Six months later; coming up for air...

Six months later, greetings and salutations once again!

Before I begin writing my life away, I should mention that I’ve been wanting to post for about four months now. But, as you’ll read, the last half year have been ridiculously busy and things kept getting in the way. Hopefully this post’ll bring you up to date with what’s been going on over here since September.

Another thing I’m adding retroactively: I really like parentheses; sorry, that’s just how I write.

Jumping to it…

September/PAC Health, Eds Swearing In and Malaria Training

Last time I posted, I was sitting in Dar; first for the PAC-Health meeting and then while I was on security hold because my backpack full of expensive things was stolen while traveling. Long story short, it took about a week to get a police report (after the initial report was misplaced, I had to refile; law enforcement in this country leaves much to be desired), after which I made a claim on the insured portion of what was stolen. Fortunately, the insurance end of the incident went smoothly and I was reimbursed enough to get the same model laptop, a new iPod, a Kindle, a hard drive and a new backpack, among other things.

My stay in Dar coincided with the Swearing-In for the new Education class (or baby Eds, as we affectionately call them), which is fortunate because (1) it gave me the opportunity to meet a lot of them and (also 1) Swearing-In ceremonies means free cake. So I got free cake and made some new friends as a bonus.

Then, on the same day as the baby Ed’s Swearing-In, I got to be a guest on a local reality television show. During PAC-Health, Johns Hopkins asked me to do a lesson on mosquito net repair, which I was more than happy to volunteer for. Then, two days before the event, it was revealed to me that the lesson was actually taking place on a popular reality television show called “Bibi Bomba” (“Cool Grandmas”) that Johns Hopkins was sponsoring to promote its “Wazazi Nipendeni” (“my parents love me”) anti-malaria campaign. (Bibi Bomba is like Big Brother, but with grandmas!)

Overall it went well, although I fudged my Swahili something awful during one of the takes (which was mercifully cut from the final version, so you’ll never know). The only part of the show with me on it ended up being a segment where I spent ten minutes watching grandmas walking down a catwalk, showing off some outfits they’d designed the previous week before I and a few other people judged which ones we liked best. It was certainly one of the more interesting “what the hell am I doing here!?” moments of my service. Quite the experience!

After that, I headed out west for a week-long malaria training in Iringa with my counterpart before heading back to site, where I camped out for ten weeks and the real busy-period came into play.

October/Life Skills and Committee Planning

Prior to leaving in September, I had already planned to do two Life Skills programs in October for the local primary and secondary schools. Each program was four classes that dealt with either HIV/AIDS prevention and safe sex (secondary school) or HIV/AIDS prevention and decision-making (primary school). Everything went exceedingly well and both programs ended on a high note.

      

Also during the month of October, my counterpart, my community change agent (CCA) and I worked on putting together a malaria education committee and an HIV/AIDS education committee for the ward. The first step of this process involved identifying at least one person from each village in the ward who’d be interested in participating in the committees. My counterpart and CCA did an impressive job getting a list of candidates together and within three weeks we had all the committee spots filled and ready to go.

While waiting for the invitees to accept, we began planning two-day trainings for each committee. My counterpart, CCA and clinical officer worked with me to plan the training, and my clinical officer provided malaria tests, HIV tests and condoms to be used for demonstrations during the trainings. I also put a fat chunk of my own money into printing training materials (unfortunately there’s no funding mechanism for PCVs with pending grant requests (market project!), so it was pay myself or compromise the integrity of the trainings; I still think it was a worthy investment).

November/Training of Trainers

The trainings took place during the first week of November. Each training consisted of lessons on malaria and HIV/AIDS science, symptoms, prevention, treatment and myths and misconceptions, along with lessons on malaria prevention in young mothers and living healthily with and reducing the stigma of HIV/AIDS. The malaria education committee consisted of 10 members, all of whom showed up the first day and all but two of whom showed up the second; the HIV/AIDS education committee consisted of 14 members (including members of a couple local people living with HIV (PLHIV) support groups), all of whom showed up the first day and all but two of whom showed up the second day.

