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Most of the small talk in my village, especially in the dry season, revolves around water problems. When all of the water taps are broken we must haul water from the river. I am lucky to live only half a kilometer away. Few of the villagers have this advantage. Many women spend several hours a day just making the trip to the nearest stream to get water for household use. With a single primary school serving an area that takes 2 or 3 hours to traverse, children are forced to spend sunrise to sunset away from home. I often see these children drinking from the streams they cross on their way home, where floating cowpies decorate the streambeds. Often villagers spend all day at their farms, rarely returning home for a safe glass of boiled water. Diarrhea is one of the most common complaints at the mission hospital (where 1 health-care worker is responsible for an area of about 10,000 people), most likely as a result of a poor source of drinking water. Most villagers cite the lack of a reliable source of water as one of their major challenges. The proposed project aims to provide at least 6 functioning public water taps. If you would like to help provide clean water for these villagers, please visit the link above.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Friday, November 23, 2007
Poor Poor Mr. Condom
I was informed yesterday that the man who invented condoms was a Russian whose name was “Condom” and he forgot to put his condoms in the refrigerator so he died of AIDS. I had been invited to teach about HIV/AIDS to a group of about 30 young people who were having a religious retreat at the Roman Catholic Mission. I knew it would be a challenge to tread lightly on the subject of condoms and family planning, and I had devised a strategy of asking questions and emphasizing that the only sure way to avoid the disease was abstinence. I didn’t count on the fact that the kids would start a barrage of questions and unsubstantiated, hostile convictions (for example white men invented condoms but they only work for people who have access to refrigerators to keep them cool, so they are useless in Africa), expect me to magically know answers to vague questions such as “why do women give birth prematurely and have miscarriages,” and respond to claims that birth control makes you sterile for life. Despite the mis-information brought by my audience, I think I managed to get the vital message across: if you don’t want AIDS don’t have unprotected sex with people whose status you do not know. If you don’t trust condoms, don’t use them but don’t have sex. I must have repeated variations of these messages about 20 times over the course of an hour. It didn’t help that I had been notified that I was needed to teach the AIDS seminar 5 minutes before they wanted me to start. I kept finding myself responding to condom questions and praying the priests wouldn’t choose that moment to walk by the classroom. I kept an eye out for them and planned to say “Many people choose not to use condoms due to their religious beliefs,” very loudly just to be safe. It will be very telling whether I am invited back to teach the next group of young Catholics.
More Names
I have a couple more names to add to the list: Sickola and Moody. The search for a “Fungus” continues.
Nighttime at a Glance
Sometimes as I sit by candlelight I imagine what’s going on in the homes around my village. Young kids put the cows to bed and head home to their one meal of ugali (stiff boiled corn flour) and fried greens, cooked on a firewood stove in a smoke-filled kitchen, digging into the communal bowls with greedy fingers. Fat mission employees finish off their beers, then clasp hands in prayer before digging their forks into slabs of meat and rice. Elementary school teachers tune into the news on the radio while they stir their ugali on charcoal stoves, then study for their high school exams late into the night. The small-shop owners sell portions of cooking oil and salt to customers cloaked in colorful kangas emerging from the night into the glow of the shop’s kerosene lantern. Women who have slaved all day collecting firewood, hauling water, cooking, farming and cleaning, wrestle unwilling children into wash basins to scrub the dirt of evening playtime from their skin, then slather oil on their shining shivering bodies. The hard-working men arrive home from the fields or pastures to a steaming bucket bath and a meal. The lazy men are still at the club where local brew will be served until 10 pm, and then they will stumble home in the dark. Children will squeeze 7 at once into a little room on bamboo-frame beds or grass mats. If there is a funeral or a wedding, large groups will be up late into the night, crying, singing, drinking, telling stories. And I sit with my book and my journal, relaxing to the familiar tunes of American and Latin music or strumming my guitar, waiting for a pot of potatoes to boil.
