31
August
2010
Dear Colleagues, Friends and Family,
I am writing to share the news that I have signed a 2-year contract
to work as a research and data management consultant with Haydom
Lutheran Hospital (www.haydom.no) in rural, northern Tanzania. Since
coming to Tanzania in 2006 as a Biology and Health Education volunteer
with the United States Peace Corps, I have worked as a Research
Project Manager for the Johns Hopkins University Department of
Ophthalmology at the Kongwa Trachoma Project, as an Operations
Research Consultant for Catholic Relief Services on a Mobile Health
(mHealth) project for OVC (Orphans and Vulnerable Children) in Arusha,
and as a Public Health Consultant for the United States Agency for
International Development (USAID) mapping the Health Systems
Strengthening budget for Global Round 9 alongside the work of other
bilateral development partners (e.g., Canadian, Danish, Norwegian,
Dutch, Swiss, Japanese, British, and American). Having lived and
worked throughout Tanzania in the southwest (Njombe), central zone
(Dodoma), and along the coast (Dar-es-Salaam), I am excited to work at
a new location in the north (Manyara).
Founded by Norwegian missionaries in 1955, Haydom Lutheran Hospital
(HLH) has grown to become a regional referral hospital with 450 beds,
580 staff, and the only facility of its kind in the region. Located
in the southwest part of the Manyara region in the Mbulu district, HLH
serves over 70,000 patients per year in more than 7 districts across 4
regions. HLH is also a research partner for a number of international
and local research projects including the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation funded MAL-ED project to study malnutrition and enteric
diseases (www.fnih.org/work/key-initiatives/mal-ed) and the Helping
Babies Breathe (www.helpingbabiesbreathe.org) neonatal resuscitation
research project. In my role here at HLH, I will be working to expand
the research capacities of the hospital and to attract new research
partners. With medical records dating back to the first patients in
1955, HLH is expanding its data collection activities. In addition to
improving data collection in each of the hospital’s wards, I will be
working to better utilize these data for the benefit of donors and
other stakeholders, and especially to improve the data feedback to the
wards themselves, to improve hospital practices.
Culturally, Haydom is located in a fascinating part of Tanzania. All
four of Africa’s major language groups are represented among the
people here: the majority Iraqw people (Cushitic language group), the
Isanzu and Iramba peoples (Bantu language group), the Datoga people
(Nilotic language group) and the hunter-gatherer Hadzabe people
(Khosian language group). HLH helped to establish the 4 Corners
Cultural Centre which brings these groups together in a unique
partnership for mutual collaboration, communication and celebration.
Where these groups historically were in conflict with one another,
they now have a forum for conflict resolution and mutual cultural
enrichment.
My wife Jessica and I are happy to announce our move to Haydom and
warmly welcome you to our new home. Whether for possible professional
collaboration or for a vacation to Tanzania, I hope that you do not
hesitate to contact me. I wish you all the best and Karibu Tanzania!
Joshua P. Levens, Ph.D.
Research and Data Management Consultant
Haydom Lutheran Hospital
Private Bag, P.O. Mbulu
Manyara, Tanzania
jlevens@haydom.co.tz
josh@joshualevens.com
Posted: Uncategorized
18
May
2010
My friend Wolfgang asked me some time back if he could distribute entries from this blog to his English class in Germany. Having planned a lesson on American volunteerism, he considered my Tanzania-inspired cultural vignettes as ample fodder for language practice. Naturally predisposed to literary exhibitionism as every blogger must be, I of course agreed. At this point, I had already finished my service with the Peace Corps in southwest Tanzania, was settling in to a research management job in central Tanzania, and was incessantly prone to waxing rhapsodically on the cultural conversation between the US and East Africa as it was. In addition, having taught Tanzanian high school students for two years, I was interested to get a sense of what their German counterparts were like.
Before filling the class in on my details, Wolfgang asked his students to extrapolate on my life and background before moving to Africa. They imagined my American life to be “busy and unhealthy,” filled with “lots of fast food,” living a “chaotic lifestyle” in a “little apartment” where I drove a “Ford Mustang” to my job as either an “office clerk or butcher.” Of course, nothing was said of my “wise-cracking next-door neighbor” who “carries a loaded handgun” and “watches Fox News,” but they were obviously still learning the finer points of American culture. Truthfully, however, the students’ questions and concerns about living in a place like Tanzania were no different than those of their American counterparts. They asked about living “without TV,” at a lower “technical standard,” and without the “luxuriousities” of the developed world. They wondered whether or not I planned on living in Africa forever and if it was difficult to live away from family and friends.