   

By the end of the week, every village in the ward had a trained HIV/AIDS educator and all but two villages had a trained malaria educator. After the trainings, all of the members received a lanyard with a name card and certificate saying they completed the training; they also got to keep the training materials to make sure they had reference materials to go back to in case they need to freshen up (which was why I was adamant about making sure they got printed materials). Now we’ve got people in every corner of the ward available to help if we find ourselves teaching in that area.

I mentioned above that members of a couple PLHIV support groups have spots on the HIV/AIDS education committee. As it happens, one of those groups was another one of my projects for October.

On the way back from one of my Life Skills sessions at the secondary school, I stopped at the house of a woman living with HIV who I’d met a few times prior. She’d shown an interest in previous conversations in starting a support group with some friends of hers (who were also HIV-positive), and when the topic came up again during this particular conversation, I mentioned setting up a meeting at the village office with her friends and anyone else interested. Within a few days, we were sitting in I the office and were formalizing plans to have the group registered with the district. The following week, four members of the group and I traveled to Masasi town and the ‘Union for Living with Hope’ was officially registered. Now we’re looking for potential income-generating projects (and I’ve already secured a permanent stall for them and another HIV support group when the market project(!) is complete).

More November/World AIDS Day Planning and Mbeya

While all of the above three things were going on, I was also working with my counterpart and some of the local soccer coaches to put together an event for World AIDS Day (WAD). WAD is traditionally December 1^st, but we’re able to get funding to hold a WAD event as long as it’s sometime within a month of that date. December 1^st didn’t work for me, so we planned an event for December 7^th instead.

The original plan for our WAD event was a soccer tournament, during which free testing would be made available to villagers and educational material would be handed out. After securing the counselors for the tests, I met with some local soccer coaches to gauge which teams would be interested in the event. Initial interest was high, and we expected to play a four-team men’s tournament while also having a women’s game. Unfortunately, this ended up being one of those not-uncommon instances where things don’t really go as planned.

Side-note: Between October 1^st and November 26^th, I had zero days off – as in, every single day for 57 straight days, I could not get away from working on some project or another (including Halloween weekend!). It was obviously unintentional, but even on days where I’d planned to take time off I found myself getting caught in some thing or another. The primary issue is traveling to town, of which I did a lot during this period. Going to town automatically eats up an eight-hour chunk of my day (if I don’t stay overnight), and every project listed above involved a lot of time going to town: because I had no computer during this period (thanks, thief!), the materials I was putting together for the trainings (each participant got a packet that ranged from 23 to 31 pages, depending on their role in the committee) had to be typed on computers in town (where power is sporadic, it should be noted); I also typed materials for a few of the Life Skills classes, registering the PLHIV group required two days in town and securing the counselors for the WAD event required three separate meetings at the District AIDS Coordinator’s (DAC) office. Altogether, I would estimate I spent at least a quarter of my time between October and November in Masasi putting things together.

By the time I left on the 26^th to head to Mbeya City (deep into the southern highlands), I’d spent two days arguing with DAC counselors about the cost of bringing the tests before finally agreeing to pay for fuel and per diems (which were never mentioned in the earlier meetings; I had to rewrite my already-approved grant request, which could have been a painful (or, if it had failed, expensive) process if our post staff hadn’t mercifully helped me get it through). I’d also busted my chops trying to get a mobile video unit to come, but had given up after a unit from one organization cancelled on me and another tried to charge me an exorbitant amount. Then, by some absurd stroke of luck that still blows my mind, the new regional director for Johns Hopkins’ COMMIT program offered a video unit for the event when I met her for dinner the night before I left for Dar (she also offered to bring the MVU to other Volunteers in the region if we could get the dates together; that was a no-brainer!).

