories, which are enlightening in some cases. Mike really did a good job on the slide show in my opinion. He included where they get water (the river that gave some people cholera), how they do laundry (with buckets), how they cook (over firewood), etc.

Just a few days ago, we got some pictures and life histories from the students and teachers of Gwinett Elementary.  What a multi-ethnic, multi-nationality school! Great to help Tanzanians know that America continues to be a melting pot and that we all get along with one another. They tend to think of us as rich, white Americans only. We are anxious to show it and Mike’s slide show to Ibara Primary here, but there was a snafu. Ibara has 2 classrooms with electricity.  Mike went to plug in our equipment and the $25 extension cord we bought got fried. Well, better the extension cord than our computers. So the electrician has to be called in to fix it. I wonder if the school has the money to fix it. This is spring break week for them, so we’ll find out next week. If worse comes to worse, we will schedule the district’s conference room to show the slide show to the entire school. We also want to invite the families to come in to see it. They’ve never had anything like it in this town. The parents and guardians will be so proud their children were chosen to be part of this slide show that was sent to America.

I know I’ve gone on about this school project, but so far, it is the most personally rewarding project I’ve done. The counselor from Gwinett said that all the students loved Mike’s video and want to help. They suggest buying animals or digging a well! Pretty smart 5^th graders if you ask me. I was so pleased they were that perceptive. The school here said they wanted to do a garden project: to teach nutrition, farming techniques, and to give any foods produced to the needy people of the community, including the school’s orphans. We’ll see where it goes and I’ll write again about this project in the future. Hopefully it will go on for years past my departure too.

·       I am just starting a grandmothers raising orphans income generation activity project with an NGO called KIWWAUMBA in response to what I saw when visiting orphans being raised by grandmothers for the school project. Some of you know we visited Mary Ann Camp, a Peace Corps Volunteer in Botswana in 2006. She is a 68 year old pediatric nurse who did 3 Peace Corps tours: Lesotho, Malawi and Botswana. We have kept in touch with her. In each of her countries, she did a doll making project with HIV+ women, or other groups. She graciously has sent her patterns and will serve in an advisory capacity over the internet. She lives in Rockport, Massachusetts now. I just had the initial meeting with the NGO last week. We met the first night I contacted them. Would you say that is eager? They offered to buy the sewing machine (amazing, out of their own personal funds), so we went to Makambako, about 45 minutes from here by bus, a few days after to buy the machine and enable me to get prices for writing up the grant. It will be a small grant, under $200, that Peace Corps Tanzania can just fund from some account that Peace Corps sets up for this purpose. So, I start with 10 grandmas as soon as I can get the grant proposal sent in. Right now, I am waiting for the “Local Language Summary” which is a Kiswahili version of the project description. The project is basically using what most Tanzanians throw away: fabric remnants from local tailors, stuffing is shredded plastic bags, etc. The $200 will buy the scissors, an iron, fabric for the body (which I was able to find for about $.50 a yard.) for the first 20-30 dolls, and so on. The dolls will be Tanzanian grandmas, braids, baskets and all, with an identity tag. We will also be making some of the animals that make the Serengeti famous, like giraffe, zebras, etc.

So, my days are busy. I am very happy with these projects and the people here. While waiting on the US monies, I will also be writing up another big grant for Prevention of Mother To Child Transmission. I want it to be approved and ready to go when I close the Home Base Care grant. A nearby village of about 35,000 people in this district is finding that almost 15% of the pregnant mothers are HIV+! That is a very high rate and Dr. Mwakapalala said it is the #2 priority for the district.  That is, to make testing to pregnant women possible in more villages.  There are 100 villages in this district and now, this testing is only available in 2 of them.  Kind of shocking, isn’t it?

So, if you haven’t read the past few posts, please do so, starting with the one about Sara’s visit. These posts will give you a good sense of our life here in Rujewa. It is a good place to be, despite the rain and the rat.

We really had a long, hard rain last night. It sounds so lovely on a metal roof. Like most Tanzanians, we put our buckets out to collect the clean water. Our regular water has been dirty lately, because of the rains. Even though we are on a deep well here at the hospital, somehow the rains make the regular water dirty. We have picked up a new trick here though, one Peace Corps did not tell us about. We were used to letting buckets of water settle if there was sediment in the water, but this water did not settle after a few days. Wierd. So we went to the docs at the hospital to ask what the problem was. Turns out you have to purchase some aluminum sulfate for a nominal cost, put a tablespoon or so in a bucket of water, and voila! in 24 hours you have very clean water (except for the sediment that is on the bottom). I really don't get it, but it works. I was never good in science, so if anyone can explain this, please send me an email.

Back to our rain. It rained hard for several hours so we were able to find out where all our roof leaks are. It reminded me of Kevin struggling with MI about roof leaks in his new house many years ago. Well, there is no MI here to call and the roof leaks are part of our home life until we leave this house. My reaction is thank God we don't have ceilings because then we'd have to worry about it caving in on us, like in Mtwara. I wonder if those ceilings are still there.

So, we have a few leaks here and there. Interestingly, the one hole in the roof is at the top of the corregated metal panel, so the rain just goes into the depression and does not come in the house. The leaks seem to be around joists where there is a nail that has been damaged. Mike, quick on the draw, decided to collect the dripping water too. Not really enough to fool with.

This post probably isn't that interesting, but it is part of our life here. We also had our first rat (small) in the kitchen yesterday.  We went up to the market immediately and were told the way to rid your home of rats is to put this black powder on a slice of tomato and the rat eats it and dies. We followed through immediately, but no dead rat this morning. I can only hope that the rat has moved on to the great outdoors where our neighbor, the crested eagle, may have eaten him for breakfast this morning.

I'm not sure this post is interesting yet. Let me tell you about the time I was in a little shop at the market and a huge rat fell down from a hole in the ceiling and landed at my feet. The store owner was quick on her feet. She put one foot (she was wearing shoes) on each side of it and she squeezed. The rat started to get away, but by now she had a small crowd watching, so they told her to move her foot in such a way as to capture it's head better. Like a pro, the rat was dead within seconds. You have to hand it to these Tanzanians for having all these skills we do not have in the US (to my knowledge).