Looking back over a year later to the answers I gave then, I find that little has changed. While I am living in Dar-es-Salaam instead of small town or village, I am already making plans to move back to the bush. While I continue to miss family and friends, I don’t miss life in the United States. While I don’t plan on returning to life without running water and electricity (at least in its sporadically available form), I am happy to live a simpler life style, with a big garden in beautiful surroundings. At the time, there were a few students in Wolfgang’s class who expressed an interest in visiting Africa or even volunteering for a longer term. If any of them is still interested, they should feel free to contact me. That includes you too Wolfgang. Karibuni sana.
Posted: Uncategorized
15
January
2010
It is not recommended to look directly at a solar eclipse. Neither is it recommended to consume saturated fats, eat with your hands out of a communal bowl, or ride a bike through the streets of Dar-es-Salaam during rush hour. Initially, I was prepared for exclusively appropriate eclipse viewing. I placed a piece of white paper against a tree, cut a pin hole through a piece of aluminum foil and then held it between the paper and the moon, as the moon floated between the foil and the sun. Here in Dar, eclipse coverage reached 71.74% at 5:31:48.8 GMT/UT, or roughly 8:30 am, which the locals call half-past two in the morning (sensibly starting the clock when the sun comes up at 7:00 am). It is not recommended to look directly at a solar eclipse, though I don’t know how anyone can resist.
The clouds moved quickly this morning. When they hit just right, sometimes for nearly 30 seconds, there was just enough cloud cover to see the moon blocking out the sun without the clouds blocking them both out, and without the sun’s intensity painfully burning out your retina. Viewing the eclipse on paper was interesting, in a 6th grade science experiment kind of way. Viewing the eclipse directly was amazing, in an images from the Hubble telescope kind of way.
Simple bits of elegant celestial geometry, solar eclipses attract the more adventurous of the more polar residents towards the equator. The Central African Republic, China, India, Kenya, the Maldives, Myanmar, Somalia, Sri Lanka and Uganda got the best show this time around. Coming from the US, I had never seen a solar eclipse before. Here in Dar, they last saw one in 2005, but will have them again in 2013, 2016, 2020, 2027 and 2030, before getting the greatest show on earth, a total eclipse of the sun in 2031. I would like to be around for that one, provided I haven’t already burned out my retinas.
Posted: Uncategorized
13
November
2008
As I sit down to write my final blog entry at UL Secondary as an education volunteer with the United States Peace Corps in Tanzania, I still have tears in my eyes. I have never felt so proud. I am sitting in my school library which, thanks to the donations of many who are hopefully reading this, has a solar power set-up for using a laptop computer. My Form II students are continuing to take their national examinations today. My Form IV students already finished two weeks ago. The remaining Form I and Form III classes are busily preparing for my annual biology examination this Friday. Over the next seven days, I will be packing up my home, giving away many of my household possessions and saying goodbye to my friends and colleagues of the past two years. Foremost in my mind this morning, however, is the news that Barack Obama has been elected President of the United States. I have never felt so proud to be an American.
When I left my country in September 2006, the world seemed a very different place. Disenfranchisement of my fellow Floridians and the murder of my fellow human beings in the name of fear had left me disillusioned and angry. Listening to family, friends and loved ones, with their calculated and strategic language, justify the dropping of bombs on cities, on hospitals, on homes, on people unlucky enough to be born in the wrong part of the world, sapped me of all hope and energy. The only “smart” bomb, after all, is the one with the good sense not to explode. I remember so many people that talked about national security and national interests as if 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians were a reasonable opportunity cost. I felt out of touch with so many of my fellow Americans. Mostly, I felt helpless to do anything that could make a difference.
My reasons for coming to Tanzania were largely selfish, as I confessed to my Peace Corps recruiter in his Washington, D.C. office. I had no delusions that I would save the world. I knew that I would get far more out of the experience than I could possibly give. I would teach math and science, important work to be sure, but I would learn another language, another culture, another corner of our planet that most of my fellow Americans would never get to see, living in the place where humanity itself first emerged during (what must be called tongue-in-cheek) the Cainozoic era. What I never expected to receive, however, was grace.
