Reflections, the half way point

While I’m in not in the best of moods with Tanzania right now, after a week of being stood up for 3 meetings, dusty dirt in my face, and chickens pooping in my house, instead of complaining and downing it, I figure I’ll remind myself of what is so great about this country. It seems an appropriate time to reflect as I have officially been a PCV for exactly a year tomorrow. Weird. Team Mbeya is getting two new members tomorrow. The original Team Mbeya (me, Teri, Meesh, and Tristain) had our last hurrah last weekend at Meesh’s house. I made bagels and burnt blondies, Meesh made some scrambled eggs and tea, Teri provided the entertainment via a tiny version of the movie Mean Girls and a couple of episodes on her iPod, and Tristain, well Tristain didn’t really do anything, but that’s ok. It was kind of funny to see how socially retarded we’ve all gotten as we were all together in the village for once, people to talk to, board games to play, etc., and Meesh would be in the kitchen boiling some water or something and notice a prolonged silence and come into the living room to find us all reading. That’s all there is to do in the village usually and I guess old habits die hard.
So back to reflecting on what makes Tanzania great. Mfano (example) 1, if you tell someone you like something that they are wearing, they will offer to give it to you. Whether it be a bracelet of earrings or a khanga (colorful fabric wrap) or their shoes. Seriously. I told a girl in my village the other day that I liked her shoes and she said, Nitakupa (I’ll give them to you). People just like to give other people things in general. Last week I just decided to go for a walk around the village and I passed one old lady sitting in the dirt peeling sweet potatoes. I was walking past a certain stretch of huts that are in pretty rough shape, many of them propped up with limbs to keep them from collapsing. This bibi (grandmother) is certainly not one of the more comfortable or well off people in my village. And yet she insisted on giving me a sweet potato from her meager pile that I knew would be stretched to feed several of the dusty kids running around the yard that night. I wanted to say No! Feed those hungry kids instead. I have soooo much and you have so little. Even though I would spend what I get from PC for a month in a week’s time in the US, here my monthly allotment is more than what many people see in a year. But she wanted to give it to me. A zawadi (gift).
The day before yesterday my neighbor wanted to learn how to make pizza, so I went up to the family’s house that sells milk to get a liter so we could make the cheese. This family used to be my neighbors, but had to move to a different area of the village because other people didn’t like that they got to live in a house that they didn’t build that used to be housing for teachers. They always give me the milk for free, which is generous enough as it is, but that day she also have me a baggy with about 8 tomatoes and 2 oranges. People are just nice. They like to share. Sharing is a good thing people. (Please excuse my short political tirade, I don’t get to have them very often here because most PCV’s share my political views). But really, look at this example of those who have so much less sharing with those who have so much more. It’s just a nice thing to do for humanity. To each his own, of course, but even hearing secondhand people talking about how they’re “scared” of what Obama may due to this country because he’s a “socialist” is a bit frustrating. First of all, socialism is not communism people. America is not turning into the Soviet Union or Cuba here. Most socialist countries are fabulous places to live and are not at all repressed. They get long maternity leaves and cheap college educations and sufficient vacation days, etc. So just because Obama likes to adhere to the old Declaration of Independence line of, “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,” and seems to think that means that people have the right to be healthy, universal healthcare is not evil. And I just have to laugh every time I hear people being concerned for the deficit being created by programs such as this and the stimulus package, seeing how our last “conservative” president took us from a huge surplus to multi-trillion dollar deficit… to accomplish what exactly? (Ok seriously, sorry about that. No offense. Just had to air it out.)
Back to the point of this blog…other nice things people do for me. I’m extremely lucky to have running water in my house, the only person in my village or any surrounding villages to have such a luxury. They made my house special for me with a faucet in the shower and bathroom, a flushable choo (squat toilet), and even a little sink. But there has been a problem with the water intake and for the past couple of weeks I haven’t had water in my house. Does this mean I’ve had to go back to the old pre-service training method of getting water and actually walk up to the pump and get it? No. Every afternoon a group a girls from the primary school comes to get my buckets and fetch it for me. If they don’t, my neighbor goes to get it for me. The one time I tried to go get it on my own, the women at the pump got a kid to carry the bucket back to my house for me. They really try to take care of me in my village.
I mentioned being stood up for 3 meetings this week, which is always a bit frustrating, but the meetings have all been rescheduled for next week so hopefully we can get things rolling with my widows groups again. But work-life hasn’t been a total bust this week. I found out that the five girls from the primary school that I sent to the girl’s conference in June have actually been doing peer education on their own every Monday and Friday at the school. Which is great. No prodding or pushing or planning from me. They completely took the initiative. I went to the class that the two standard 7 girls taught to the other standard 7 girls on Monday. It was really good. They talked about (close your ears boys) periods and they did a really good job. A lot of girls don’t know what their period is when they first get it and they don’t have anyone to talk to about it. The peer educators gave them a good overview of what happens and what they should do then allowed them to ask questions. The questions strayed far from the issue of menstruation and addressed topics as complex as, “Where do babies come from?” and “Why is sex bad?” and “Why can’t girls wear pants?” It was a good discussion. And the peer educators answered most of the questions all on their own with only occasionally turning to me for help. Then after the class, a small group of girls stayed behind to ask me why it is dangerous for girls their age to have sex with older men. They knew that it was, but didn’t really understand why and they wanted to have the details so they could explain them to their friends that they new were engaged in this type of behavior so that they could try to convince them to stop. Wow.
In other less serious matters, I started teaching English to Standard 2 last Thursday. I’m going to try to teach for 30-45 minutes everyday Mon-Thurs, not only for the obvious reason that if they go on to secondary school all instruction is in English and it would help if they were able to understand what was going on, but also because now that we have shelves and shelves of fabulous new books for them to look at, it would be even better if they can eventually read the stories to go along with the pictures! They’re all fascinated with the books. Kids have been coming over to my house a lot lately saying, “Naomba kitabu kusoma.” (May I please have a book to read?) On Monday, we’re finally going to move the stacks of books from my house to the waiting library room, give them a little lesson on how they should wash their hands first and how to turn the pages without damaging them, and then give them their first shot at it. I have high hopes for my English class. It might take a while. I’m trying to ease them into it, I know they have short attention spans as all second graders do, and even shorter because they generally just sit in their classroom without a teacher most of the day doing nothing so when I make them focus it’s a bit difficult, but today at least was a pretty good day. Since most of them don’t know how to read yet, I’m trying to use a combination of drawing pictures and having them repeat the words over and over, but trying to mix things up so it wasn’t just the usual rote memorization. They seemed to start actually trying to think about things a little bit before just blindly repeating everything I said. That’s a start.
So a year in, maybe I don’t have that much that I can point to and say, “ I did that,” but I like to think we’re making progress. We’ve got a couple of things we’re working on and more projects to be started in the near future. When I get back from Mid-Service Conference in Dar in two weeks, the mama I brought to the community theater workshop in Morogoro and I are going to try to start a theater group to provoke conversation and debate about things like stigmatization of those with HIV and older men in using their positions of power to get younger girls to have sex with them. I think it’ll be good. We’ll just have to see how things go. So much has changed and so much has stayed the same since this time last year. It will be interesting to see where this next year takes me.