I was informed yesterday that the man who invented condoms was a Russian whose name was “Condom” and he forgot to put his condoms in the refrigerator so he died of AIDS. I had been invited to teach about HIV/AIDS to a group of about 30 young people who were having a religious retreat at the Roman Catholic Mission. I knew it would be a challenge to tread lightly on the subject of condoms and family planning, and I had devised a strategy of asking questions and emphasizing that the only sure way to avoid the disease was abstinence. I didn’t count on the fact that the kids would start a barrage of questions and unsubstantiated, hostile convictions (for example white men invented condoms but they only work for people who have access to refrigerators to keep them cool, so they are useless in Africa), expect me to magically know answers to vague questions such as “why do women give birth prematurely and have miscarriages,” and respond to claims that birth control makes you sterile for life. Despite the mis-information brought by my audience, I think I managed to get the vital message across: if you don’t want AIDS don’t have unprotected sex with people whose status you do not know. If you don’t trust condoms, don’t use them but don’t have sex. I must have repeated variations of these messages about 20 times over the course of an hour. It didn’t help that I had been notified that I was needed to teach the AIDS seminar 5 minutes before they wanted me to start. I kept finding myself responding to condom questions and praying the priests wouldn’t choose that moment to walk by the classroom. I kept an eye out for them and planned to say “Many people choose not to use condoms due to their religious beliefs,” very loudly just to be safe. It will be very telling whether I am invited back to teach the next group of young Catholics.
More Names
I have a couple more names to add to the list: Sickola and Moody. The search for a “Fungus” continues.
Nighttime at a Glance
Sometimes as I sit by candlelight I imagine what’s going on in the homes around my village. Young kids put the cows to bed and head home to their one meal of ugali (stiff boiled corn flour) and fried greens, cooked on a firewood stove in a smoke-filled kitchen, digging into the communal bowls with greedy fingers. Fat mission employees finish off their beers, then clasp hands in prayer before digging their forks into slabs of meat and rice. Elementary school teachers tune into the news on the radio while they stir their ugali on charcoal stoves, then study for their high school exams late into the night. The small-shop owners sell portions of cooking oil and salt to customers cloaked in colorful kangas emerging from the night into the glow of the shop’s kerosene lantern. Women who have slaved all day collecting firewood, hauling water, cooking, farming and cleaning, wrestle unwilling children into wash basins to scrub the dirt of evening playtime from their skin, then slather oil on their shining shivering bodies. The hard-working men arrive home from the fields or pastures to a steaming bucket bath and a meal. The lazy men are still at the club where local brew will be served until 10 pm, and then they will stumble home in the dark. Children will squeeze 7 at once into a little room on bamboo-frame beds or grass mats. If there is a funeral or a wedding, large groups will be up late into the night, crying, singing, drinking, telling stories. And I sit with my book and my journal, relaxing to the familiar tunes of American and Latin music or strumming my guitar, waiting for a pot of potatoes to boil.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Let's go to the Funeral
When people saw my hair last week, most burst into laughter. They never thought braids could happen to a mzungu, with our slippery hair. The unfortunately named “Tuende kilioni” style (meaning let’s go to the funeral) was right on, as this week I attended two funerals. I think next time I’ll get the “Kilimanjaro” style, which involves your hair ending up on the top of your head like a mountain peak. There’s another style which is named something having to do with getting revenge on your husband’s other wife, but I can’t remember exactly what it’s called or what it looks like.
Maize and Beans
Most people cannot fathom that maize and beans did not come from Africa, as they are so much a part of life in the Southern Highlands. This week I had the students draw a rough map of the world on the board and had them guess the origins of the commonly-grown crops of Tanzania. I liked that I could shock them by moving the papers around on the board. They were surprised that beans and maize came from Central America, cabbage and sugarcane from Asia, and coffee originated in Africa. The only crop with African roots that is still grown in our area is cassava. Then we had a very ruthless competition, in which two teams of students had 10 minutes to collect samples of different native plants with uses for humans. They came up with about 20 different plants, with uses from stomach medicine to natural pesticides.
One thing I enjoy so much about Peace Corps work is the variety. My work in one week has involved teaching Mamas about the dangers of drinking while pregnant, teaching about the manufacturing industry to secondary school students, convincing women that birth control pills are used in the US (and are not poison that Europeans have forced upon Africa), leading a seminar on emotional support for orphans, and teaching English and permaculture. If only real jobs could be this varied.