Before I left the United States, I was consumed by the daily news, with my country’s sins of commission and omission, with events in the world over which I had no power and felt I could not change. In Tanzania, I have been given the grace to simply live in peace, to think only about spending time with my students, my friends, working in my garden, and enjoying life from one sunset to the next. I cannot begin to adequately express my gratitude to my country for supporting me in my Peace Corps service, to the Tanzanian Ministry of Education for its cooperation with Peace Corps/Tanzania, to my community for treating me both as an honored guest and as simply a friend and neighbor, and finally to my family and friends for both material support of my projects and emotional support for my service and life here.
It has been fascinating to observe this election year from the vantage of a rural village in the Tanzanian southern highlands, 80 km. away from paved roads, in a community with minimal infrastructure, health care, access to running water or electricity. During the primary season, crammed in the cab of a Tea truck for the three hour trek to town, I overheard Tanzanians discussing the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary as if I were riding a bus in Baltimore. It is my sincere hope that Americans recognize the extent to which people all over the world have been watching, awaiting, and now celebrating this historic time in our country’s history.
As a teacher at my school reminded me yesterday, however, what politicians say before elections and what they do in office are often incongruous. There are examples all around us to make Tanzanians skeptical about elections. Kenya and Zimbabwe remain fresh in everyone’s minds and I have spoken to Tanzanians who secretly fear for their own upcoming election cycle in 2010. Of course Tanzania is not Kenya and it is nowhere near Zimbabwe. The United States of today is also not the United States of even two years ago. And yet, I remain cautious in my optimism. Undoubtedly there will be times of disappointment in the Obama administration, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Palestine, in the health care system, in foreign aid, and in financial regulatory agencies, to name, I am sure, but a few. Today, however, I cannot care about these things. Today, I cannot wait to be disappointed in Obama. To alter my Dad’s phraseology concerning golf and work, a bad day with Obama is better than a good day with Bush.
At present, my future plans are still only short-term. I will finish my Peace Corps service on November 20. I will fly back to the states in December and hopefully return to Tanzania in another work capacity. In the meantime I hope to reconnect with family, friends, and colleagues, in other words, all of you. For keeping up with this website, for sending me emails, letters and packages for the past two years, I thank you. Once I return to the United States and have regular computer/internet time, I will update and revise this website for whatever function it will serve in the next stage of my life and career. Thanks again to Brian Hart for designing and maintaining this page. While I do plan on writing more over the next several weeks, this seems to be as good a time as any to say again: Asanteni, kwa herini, na tutaonana siku nyingine. Thank you, all the best, and we will see each other again someday.
Posted: Uncategorized
13
November
2008
“Saving the world one garden at a time,” is how Peace Corps Tanzania’s permaculture guru Peter Jenson describes his environmental mission. For a busy education volunteer teaching 450 students during 28 periods per week, such a mantra can be comforting. Only one garden and I can help save the world?! After all, as a teacher, I can hardly spend all day farming, or even spend more than 10-15 minutes in the garden on most days. Between cooking, cleaning, dishes, laundry, exercise, teaching, reading, grading papers and whatever else passes for free time, the day often flies by with many of my morning’s aspirations neglected. Most evenings I end up rebuking myself for all those things left undone. I meant to go visit my friend in the village, practice yoga, play soccer, clean out the storage room, or cook something other than rice and beans. All that being said, spending time in the garden, playing in the dirt, has been one of the most relaxing and rewarding pasttimes I have taken up this past year.
My school’s garden project would never have gotten off the ground in the first place if not for the expertise and assistance of my former site mate, environmental volunteer Jason Maglaughlin, whose own 32 garden bed, model permaculture site inspired me every time I visited him. Together we planned a collaborative venture with a select group of students, many of them orphans, to teach permaculture, bio-intensive farming and composting, and to prepare a garden at the school to supplement the students’ regular nutritional intake. Although Jason had to leave Tanzania before the actual planting, his protege and good friend in the village came and helped with the teaching and the seed-bed preparation.
To emphasize why nutrition alone is a worthy venture here, let me remind you what my students are fed at school. The daily menu begins with uji (corn flour mixed to a watery consistency with sugar) for breakfast, ugali (corn flour mixed to a thick pasty consistency) with beans for lunch, and ugali with beans again for dinner. Sick students and those who pay extra will additionally get one serving of greens (overcooked with oil and salt). This is the regular menu, seven days of the week. On holidays, they may be served rice instead of ugali. For fruits and vegetables, the students are left to their own devices. Fortunately, fruit trees are quite common in the surrounding area. Nevertheless, most students do not usually get an appropriately balanced diet.
