A PEPFAR Grant and Training

My first grant went through! It's only for about $180, but it went through just fine, so next weekend we are going to sell fruit tree seedlings in the village (orange, lemon, passion fruit, custard apple, guava and a few more). We are buying them for the equivalent of 50 cents and selling them to villagers who attend a seminar for 5 cents each. We're doing a seminar on how to care for seedlings properly, so that hopefully they will all survive. The grant is PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), so I had to make the project relate to AIDS as much as possible. There's a group that takes care of orphans by providing them with a plot of land to farm and seeds when they graduate from the 7th grade, and they get to order seedlings first. Then the seminar will include a little spiel about how fruit relates to proper nutrition, and how proper nutrition is so important for people with diseases like AIDS. I'm excited.

We are in Iringa for AIDS education training, so today we went to an elementary school and taught two lessons. It was surprising to me how much the kids already know. I think what is really needed are more life skills lessons, where they learn and practice skills like saying "no" assertively, having positive role models and developing goals. I hadn't really thought much about how important those things are until recently. I can see how much easier it would be to do the right thing in a tough situation if you'd done a skit about it in class, or if you had some lines prepared to say to someone who was pressuring you. It is a lot like the DARE program from elementary school (Drug Abuse Resistance Education). My counterpart and I are thinking about how we are going to teach when we get back to the village.














It is nice to be in town and get things like cheese and chocolate, but it will be nice to get back to my little farm!

HAPPY NEW YEAR

The past month has been so busy, with our in-service training, a visit from my friend Rafael on his winter vacation from Nova Scotia, and now a President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief seminar. We are now allowed to start projects, so I am working on trying to get fruit tree seedlings to plant before we get too far into the rainy season.

Rafael was a terrific guest; we didn't actually do any of the typical touristy things. Instead we spent the majority of the time in my village, meeting villagers (a few of whom spoke English with him, a few of whom rattled on in Swahili or even Kihehe heedless of his confusion). He even tagged along to another subvillage where I was doing evaluations of permaculture seminars, and got a tour of some farmers' fields. My friend, who owns a little shop where she sells maandazi (fried dough) and milk, was very impressed when he quickly learned to fry the maandazi. It was nice because men in the village don't cook if they are married, so to see the mzungu frying maandazi was quite a wake-up call. I explained how men in Canada and the US often will cook, clean and even do laundry for themselves, even when they're married! They thought that was hilarious. We have a long way to go.

It was also really nice to have a friend helping out on the farm. I have only a half or a third of an acre, but it's taking me quite a while to get the whole thing prepped and planted. I have about 1/3 of it done so far, but will get back to work when I return next Saturday. It is nice because people come by and ask me why I'm farming the way I do. This year the rains are incredibly heavy, and many many people have lost their bean crops and have had parts of their fields washed away. I've had a number of people say that if they'd known the rains would be so strong, they would have done their farms like me (that is with contour ridging and ditches). I am currently on a campaign to get everyone to dig ditches, which I think is the most important thing I could possibly get them to change at this point.




Me in my contoured and ditched garden.






We spent Christmas with about 25 other wazungu at my friend's village in Njombe. It was a lot of fun, and if the idea of a fat man who lives in the North Pole and spies on you all year to judge your behavior and then comes around to put presents or coal in your socks isn't weird enough, we decided to have a Christmas pinata. We hung it out on a tree and a bunch of villagers gathered around and watched us beat the thing. Some even joined in. It was a blast. We also had a deep-fried turkey.

I hope everyone had as lovely and interesting holidays as we did here!

Peace and Season's Greetings to All

I can't believe it's Christmastime! That seems so bizarre right now. I think we are getting a turkey to cook on the charcoal stove.

We have been having an in-service training this week. I returned to my village with a friend who lives in Njombe, because we had a free day on Sunday. It was really cool getting to show him my village. Plus he is one of the most hilarious people I've met in my life. I got a chance to work on my farm a tiny bit, but it was the Sabbath and my farm is right on the road, so I got lectured by several people passing by that I shouldn't be working. I really wanted to get a little bit of a start though, and won't be back in my village for a long time, so I felt it was necessary.

My corn is healthy, my garbanzos and beans are growing, the Chinese cabbage is up but being ravaged by something, half of my peas were eaten, half survived, and the tomatoes, carrots, lettuce, onions, basil, mint, beets and eggplant have yet to come up. We'll see. I plan to plant pumpkin seeds, potatoes, peas and beans on my farm.

The major thing that came out of training was a rough plan to buy seedlings and plant them in January. I'm still working out the details with my village executive officer. The training was fun, and it was good to work on planning a project.

Permaculture, Rain (Hooray!!) and the Answer to the Rooster Question

I had 3 days packed full of permaculture fun. The first day, we went to one of the subvillages and 80 people showed up for the meeting. It went pretty well. Then in another subvillage we showed up and nobody was there, so we moved the meeting to the kilabu, which is a cluster of buildings where the local brew is sold. People showed up expecting to while away the afternoon and maybe get a bit tipsy, but we sat them down and started the class. There were 15 people, and I have to say it was probably the best of all our sessions so far. The next day we had invited tons of people from all kinds of clubs, but only 6 showed up. But they were a jolly group of elders, very excited about the seminar. My counterpart had to translate everything into Kihehe though.