A Young Composer
“Gailo will be so happy when her mother comes to visit! She will throw a party because there will be another mzungu in the village! We will come and drink soda!”
(A song, translated from Swahili, composed by Lightness, my 4-year-old neighbor, when asked what she would say to my mother when she visits. She was lying in the sand in my garden, a stuffed bear tied to her back like a baby, getting ready to go dig up sweet potatoes I planted early this year.)
When people saw my hair last week, most burst into laughter. They never thought braids could happen to a mzungu, with our slippery hair. The unfortunately named “Tuende kilioni” style (meaning let’s go to the funeral) was right on, as this week I attended two funerals. I think next time I’ll get the “Kilimanjaro” style, which involves your hair ending up on the top of your head like a mountain peak. There’s another style which is named something having to do with getting revenge on your husband’s other wife, but I can’t remember exactly what it’s called or what it looks like.
Maize and Beans
Most people cannot fathom that maize and beans did not come from Africa, as they are so much a part of life in the Southern Highlands. This week I had the students draw a rough map of the world on the board and had them guess the origins of the commonly-grown crops of Tanzania. I liked that I could shock them by moving the papers around on the board. They were surprised that beans and maize came from Central America, cabbage and sugarcane from Asia, and coffee originated in Africa. The only crop with African roots that is still grown in our area is cassava. Then we had a very ruthless competition, in which two teams of students had 10 minutes to collect samples of different native plants with uses for humans. They came up with about 20 different plants, with uses from stomach medicine to natural pesticides.
One thing I enjoy so much about Peace Corps work is the variety. My work in one week has involved teaching Mamas about the dangers of drinking while pregnant, teaching about the manufacturing industry to secondary school students, convincing women that birth control pills are used in the US (and are not poison that Europeans have forced upon Africa), leading a seminar on emotional support for orphans, and teaching English and permaculture. If only real jobs could be this varied.
A Young Composer
“Gailo will be so happy when her mother comes to visit! She will throw a party because there will be another mzungu in the village! We will come and drink soda!”
(A song, translated from Swahili, composed by Lightness, my 4-year-old neighbor, when asked what she would say to my mother when she visits. She was lying in the sand in my garden, a stuffed bear tied to her back like a baby, getting ready to go dig up sweet potatoes I planted early this year.)
Sunday, November 11, 2007
From Donkeys to Heroes
As soon as I stepped in the classroom I could sense my students were abnormally happy. Either I had gotten chalk all over my butt, I thought, or they were about to get me with some practical joke (maybe they had rubbed the cow-itch plant all over the piece of old mattress we use as an eraser). I thought they had finally realized how powerless I would be if they all turned against me, the soft teacher who doesn’t beat kids, my thin façade of control breaking down. I asked them what had gotten into them, and (as usual), 40 heads turned down to their desks and after a good 30 seconds one kid raised his hand. “The rains are near,” he mumbled. That was a relief! I should never have doubted these incredible kids. As we waited for some students to bring us some bamboo rods for the days lesson I gave an impromptu speech about Alaska—I still haven’t gotten used to the fact that here nobody bats an eyelash when I say that’s where I’m from, but these kids were a captive audience so I babbled on and on. Even as it started to rain and the bamboo arrived, the kids managed to pay decent attention to the task of building an A-frame. I love these kids who seem a different species from some of the monsters I tried to teach in the States or Mexico.
Just after the lesson, two men came up the hill toward the school leading two children whose hands had been shackled with heavy rusty chains and secured with a giant lock. I recognized one of them as a kid from my environmental club who had skipped the session. They must have stolen a bunch of chickens (a high crime in our town) or were caught with marijuana, I thought. The grandfather of one of the kids addressed the teachers. “These children were caught skipping school and playing cards!” he announced. The reaction wasn’t quite what he had hoped. I was a little hurt that the kids would rather do this than attend my club meeting (which usually involves a game or competition), but the shackles on these docile children seemed as necessary as harnessing a dead dog. I left at this point, only to hear the beating stick echoing from the school grounds, and to see an excited mob run onto my land after one of the boys and drag him back to the school by the hands and feet.