Quite selfishly, I too had grown weary of my carb-heavy diet and thought about the garden fresh salads I ate every time I visited Jason. Thus was the Lupembe Orphan’s Garden project born. After consulting with the students about a proper location for the garden, we eventually chose a site adjacent to my own backyard. This allowed us to dig a trench from the roofline to bring rainwater into the garden plot. We also dug a trench from a spot on the connecting footpath that regularly flooded. The key to any good garden, after all, is water.
Since we started this project in the dry season right before the students left for their winter (June-July) break, I often had to haul at least two buckets of water from the river each day, just to keep the seedlings from drying out, not to mention the water I still needed for washing, cooking, cleaning, and drinking. Needless to say, my neck muscles got a good workout and I’m pretty good at balancing a bucket on my head now, though I still need to use a hand for balance. It never ceases to amaze me how gracefully and seemingly effortlessly Tanzanian women balance unwieldy loads on their heads as they climb steep hills, curtsey and chat.
After about seven weeks, the results of all this hard work started to pay off. From late July until mid-September, I was harvesting about two buckets worth of various salad greens every week. I would make two large salads for the group once a week and have a small salad myself every day. Even though uncooked vegetables are anathema to Tanzanians on the first pass, I soon had students begging for salad and for seeds to plant in their gardens at home. As I write this, there are still greens to be harvested, though much less. All the broccoli, arugala and romaine has already gone to seed. However, the tomatoes are only now just ready to harvest and I have already begun planting for the next volunteer, who is due to take over my site at the end of this month.
A good friend of mine who runs a rose farm in Njombe once asked me how I could be motivated to plant seeds that I would not get to harvest. It seems to me that this is actually quite a good metaphor for the work of the education project with Peace Corps Tanzania: “Planting seeds that others will reap.” During training, we were warned against developing an “Ediface Complex” during our service, feeling as though we needed to build some structure to feel as though we had accomplished something. The work of a teacher may only be realized long after the fact. Hopefully the results will be more important and longer-lasting than so many other structures, built with good intentions, yet unused and long forgotten, strewn across this continent. In my final days here at site, I am continuing to spend time with those students who have meant so much to me over the last two years. I am also still playing in the dirt, planting seeds.
Posted: Uncategorized
20
March
2008
After a number of technical difficulties, adjustments and readjustments, I’m back. Thanks again to Brian Hart for his tireless and cost-effective (free) labors. This blog is now being brought to you by the letter S (Solar Power) and the number 2 (2 solar collector panels and 2 computers in year 2).
In conjunction with the Olive Branch for Children NGO, headed by Deborah (Mama D) McCracken (www.theolivebranchforchildren.com), *Undisclosed Location* Secondary will be entering the computer age. To all of the private donors who earmarked funds for this project, thank you. Karibu Tanzania.
I have returned from Dar-es-Salaam where I purchased 2 85 Watt Solar panels, 4 solar batteries, 35 metres of wire and a charger controller, all of which will be set-up in the next couple of weeks to provide an electricity source in the school’s library to power lights and at least 2 desktop computers. I should be able to get both the DC-AC inverter and the new computers by May at the latest. However, there should be one computer immediately available to begin staff training when the school re-opens at the beginning of next month.
We just had a visit from our member of parliament a couple of weeks back. Among other messages, he told our assembled teachers and local community leaders that a school without a computer was not a school. On the right track maybe, but counterproductive given that he knew nothing of the current project. As I told him about the project, I made sure he knew that many Tanzanian schools suffer not for lack of resources as much as for lack of utilization of existing resources.
Case in point, our school has a nice library. It could still use more books, especially textbooks and Kiswahili language materials. However, when I got to the school the main problem with the library was that the students hardly used it. It was open during school hours only, when they were supposed to be in class. It was closed at all other times. What I have done with our library over the last year and a half has been simply to make the library resources available in the evening study hours and to train students in its proper use. This cost only labor and did not need any outside grant.
Before coming to UL Secondary, I trained at a school in Morogoro that actually had a couple of computers. However, no one knew how to use them and they remained in the headmaster’s office, unplugged and taking up space. I took the time to remind our parliamentary representative as well as the assembled school and community leaders that this computer project would not be a success just because of the financial resources. We needed commitment, time and talent or it would become no better than a locked library and unplugged computers.
All that being said, I am excited and optimistic. While every teacher, staff member and student with whom I have discussed the project has assured me of community-wide interest, I personally feel confident that 3 of our teachers will take the necessary time to train according a regular schedule in order to become proficient in word-processing and spread sheet use. It also appears quite likely that after my departure in late November, the Peace Corps will replace my site with another education volunteer to continue with this work. As I said, all realistic pessimism aside, I am happy about our prospects.