Here's the good news: it's the rainy season!!! Such a relief. It has been raining for about a week now. It rains for a couple of hours each day usually. And when it rains it pours. The first day it rained I stood in my enclosed courtyard under the roof and took a shower!

The downside to this is that I felt a panic to get my garden planted. I set about permaculturing the entire thing, which involves double-digging all the beds and digging swales and ditches, and the clincher is that I don't have a shovel, just a hoe. But I think it is important that I used only a hoe, because that is the only implement at most of the villagers' disposal. I didn't realize how big my garden was until I began this formidable task. It was probably one of the more difficult physical accomplishments I have undertaken in my life. I didn't have any compost, but I will get some. I have planted carrots, lettuce, eggplant, beets, kale, peas, a few potatoes, garbanzo, corn, beans, basil, mint, and tomatoes. We'll see what works. Some of the seeds are a little iffy.

Oh yeah, and finally in answer to the question posed in my first blog entry, roosters say "Kokolikoo".

Here are a couple of pictures taken during training in August.

A Wedding and a Funeral

I went with my neighbor to a wedding in Iringa, and it was pretty normal: you know - started a fight, had more relation to Kevin Bacon than to the bride or groom, toured around the city in a daladala (microbus) crammed full of people singing send-off songs in Swahili, when arriving at the church could not identify the bride or groom whose wedding I had been invited to, and was amazed at how bored and unhappy the bride and groomed managed to appear throughout the wedding and the reception.

There were about 150 invited guests at the wedding, and we were hanging out in the bride's mother's courtyard for a good chunk of the day, preparing food, getting fed, chatting, dancing, drinking the local brew and the like. That was pretty normal. Somehow though, some drunk and crazy people made their way in, and two of them were quite obsessed with the fact that there was a mzungu (Caucasian) there, and decided it would be necessary to push through some people to try to touch me. They jostled a friend of mine and she jostled back and one of these crazy people punched her in the head. Luckily that was all that it came to, and they were quickly kicked out.

Apparently I was there because my friend's husband is the groom's brother-in-law. Nobody seemed to mind though.

The reason I couldn't identify the couple was because there were two couples getting married at the same time (to save the priest’s time?).

The daladala ride was pretty normal for Tanzania, and actually incredibly fun.

The reason the couple looked so unhappy is because I guess there are some rules to weddings here. They are supposed to act like it is the most painful torture they must endure. Hopefully they were happy on the inside. We were happy-- there was good food and music and dancing.

I slept in the bride's mom's house, and I think maybe in the bride's mom's bed, which she insisted on while she slept on the floor. I was too tired to protest at the time. All-in-all it was a pretty good time and I made some friends.

Also, my neighbor died and I went to his family's house. It is tradition for people to arrive on the day of the funeral, and walk in a big procession with the coffin to the burial site, and then return to the house where they sit around cooking, eating, drinking, crying and accepting donations all day long. I went over after the funeral was done because I had to teach in the morning. I was glad to be a little late because the crying had stopped and been replaced by drinking, and they were very glad to receive me and ask me some questions about America and the like. I arrived and gave my condolences to everyone, gave my donation, and sat with the women awhile.

A Day in My Village

I have been asked to describe a typical day in my village. There haven't been any typical days; every day is different. I wouldn't say I have a routine, so let me just tell you what I did one day, and wouldn't be surprised if it happened again.

I got up around 6:00am, and cleaned the house a bit. After cooking and feasting on rice with powdered milk and sugar, I hopped on my bike to go to the one remaining water pump that still works in the village. The water flowed so slowly that I was there for an hour, 40 minutes of which was waiting for my 20-liter bucket to fill. Some kids arrived, and of course were very shy. One started drumming on his empty water buckets, so I joined in, and soon we had a small band going. After returning to my house, I bathed quickly in about 2 gallons of water, and then headed to the mission, where I had been invited to see the monthly clinic, where all the kids under 5 years old are taken to be weighed. It was jam-packed with mothers and bawling babies and toddlers running around poking each other. They put me to work recording the health status of the kids, which apparently you can tell just by their age and weight. They are given a color-code which corresponds to their health. To weigh the kids they stuff them into over-sized underwear and hang them from a scale like the ones at the produce section of the grocery store, but it has a hook to hang the underwear on. After all the kids are weighed, there is usually a nutrition session where the mothers are instructed on how to make nutritious baby-food. The nurse then gives shots to all the kids who need vaccinations (polio, measles, diptheria, etc.). It runs pretty smoothly considering the number of babies and little kids all crammed into such a little space.