Mbeya was nice; it was my first trip that far west, and that part of the country is gorgeous. We spent our few days there doing nothing in-particular, but the highlight of the trip was a spontaneous decision to climb into Africa’s second-largest crater lake, Ngozi Crater. The “paths” in some areas were so steep that we had to back our way down facing the crater wall. It was one of the most physically-demanding things I’ve done in country (which may speak more to how physically unfit I am at the moment than the difficulty of the climb) and it definitely got me motivated to challenge myself physically more often.

   

Unfortunately I couldn’t really get away from work in Mbeya either; the soccer tournament quickly (and predictably) fell apart just when I hoped to get away from the drama. Two of the teams waited until I was gone before announcing that they wouldn’t play at the time of day they’d drawn (early afternoon), demanding to change the date of the tournament and demanding to be paid in cash rather than a soccer ball (the originally agreed-upon prize; Peace Corps grants don’t allow for cash prizes and quality soccer balls cost $40, which is more than what most people in my village make in a month). This spat lasted the better part of a week before I decided their obstinacy wasn’t worth the trouble. We dropped the two whiny teams and agreed on a single men’s match between my village team and the one that hadn’t complained; fortunately these teams had the two largest followings of the four, so we felt good about our chances for a big turnout.

December/World AIDS Day

I got back to my village on the day before the event; another Volunteer traveled with me to help out, and we pooled together some money to buy prizes to encourage people to test (radios are a ridiculously valuable prize in this country in terms of cost-effectiveness and utility; we put three up for prizes, along with soccer jerseys, cooking utensils and other goodies). It was explained to me after we returned that one of the village councilman had planned his wedding for the same day as the WAD event, something no one had bothered to mention while we were planning. (Tanzanians generally avoid confrontation, which often makes it difficult to get information they perceive as inconvenient.) So there were already a few-hundred villagers who wouldn’t be available to test, which was a bit of a downer. Furthermore, the bulk of one of the women’s soccer teams was going to the wedding, so the women’s match had to be scratched. But such is life.

The morning of the 7^th brought more good news: the members of the HIV/AIDS education committee showed up at my house and quickly revealed that they hadn’t put together anything for the even (despite my asking them to do so at our last meeting before I left). Fortunately, the other Volunteer was at my house for the event and we were able to split the workload and keep the ship from sinking (she played good cop; I played cranky, no-patience-for-poor-excuses cop). They put together a series of brief informational lessons (which were essentially abbreviated forms of the lessons we provided at training) and planned to talk to groups of people waiting in line to test.

The counselors showed up on time (unheard of in Tanzania) and we got testing underway before noon. The rest of the day then went relatively smoothly until it was time to begin the soccer match. By that point it was mid-afternoon, the line had dwindled and the DAC counselors started arguing that they needed to leave before it got too dark (despite there still being a few hours of daylight left). (They also complained about being over-worked, ignorant that I was already slated for a sixteen-hour day.) I was entirely opposed to their leaving because I anticipated villagers using the halftime break to test. Coming early was the counselors’ suggestion; the soccer game was always supposed to be the draw and they were aware it was an afternoon game. My clinical officer broke up what turned into a heated ten-minute dispute by agreeing (very graciously, I must say) to continue testing through halftime. Unfortunately the counselors took the tests with them, so my clinical officer had to use all of his remaining eighteen tests before we ran out.

But, in one of the most gratifying moments of my service so far, any concern I’d had about burning bridges during my argument with the counselors was thrown to the wayside when I found out that the sixteenth of those last seventeen* tested positive. (*Seventeen rather than eighteen because a person who tests positive is double-tested to make sure the first positive result isn’t erroneous.) He’s a young man about my age; one of only three people to test positive of the 287 we tested (which is a hell of a number and much higher than I was expecting given that it felt like everything was working against us). It’s an unfortunate reality, but now he knows and can get treatment that will save his life; that wouldn’t be the case if testing had ended early.