As for the gardening projects, I have had a couple of small successes but have had most of my goals delayed. The orphans’ vegetable garden has been put-off by scheduling logistics. However, I plan on getting some seeds in the ground by the end of the month and having a full-training session with the students in permaculture and bio-intensive farming by the middle of next month. The rains have not been ideal up to this point anyway (sour grapes?). Heavy rains with no sunshine (lots of mold problems) have been followed by 10 days periods of drought, hardly ideal. We usually get substantial rain in my region until June. Since I’m planting vegetables that mature after 1-2 months, all is not lost. I’m still counting on eating broccoli by May.
On a personal note, I healed up quite nicely in South Africa. My collarbone (sans metal plate) is about 95% back to normal. I’m still taking a little easy when it comes to doing ju-jitsu with my students, but am otherwise back to my regular exercise routine.
As for teaching, things are hectic but well on course. As the only biology teacher available, the students are not getting as much class time as they ought. In particular, my Form III students have only one double-period, once a week. On the other end of the spectrum, my Form IV students have already finished the biology syllabus and will be reviewing the past four years of biology until they take their national exams in September. We got through quite a bit of material last year when we had two biology teachers and they are now enjoying the benefits of being ahead in their studies.
I have found that in my second year, I am much more qualified to teach the Form I students. Most of these students know absolutely no English until they reach secondary school. This means that I need to teach everything throughly in Kiswahili before I teach them in English. Last year the words for nuclear membrane (utando wa kiini cha chembechembe), catalyst (kimeng’enya) and liver (ini) hardly rolled off my tongue. I can answer most of their questions now in class rather than writing everything down and getting back to them later. Right now they are using the microscope (Thanks again to Ma and Pa Levens!) and learning about the parts of the cell. This is probably my favorite topic and the one that I use to launch into every other topic: Nutrition, Digestion, Genetics and etc. It all starts with the cells, right?
The other fun new project this year has been a peer-education project. A group of about 8 Form IV students (male and female) go with me every Monday to the local primary school to teach life skills and material about HIV/AIDS. This is my favorite project because I do none of the work. The kids prepare the lessons and do all the teaching. I go with them, watch and meet with the later to talk about what went well, what did not, and why. It has also been the first time that i have found students talking freely and bluntly about issues of sexuality. They discuss the issues with each other. I mostly listen and only occasionally interject.
Well, I’m running out of time and need to be getting back to the village. I’m not sure when I’ll be back to town next, but I promise another update before 3 more months slips by.
Peace, Josh
Posted: Uncategorized
1
December
2007
The new crop of education volunteers just arrived for their site installations and I’m feeling sentimental. It was this time last year that I constructed my water filter, struggled with lighting my charcoal stove, and first learned to keep myself reasonably clean and fed without the benefits of electricty and running water. My early days were spent cleaning up mounds of 2-year old decaying trash and trying to make my surroundings as livable as possible.Â
These days I’ve got a well-structured kitchen, stocked with all the basic appliances and accoutrements, a solar panel generating electricity for my laptop, a decent sized vegetable and herb garden-in-progress and a thorough familiarity with my community and its facilities, as well as a fluent knowledge of Kiswahili coupled with a working familiarity of the local Kibena.  Over the last year I faced the daunting task of teaching students 2 year’s worth of biology in a single year. Next year, all my students will start off with one syllabus topic already completed. Living well in the bush has been no small feat and one that I will undoubtedly continue to work on until the end of my service next year. It is my hope that the next volunteer (hopefully there will be a next volunteer here) gets to start off a few steps ahead because of what I’ve done. For example, my only “gardening” work this past year was composting. Right now, however, I’ve got about 15 avocado seedlings ready for transplanting and grafting, 3 hearty indigenous fruit bushes (Songu - whose leaves are also used as Typhoid medicine) cleared and surrounded with mulch, 4 major compost piles, natural fencing construction, 6 passionfruit vines growing from cuttings, a small herb garden (generously supplied with cuttings by my site mate and farmer extroirdinaire Jason Maglaughlin) and a number of double-dug beds in-progress for vegetable planting. (Thanks to Katy Wettengel for the recent package with seeds!)  But more on my gardening projects for a subsequent blog (and after more of it’s finished). Anyway, hopefully the next volunteer will have a decent garden to build on in their first year.