After this I went home and felt too lazy to cook, so I went to my passion-fruit vine in the backyard and made a lunch out of a few of the fruits. I was waiting for a woman who used to be the chairperson of a mama's group in the village, which was disbanded after the departure of my predecessor. I want to start the group again, but I don't want it to by MY mama's group, so I am working with her to get it going again with as little input from me as possible. I want them to get the idea that I will help them but will not run the group. We were supposed to meet with the village executive officer about getting all the mamas together for a meeting, but there was a death in the village, so he was out. This is very common- meetings and important dates are often put off because of deaths in the village, as graves must be dug, and other arrangements made.

In the afternoon I holed up in my house for a while to paint, then went out to visit neighbors and teachers. I returned home to translate a session on AIDS from English to Swahili, as I said I would do for the chairperson of the AIDS education club. The story on the AIDS club parallels that of the mamas' group-- after the previous Peace Corpse left it no longer met. Now I have met with the chairperson to advise and motivate him to get the group going again with as little involvement from me as possible.

On my rounds in the village I met a woman selling bread, which is akin to finding clementine oranges in the grocery store for the first time around Christmas-time. I was excited, and bought up the remaining 4 rolls she had. I ate these for late-afternoon snack. I usually eat a little better than this, and intended to cook up some Chinese cabbage I bought, but I had a lazy food day.

By 7:00 pm you need a lamp to see anything, so I usually water my "garden" (which right now is only 2 small beds) before this. Realizing I didn't want to waste any of my clean water on the garden, I went down the hill to haul water from a ditch where the water is dirty, but I don't have to wait in line. I hauled it back up to my house, and decided that it was too late to go for a run, and I had gotten a bit of exercise anyway. I read and painted by candlelight until 9 or 9:30, when I went to sleep.

A typical day usually consists of me running around the village chasing people down and setting up meetings and then going to those meetings and then waiting for hours for those meetings to start. Now I have the work of translating AIDS sessions and planning of permaculture sessions. I don't feel like staying in my house all the time, and of course there is no library where I can study, so I was thinking of trying to use the teachers' office as a less solitary workplace. Yesterday was atypical only in that I got away with very little cooking, didn't wash any clothes, and I didn't have very many visitors at the house.

I hope that was at least a little informative!

Up a Hill - and Down

I just spent several days at meetings in the town of Morogoro. We got a free day off, because they changed the schedule of the monitoring and reporting seminar, so we decided to climb one of the beautiful Morogoro mountains. We knew that people often get robbed when they climb, so we decided to play it safe and take a large number of people and pay for 2 experienced guides. It was absolutely gorgeous; a mix of natural acacia forest and cultivated land; land that was so steep you wonder how you could possibly hold a hoe over your head and not fall off. There were plantations of everything from cabbage and carrot to bananas and even peaches. There was a beautiful waterfall that we stopped at to rinse the sweat off our faces. We climbed for about 6 hours, in one of the harder hikes of my life. It was very hot and humid and quite steep in some places. Possible more amazingly, at the top, after winding our way up steep switchbacks of a narrow but well-travelled path, we arrived at a cellphone tower, where a few of the tower guards were hanging out. I guess the climb was probably no big deal for them because there were sodas and water they had hauled up the mountain and maybe were selling, and there was a loud generator going so maybe they hauled the gas for it up the hill as well.

I have to say that the hike down was much harder, and today I'm feeling pretty wrecked.

Ants, Gardens & Wedding Cakes

This has been an exciting week, starting from the biting safari ants that took up residence in my house, to a successful permaculture seminar, to baking a wedding cake.
I woke up one morning before dawn and stumbled out to my bathroom, where I was greeted with a pinching sensation as I sat. Upon my return with a candle it was clear I had an infestation of the bathroom and living room. I went on a killing rampage, and decided after my morning teaching I would seek advice from villagers on how to rid myself of the beasts. They suggested everything from diesel oil to smelly plants, and I settled on a tactic of kerosene and charcoal ash. I was informed by one villager that the ants could crawl into my nose and kill me, so needless to say I didn't sleep well that night. But they didn't return. They are still in my garden, and have invaded my bathroom once, but I drove them off. Once in a while I find one in my room which makes me nervous. They have now moved on to pester my neighbors, who are having a terrible time getting rid of them. If you're having second thoughts about visiting me, don't worry, they're really not that bad.
The permaculture seminar was good-- we started in the classroom and then went to my garden for the practical part. People seemed bored but everytime I thought we were losing their interest they would ask very good questions.
Today there is a wedding in the village. I was invited to help the village nurse make a cake, and we failed miserably the first time, burning the thing black. So I tried again on my own, and the thing didn't rise at all, so it is a small, dense, sweet loaf. I'm too embarrassed to show my face at the wedding, and hopefully they won't know it was me who made the cake!

Exciting New Ideas

We just got done with a 3-day training on permaculture, which was pretty fantastic. I went with a counterpart from my village, whom everyone calls Babu (grandfather in Swahili). The idea is to learn to grow more vegetables close to your home in a small amount of space using water conservation and double digging and other cool tricks. My counterpart is so excited about it that while others were hitting the bar after the session, we were planning permaculture sessions for when we get back to our village. We are setting up a meeting with all the village leaders to organize seminars. I am excited to get back and plant my garden!