   

On top of the 287 people we tested (many of them testing for the first time), we distributed all of our 1200 educational handouts and Johns Hopkins’ estimated over 2000 people showed up to the soccer game and movie night. The game was pretty exciting; the opposing village’s team won 5-3.

So, while putting it together was hell in a hand-basket, I’d do it again in a heart-beat. (Besides, none of the bridges ended up burning. I’ve met the lead DAC counselor on a few occasions since and our friendship is actually stronger now than before.)

More December/Back to Dar and back

I spent a day and a half in my village before turning around and heading right back up to Dar to meet with some of the senior staff. Sometime in September, I was asked by Peace Corps to work with another Volunteer on the program’s 2013 annual report. It’s basically a three-page foldout with success stories and a compilation of statistics for the year that’ll go to Washington and partner organizations to promote our work. So, after my WAD event, it was back to Dar to plan a January trip around the country to some of our favorite projects (a sustainable stove project; a pit latrine construction project; and a trio of students who won a national science competition, complete with scholarships and a trip to Ireland – pretty nifty!).

After a few days in Dar, it was back to the vill for about three weeks. I tried to keep a light workload; I taught some villagers how to make sustainable pesticide (one of whom has already gone on to teach his neighbors) and made sure I had everything I needed (and a little more) for the market construction grant application.

I also managed to get a few days to myself during this period; I got quite a bit of housework done (including some upkeep on the permagarden I built in September; I’ll do a separate post on that) and catch up on some reading. Being able to focus on myself for a bit was medicinal and gave me an opportunity to look forward to what the next year’ll entail. (I’m excited!)

As for Christmas, a solid group came down and we had a great time hanging out for a few days on

the beach. We did a white elephant gift exchange where I locked up a box of Cookie Crisp (which I later shared; I’m not cruel). After Christmas, a few of us split off and went to Ndanda to swim in the springs in the hills beyond the Benedictine Abbey. Incidentally, we ran into the abbot when he and a group of German monks joined us at the springs. They’re a wonderful group of people, and their cashew wine is excellent!

January/Whale sharks, MSC and heading West

I made it back to my vill again and camped out there until the 6^th of January, when I left to spend a few days on Mafia Island before Mid-Service Conference (MSC). Mafia is one of the go-to spots in Tanzania during the holiday season because that period of the year coincides with the whale shark migration. You can get there in no time by plane if you’re not on a Peace Corps budget, but the rest of us are stuck with a four-hour ride in a (grossly over-loaded) van followed by a five-hour ride in a (grossly over-loaded) ferry.

We spent two full days on Mafia. The first day we went out in the morning to snorkel with whale sharks. Whale sharks are the largest species of fish on the planet and can reach lengths somewhere in the ballpark of 12-13 meters. Swimming with them was an all-timer of an experience! My first dive was epic and I and some friends were able to swim alongside a good-sized (guessing 9-10 meters) for a good 50 yards before I backed off after swimming into a group of jellyfish. My second jump wasn’t so great (I, being the genius that I am, forgot to put my goggles on), so I only got to see the second shark from a distance as it got away. I got an opportunity for a third jump but opted out of it because my fins were making me uncomfortable during the second jump (and nothing was going to top the first).

The second day on Mafia, a group of us went to the marine park on the other side of the island where we rented out some snorkel equipment and paid a small boat to take us out to a reef a few kilometers off-shore. That experience was arguably as incredible as swimming with the whale sharks – visibility was great and there was something surreal about the environment around the reef; it’s safe to say I’ll be looking to do a bit more snorkeling in the future.

We got back from Mafia the day before MSC began. MSC consisted first of two days of medical checkups followed by a joint-conference with the baby Ed class mentioned above (who were at their three-month IST, now referred to as EST, or Early-Service Training).