As for the year-in-review, I have also learned a great deal from my fellow volunteers and have had to say goodbye to far too many of them. I also continue to learn from Tanzanian friends in the village as well as those I meet in towns and while traveling. A prescient observation I made early in training has proven to ring true, that those volunteers and other foreigners with negative attitudes towards Tanzanians are those who have failed to learn Kiswahili beyond the elementary level.  Effective communication breeds understanding and understanding breeds affection – hardly surprising. Of course in keeping with the mission of the Peace Corps, I continue to find aspects of Tanzania that could benefit from American influence (e.g., aspects of the educational system, LGBT tolerance and gender rights, consumer rights) as well as those aspects of the United States that could benefit from Tanzanian influence (e.g., aspects of the community/family structure, religious tolerance, respect for seniors). There are practices common in the U.S. that I wish more Tanzanians would adopt (e.g., better business auditing and management) as well as practices common in Tanzania that the U.S. could use far more of (e.g., households growing some their own food, instead of chemi-polluting their yards for mere ornamental grasses).Â
While I am sure that, when the time comes, I will be ready to move on from UL Sec. for new opportunities and challenges, I am equally sure that I will never be completely finished with Tanzania.  In the best of all possible worlds, I will be able to continue to return here for the rest of my life. This country has gotten way under my skin. On that note, I do have another project in the works for post-Peace Corps work in Tanzania. But, more on that for another blog.
For those who have continued to keep up with me, in emails, letters and delicious candy-filled packages, I cannot thank you enough. I will do my best to keep the blog updates coming along with the pictures. For the next couple of months, my work is moving from that of teacher to farmer. But more on that later.
Peace, Dr. Josh
  Â
Posted: Peace Corps Tanzania, Personal, Tanzanian Society & Culture, Uncategorized
14
October
2007
Once again, it’s been a while. But, I’ve got a good excuse. I’ve spent the last month in the village without coming to my banking town. If I hadn’t run out of money, every one of my luxury items (coffee, cheese, powdered milk, cocoa, peanut butter, jam), and had my computer not broken again, I probably would still be there. Nevertheless, it’s nice to have a hot shower, someone else to cook for me, and, of course, precious internet time.
Let’s start with some really good news. The government came to my village last month to do HIV testing. Tanzania’s president Jakaya Kikwete has been telling every Tanzanian that it is their civic responsibility to get tested. He’s backed up this admonition with a huge testing drive, sending physicians and supplies from village to village for free testing, counseling, and HIV/AIDS education. Perhaps more importantly, the government is now promising free CD4 count readings as well (a reading of less than 200 is the clinical definition of AIDS and the requirement for receiving free anti-retroviral medicines, ARVs in the lingo). Although NGOs have been testing for HIV in Tanzanian villages for sometime (though certainly not often enough), most HIV positive villagers could not afford to come to town and get their CD4 count read (this is the number of helper T-cells fighting off the body’s secondary infections) in order to qualify for free meds. HIV Testing without transport costs and CD4 count readings thus poses many problems. However, with American help from PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief) and USAID, the Tanzanian government seems to be doing what it can to make this relief effective.
Here in *undisclosed location* village, all the bigwigs came out for the event: government officials, medical professionals, tribal leaders and church representatives all showed up to stress the importance of getting tested and the effectiveness of condom use in stopping the spread of the disease. Even more impressively, people crammed in to the event, and rushed to be the first ones in for testing. In a culture where many people readily admit their fear of knowing their HIV status, this was a wonderful sight.
For my own part, I feel as though this is ideal sort of venue for a Peace Corps volunteer. Rather than completely orchestrating an event from the ground up, I was able to simply insert myself into the pre-arranged activities. There was a DJ from Dar es Salaam spinning Bongo Flava music in an attempt to turn an otherwise frightening experience into a community dance party. Local drum and dancing groups came equipped with drums, masks and instruments of all sorts.
Along with fellow volunteer “Bomba Mbaya,” we wandered around the event doing impromptu condom demos, games, answering questions about HIV/AIDS and otherwise dancing and having a good time. I’ll try and get some pics of the event up in the near future. Otherwise, I’m afraid I’ve got to cut it short again.