You might feel outraged at how I could just stand back and let this happen. But what I know about the system is that it is going to be a long slow transition. More than just a shift from corporal punishment, it will take a shift from people viewing children as pack animals whose wild spirits must be broken, to fostering respect for them. We are taking minute steps.
The headmaster at the primary school is transformed every Tuesday and Thursday when we teach 1/3 of the 6th grade class “Hero Books.” These are books that should help the students pick out goals and figure out what the obstacles are to getting there. They should also help them psychologically to realize who they can go to for help. The headmaster, usually feared by the children, reminds me of Beauty’s Beast as he tames his natural tendency to intimidate the kids, and calls for mutual respect. I explained to him that I think children need to learn out of a desire to reach goals, and earn praise from others, rather than the fear of being beaten so it hurts to sit on the hard school benches. I think most of the teachers agree in principle, but behavior change is very tough to bring about.
A 20-year-old villager told me that until he was in the 5th grade, he would run off with his friends and gamble with whatever they could find—100 shillings, a piece of sugarcane, an egg. One day he was caught, and the headmaster gave him the maximum beating allowed. He said he is so glad, as ever since that day he turned into a studious and diligent student, often coming home from vacations from boarding school and locking himself in his room to study for 16 hours a day. He was the top student in his class all four years of high school, and from my view is on his way to being the most educated person in the village. There goes my theory out the door.
As soon as I stepped in the classroom I could sense my students were abnormally happy. Either I had gotten chalk all over my butt, I thought, or they were about to get me with some practical joke (maybe they had rubbed the cow-itch plant all over the piece of old mattress we use as an eraser). I thought they had finally realized how powerless I would be if they all turned against me, the soft teacher who doesn’t beat kids, my thin façade of control breaking down. I asked them what had gotten into them, and (as usual), 40 heads turned down to their desks and after a good 30 seconds one kid raised his hand. “The rains are near,” he mumbled. That was a relief! I should never have doubted these incredible kids. As we waited for some students to bring us some bamboo rods for the days lesson I gave an impromptu speech about Alaska—I still haven’t gotten used to the fact that here nobody bats an eyelash when I say that’s where I’m from, but these kids were a captive audience so I babbled on and on. Even as it started to rain and the bamboo arrived, the kids managed to pay decent attention to the task of building an A-frame. I love these kids who seem a different species from some of the monsters I tried to teach in the States or Mexico.
Just after the lesson, two men came up the hill toward the school leading two children whose hands had been shackled with heavy rusty chains and secured with a giant lock. I recognized one of them as a kid from my environmental club who had skipped the session. They must have stolen a bunch of chickens (a high crime in our town) or were caught with marijuana, I thought. The grandfather of one of the kids addressed the teachers. “These children were caught skipping school and playing cards!” he announced. The reaction wasn’t quite what he had hoped. I was a little hurt that the kids would rather do this than attend my club meeting (which usually involves a game or competition), but the shackles on these docile children seemed as necessary as harnessing a dead dog. I left at this point, only to hear the beating stick echoing from the school grounds, and to see an excited mob run onto my land after one of the boys and drag him back to the school by the hands and feet.
You might feel outraged at how I could just stand back and let this happen. But what I know about the system is that it is going to be a long slow transition. More than just a shift from corporal punishment, it will take a shift from people viewing children as pack animals whose wild spirits must be broken, to fostering respect for them. We are taking minute steps.
The headmaster at the primary school is transformed every Tuesday and Thursday when we teach 1/3 of the 6th grade class “Hero Books.” These are books that should help the students pick out goals and figure out what the obstacles are to getting there. They should also help them psychologically to realize who they can go to for help. The headmaster, usually feared by the children, reminds me of Beauty’s Beast as he tames his natural tendency to intimidate the kids, and calls for mutual respect. I explained to him that I think children need to learn out of a desire to reach goals, and earn praise from others, rather than the fear of being beaten so it hurts to sit on the hard school benches. I think most of the teachers agree in principle, but behavior change is very tough to bring about.
