first weeks in village

hi everyone! for some reason the shift key doesn't work -0h well. anyway, life in the village is going well - no electricity or indoor plumbing, but we all adjusted very quickly to that. limited communication is harder - with all of you as well as with the village - but our swahili is improving and the number of spanish words we throw in is decreasing. there are some easily confused words that have made for some entertaining stories but i'll save that for another time.

teaching is going well. my group has the secondary school. we teach f0rms 1-3, which technically should be 14-16 yr olds but in reality is more like 14-20 yr olds. on our first day, they combined all 3 forms in the cafeteria - i stopped counting students at 300. we then split into a more manageable class size of about 120 - i have form 3 students since i have the strongest bio background in the group. my teaching partner is amazing - he's great w/ the kids. the 3 other teachers have forms 1and2 combined. the 2 groups are teaching at 2 primary schools.

before teaching started we had meetings w/ village leaders including local govt and church leaders. it went v. well - lots of them showed up and were welcoming. we also had a mtg w/ the teachers of our respective schools. the lack of knowledge of secondary teachers was upsetting but we have permission to teach our full curriculum, even to the primary students, which is wonderful.

we've gotten lots of questions. those based on lack of knowledge are far easier to respond to than those based on lack of compassion. i've gotten this same question twice - once from a teacher and once from one of the students at the same schools - the teachers are never in the room when we teach - and have heard that its a common question for other groups also. 'if giving people antiretroviral drugs makes them live longer then they can potentially infect even more people. why not just let them die as soon as possible to prevent spread?' the only positive thing i can say is that i believe stigma comes from fear which is largly based on lack of knowledge. it's our hope that our education will reduce fear and therefore stigma. it should be noted tho that this village has a far higher baseline of knowledge than most in tanzania - sic was here just 3 years ago and many of them remember.

our very first project in the village was to do surveys of houses re general knowledge and of dukas - small shops - to see if they sold condoms, and if they'd be willing to if not. the house surveys were interesting. first we had to find the boundaries of all the subvillages - there aren't exactly lots of roadmarks except things like the big tree, the small stream, etc - and then walk to the geographic center of each subvillage, spin a pen in the dirt, walk in that direction, interview the first house, turn right, interview the 3rd house, repeat until all surverys done, being sure to interview only ppl ages 18-60. in all the science textboooks emphasizing the importance of a random survey sample of the poplulation, this model was never mentioned!! they were interesting interviews tho - and we were thrilled when responses showed lots of knowledge and little stigma, as some did.

homestay is great/ roommate is one of tanzanian teaching partners who thankfully communicates for me when necessary. our mama works in her fields a lot. our sister is in secondary school. our bibi - grandma- is an inspiration - she's at least 90 and full of energy - always smiling and constantly hard working. she's hilarious! another woman - mama joshua - helps out our mama during the day. she has two young boys who are in primary school - joshua and jonah - and a daughter too young for school. they're adorable! the women here often go by the name of their eldest child and never take their husband's last name. speaking of husbands - there are no men at our house. i haven't been bold enough to ask about that but it is interesting.

we also have a lot of livestock - goats cows chickens - which means fresh milk and eggs. pasterized and homogenized are meaningless in a village w/o refrigeration. most of the other volunteers are harvard/stanford grads w/ little ag background. i love them all but enjoy my az/id childhood that allows me to respond w/ things like - yes, it possible to get milk from a cow thats not black and white; no, that is not a cow w/ cancer of the back, that is a healthy brahma bull. they've taught me a lot as well... it's all good. also watched a goat slaughtered and skinned - in the center of town. am told that the goat skins are great for making drums.

we're a pretty small group and spend tons of time together which means we have rather interesting conversations. we had a day off for a national holiday last week so the 2 groups in my village walked 2 hours each day to visit the other group in the next village. it was great although a bit warm on the way back. the river we crossed was knee deep and of course all the girls were in long skirts - thrilled to be in town in jeans today. we visit the river when we have a few hours off and love to watch the monkeys that live in the trees there.

the little brother of our group spent the 1st evening arguing the definition of a pun and making attempts at creating some. having now mastered the definition his goal is to make puns as often as possible and then explain them to us if we don't immediately laugh. i swear, tom, he's related to you.

this weekend we went on a 2 day safari. lots of great photos - can't wait to share them w/ all of you!

one of the mamas groups in the village wrote songs to welcome us and performed them with lots of dancing and drumming. average age 60. they're amazing and have great rhythm! it was wonderful.

you can't walk half a block here w/o lots of greetings that are drawn out. it slows things down a bit but is great. we're also typically met with lots of shouts of mzungu or wazungo - white person/people. there's no negative connotation attached, just observation, and rather rare in villages so always shouted. also often followed by a throng of kids. interesting.

we went to church w/ our family. the offering also includes gifts in kind, usually eggs and produce. all of which is auctioned off after the service. the village mayor bought a 7foot sugar cane and a papaya for the american volunteers. his very public support of us is huge and is highly appreciated as is it shapes all that we do in the village. i somehow had the honor of carrying the sugar cane across the village to our home. people eat pieces of it like candy - for the record i prefer chocolate but it wasn't bad.

everything is going well/ will hopefully update this in a week or two

miss you all!!!!!!!!