Peace, Josh
Posted: Uncategorized
26
August
2007
Between the end of the school day at 2:30 and the 6:00 dinner bell ( by which I mean the hubcap hanging from a rope that gets hit by a stick), I usually get at least two student visits. Dinner, by the way, is the same as lunch (ugali and beans *lather, rinse, repeat* – I used to comment at home how the dogs always seemed excited to eat the same food every day, twice a day, I suppose it beats the alternative). First, 2-3 students, sent by the student leaders-on-duty, arrive in their role as unpaid manual laborers. If I’m hammering or sawing away at one project or another, I toss them some tools and work alongside them for an hour or so. If I’m low on water (typically the case now, during the dry season), I ask for one bucket per student, and assuage my guilt by paying them in fruit or candy.
My other reliable visit is from (at least) my two most reliable yoga/ju-jitsu students. Even if I’m busy doing work, they drop by to pick up the exercise mat, which they set on a thick chunk of grass near the boy’s hostel. They return later, guzzle down some water, take some bit of fruit and patiently listen as run on about the importance of good nutrition, proper stretching, studying hard or somesuch teacherly thing. These are my typical visits after school, as I explained to Jessica, who was passing through my village after leaving her own to finish her Peace Corps service (see previous post). And then, Murphy’s Law and all that, I got an atypical visit.
When I first heard the screaming horde of young male students, it hardly registered with me as something out of the ordinary. School was out; maybe a rival soccer team from a neighboring village had just pulled up in a Chai Truck. However, the horde got louder and closer, finally bursting through the door of my courtyard leading a colobus monkey by the arm, ensnared in a homemade trap. *Mental note to self* Be careful around mysterious bunches of bananas left invitingly in the middle of the road.
Whooping, hollering and quite proud of their catch, the whole group gave me a self-evident “This is pretty cool, huh?” look. Part of me shared their fascination. I had heard about and seen evidence of monkeys in this area, but had yet to get a good look at one, much less 2 feet away in my backyard. Part of me wanted to grab my camera and really get a good look at the thing. However, the rest of me was somehow horrified.
Like a small child being led by the hand, the poor creature dutifully kept apace behind the lead boy and probable crafter of the reed-snare. The monkey remained downcast and passive, moving only when necessary. I struggled to come to grips with what was going on and ran inside to tell Jessica. “They’ve brought me a monkey!” was all I managed to blurt out.
“Kwa nini mmemkamata?” (Why did y’all capture him?) I asked the group. They collectively looked at me with a quizzical smile, as if I were being rhetorical. Clearly they were expecting a different reaction. As I transitioned from shock to understanding, I led the group outside, urging the immediate release of the animal with repeated pleas not to kill it.
“It’s hand will heal won’t it?” I had asked one of the students. He reassured me with all the sincerity of a parent explaining doggy-heaven to a 5 year old. Like a brave little kid at the doctor’s office, the monkey held out its left hand, looking down and to the right as the trap’s creator undid his handiwork. After a brief pause of realization upon its release, the monkey shot off towards the thick vegetation at the rim of the valley. The assembled masses resumed their leaping, screaming, laughing chase.
One of my more serious-minded Form III students explained to me (after watching my response to most of the incident), “They are happy to have captured what they think of as a dangerous animal.” “So, they will kill it?” I confirmed. “Yes, they will kill it.” It’s nice to have those students who will cut to the chase and not bother with trying to give you what they think you want to hear.
I watched from my side yard as the monkey and lynch mob disappeared into the valley. I think the monkey got away. At least, that’s the memory I’m sticking with.
While the mythical indigenous ethnic group that respects life in all its forms would have been appalled to see one of our genetic cousins paraded about in torment, even the most serene of yogis would have understood the carnage of the next day. For what, I believe, has now been the fourth time, I fended off a siafu attack at home.
Known in English as army ants and in Kiswahili as siafu, these creatures are at once one of the most fascinating and one of the most troublesome lifeforms I have so far encountered here. In the Congo, siafu are known to swarm entire villages, completely wiping out everything edible in their path, including any animals that may be tied up and unable to escape. In Tanzania, you are more likely to see long caravans of them, with larger members linking limbs at the edges of the march to protect the procession. If you jab a stick through the caravan and lift it up, you will collect a good foot of attached guard ants, hanging together like the “Barrel O’ Monkeys” children’s game.
When the siafu attacked my house from the rear last week, I had a small group of female students (who had come to ask questions about Life Skills, read: sex, the previous day) waiting in my courtyard. “Siafu!” they said, and huddled together on my deck looking on as the ground was covered in a black, moving mass, spreading to the walls and heading towards my back door. They seemed shangaa’ed (think: surprised/shocked) as I used up almost 2 liters of kerosene covering all entrances and attempting to find the source of the rampage. Kerosene does the job better than just about anything else, killing the little bastards as well as sending the borg-hive-mind into a retreat. I swept up thousands of them after the kerosene went to work. Although, a few members came back later to collect their remaining dead. Fascinating. Oh yeah, and creepy.