A 20-year-old villager told me that until he was in the 5th grade, he would run off with his friends and gamble with whatever they could find—100 shillings, a piece of sugarcane, an egg. One day he was caught, and the headmaster gave him the maximum beating allowed. He said he is so glad, as ever since that day he turned into a studious and diligent student, often coming home from vacations from boarding school and locking himself in his room to study for 16 hours a day. He was the top student in his class all four years of high school, and from my view is on his way to being the most educated person in the village. There goes my theory out the door.
Saturday, November 03, 2007
Magic
I tried to introduce the concept of grafting to a (hilarious) health volunteer friend of mine, who told me to stop making up Lord-of-the-Rings magic-type lies. How could you take a piece of one tree and stick it on another, improving the trees and even changing the type of fruit it produces? Grafting is pretty much the coolest thing I’ve done in my life. Yesterday we started the grafting of 800 avocado trees, the first step in my master plan to turn my village into the hub of guacamole-making in Tanzania.
Amazing Guests
“If you saw me on the street, would you ever believe I have AIDS?” the young woman asked a group of my villagers. They adamantly shook their heads. How could such a stunning, cheerful, confident young woman be infected with the deadly disease? I invited two people living openly with HIV to come to my village and talk about their experiences with the disease, and halfway through the young woman realized that her audience thought she was acting. She then pulled out her record of CD4 (white blood cell) counts at the hospital to prove it to the group of women she was addressing. More self-assured than the vast majority of females in the village, our guest shared her story of getting married, falling sick with tuberculosis, the death of her husband and youngest child, getting tested for HIV, and how she now lives positively with her remaining two children. Stories like hers are so common among young women. The difference is that she is one of the few who has been tested and has begun to take antiretroviral drugs, which have changed her life. She appears strong and healthy, and asserts proudly that she could now ride her bike all the way to town without any problems, while in the past she was bedridden. The two guests made quite an impact on me, and I hope the villagers were as moved as I was.
Yet More Fatness
While filling out the cards used to chart the weight of growing children, I asked the nurse what she intended to name her future kids. She said it was funny I should ask because she had just been telling someone the other day that if she has a girl it will be named Gail (but spelled Gell so that people will be able to pronounce it), and a boy will be named “Beckham.”
I will add to the growing list of excellent names: Redness (and her brother Swelling?), God, Nitishie ("Scare me" in Swahili), Rechina, Bathroomeo (ok, maybe it had only 1 “o”), Enjoy.
I tried to introduce the concept of grafting to a (hilarious) health volunteer friend of mine, who told me to stop making up Lord-of-the-Rings magic-type lies. How could you take a piece of one tree and stick it on another, improving the trees and even changing the type of fruit it produces? Grafting is pretty much the coolest thing I’ve done in my life. Yesterday we started the grafting of 800 avocado trees, the first step in my master plan to turn my village into the hub of guacamole-making in Tanzania.
Amazing Guests
“If you saw me on the street, would you ever believe I have AIDS?” the young woman asked a group of my villagers. They adamantly shook their heads. How could such a stunning, cheerful, confident young woman be infected with the deadly disease? I invited two people living openly with HIV to come to my village and talk about their experiences with the disease, and halfway through the young woman realized that her audience thought she was acting. She then pulled out her record of CD4 (white blood cell) counts at the hospital to prove it to the group of women she was addressing. More self-assured than the vast majority of females in the village, our guest shared her story of getting married, falling sick with tuberculosis, the death of her husband and youngest child, getting tested for HIV, and how she now lives positively with her remaining two children. Stories like hers are so common among young women. The difference is that she is one of the few who has been tested and has begun to take antiretroviral drugs, which have changed her life. She appears strong and healthy, and asserts proudly that she could now ride her bike all the way to town without any problems, while in the past she was bedridden. The two guests made quite an impact on me, and I hope the villagers were as moved as I was.
Yet More Fatness
While filling out the cards used to chart the weight of growing children, I asked the nurse what she intended to name her future kids. She said it was funny I should ask because she had just been telling someone the other day that if she has a girl it will be named Gail (but spelled Gell so that people will be able to pronounce it), and a boy will be named “Beckham.”
I will add to the growing list of excellent names: Redness (and her brother Swelling?), God, Nitishie ("Scare me" in Swahili), Rechina, Bathroomeo (ok, maybe it had only 1 “o”), Enjoy.
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