It was good to see the new group again. There was an interesting dichotomy to the training because my class and theirs are from two different sectors; we spent a great deal of time sharing ideas and experiences while getting to look at things from a different perspective. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned to many of you before, I was originally nominated to be an Education Volunteer, so I’ve always been interested in how that sector functions and how dramatically different our lifestyles are. It was the first time Peace Corps has held joint class conferences, which tend to be huge in and of themselves – during MSC/EST we had over 80 Volunteers together in one compound. I really hope it continues for future classes.

Following MSC, another Volunteer and I took our trip out west to Makambako, Mbeya and Singida. We got to visit the sites of the Volunteers whose success stories we’d chosen for the annual report, along with their counterparts and those directly involved in the projects. The trip was absolutely fascinating and I saw quite a bit of the country I hadn’t seen before. Nonetheless, we also did a pretty nice job of keeping the schedule concise, which allowed me to get back to site for the better part of a week before turning right back around and coming up to Dar for the umpteenth time.

February/Week 0, more time than anyone should ever spend in Dar and the Kili Marathon

In November, I applied to be a resource PCV to help train the new Health and Environment class when they came in February. After a couple weeks – when I was in Dar for the annual report meetings, as it happens – I was asked to be a Week 0 Volunteer. The resource PCVs during Week 0 are the ones who meet the new class when they first arrive in-country; they’re with them during the first week and are the first ones to get pummeled with the inevitable onslaught of questions about what life is like in Peace Corps. It’s a nifty gig and it worked out perfectly with our schedule for writing the annual report. So, I spent just under a week back in the vill (where the only productive things I did were change out my bucket wine and hand out books at the primary and secondary schools) before heading back up to Dar to meet with the new class (who are awesome, by the way; Week 0 was a blast!).

After Week 0, I spent way too long in Dar working with another Volunteer to put together (the actual writing of, that is) last year’s annual report. It didn’t take long to figure out the expat side of Dar is waaaay out of my budget, so I spent half my time between the (far more economical) city center and occupying as many coffee shops as possible (where I feel more at home writing). But my end of the report is done and, though I haven’t seen the final copy, I think it’s going to look good. 

I even found some time to spend a few days up north in Moshi for the Kili Marathon, where I toughed out a grueling 8.75k (by accident) at the base of Africa’s tallest mountain. (I’m proud to say I beat at least half of the small children who were also running; no one older than twelve was going to keep me from my “fun run” t-shirt!) I’m strongly considering trying for the full marathon next year, provided I get my running shoes sent and can get over being a hypochondriac about my knees (bad cartilage). But that’s a battle for another day.

March/Finally back to the vill…

After spending so much time in Dar that I really never want to go back, I finally made it back to home (sweet home) in Mkululu. Apparently I failed to hide the anxiety and wear of almost two months away from site; most of my village greeted me with the traditional “you were lost, how was your trip?”, followed by “you look sick, you should go rest.” But all’s well now; I’ve found homeostasis (what a beautiful word!) again and the balance of the universe has returned.

      

The first order of business once I got back to site was to make sure the community was rolling on the market project, which I found out during Week 0 had been approved. By the time I got back to the village, the money from the grant was in my account and it was simply a matter of making sure the community contribution (a requisite for grant-funded projects; usually locally available resources like sand, stones, water and casual labor) was coming together. Fortunately, the community had two large piles of sand going when I got back, and we’ve spent much of the last two weeks collecting the materials to get busy with construction.

So now you’re up to date on where I’m at and what I’ve been up to recently – an overwhelming amount of work followed by an overwhelming amount of still-working-but-not-at-site. I’m sure I missed a few things here and there, but that’s the bulk of it and it’ll have to do.

As for the future: on the project front, my villagers and I are looking forward to doing more with sustainable agriculture over the next year, we’ve got a Malaria Day event coming up within the month (it’s going to be huge!), I want to get to work on a couple projects to improve the secondary school.

That seems like a good place to end for now. Hopefully it won’t take as long for the next post, but until then, all the best!