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12
August
2007
First, a brief word about misleading titles. I will not be saying farewell to the good people of *undisclosed location* village any time soon. That being said, I have had cause to think about this eventuality quite a bit lately. Peace Corps Tanzania volunteers leave the country (COS: Close of Service; an important bit of the PC-TZ alphabet soup to remember) during two times of the year. Education volunteers, such as myself, leave between October and December. Health and Environment volunteers COS between June and August; in other words, right about now. So, I have had a chance lately to observe a number of the volunteers in my region go through this process: Throwing Good-Bye Parties; finishing up their Peace Corps projects; seeing their villager friends for (possibly) the last time; making plans with other volunteers to meet up in the United States (“You live in Minnesota? I’m in Ohio, we’ll see each other all the time!); passing along their material goods to other greedy volunteers (“Non-stick pan? All-right! Wait, you don’t have any vanilla or nutmeg do you?) and, of course, mentally preparing themselves for returning to the fast-paced American lifestyle. I have seen tears, protestations of eternal friendship, and even the outright refusal to leave. A number of volunteers opt to exend with the Peace Corps in Tanzania, extend with the Peace Corps in another country (such as the newly opened office in Ethopia), and even to find work with another organization in Tanzania.
Egotistically, my main thoughts concern my own fate. Will I be ready to leave? Or, will I be eager to stay in Tanzania by any means necessary? What anxieties will I face when confronted with the prospect of moving back to the States? For the time being, fortunately, I can see how others are coping with these issues well in advance of my own departure. I even recently had the chance to discuss these matters with some returned Peace Corps volunteers (RPCVs, for those keeping up with the jargon) who were going back their sites for the first time in roughly five years. “When I got back to the States, all my friends had the nerve to get on with their lives without me,” I heard from one self-deprecating observer. Pessimistically, he also commented that “All those people, I said I’d keep in touch with . . . well, life goes on.” On the up-side, the return visits to the village yielded some positive results: improved farming techniques continuing to be practiced, former students holding prestigious jobs near their home communities, and the especially rewarding finding, that people remembered you, and fondly at that.
In addition to simply hearing outgoing volunteers relate these farewell stories, I recently had the chance to see the whole process up-close. Now that my collarbone has fully healed (thanks to you well-wishers), I am back on my bike and once again exploring the region. I therefore took the opportunity to travel to a fellow volunteer’s site (Jessica Stephens lived, of late, in a village 50 km. outside of my own) to attend her farewell party. Jessica had not yet begun to pack up her house; she was still unsure whether or not another volunteer would be moving into her village; and, as she confessed, “It doesn’t feel like I’m really leaving yet.” As she lived in a much smaller village than my own, I was curious to see what kind of shindig her friends and neighbors would put together.
In typical African fashion, everything started late. At 11:00 someone came to let us know that the 9:00 party would actually get started around noon. And so, at around 12:15, our escorts to the party arrived. Leading the front of the pack, 6 young women in identical t-shirts, skirts (in the yellow and green colors of the leading political party: CCM) and baseball caps (reading: ENGLAND) sashayed through the wooden gate to the house in synchronized rhythm, joined in their singing by a dozen or so others, waving tree branches and banging on drums. After assembling in the courtyard, they grabbed Jessica and I by the hand and led us with them on their parade to the office of the village chairman. We moved slowly and were allowed to walk only in dance. Hand waving, periodic chanting or hooting, and singing songs about Jessica seemed to be the norm. Jessica and I fumbled for our cameras, trying to document all of this even as we were thrown in the midst of it. One man held onto my hand, swinging it back and forth over our heads, as I tried to capture some pictures and video, continuing with my dance steps and trying to sing along with the refrain (dah-dah-dih-dah-JESSICA-dah-dah-dah-dih-dah-dah).
Our parade route ended at the offices of the village government, with a table and chairs for the guests of honor (of which it turned out I was one) and groups of villagers assembled before us, sitting on the ground, women and children on one side, men on the other. After the mandatory round of formal introductions, people got up to give speeches. Jessica had warned me in advance that I too would be expected to give a speech. The village leaders extolled Jessica’s work in the village: a fish pond project, a chicken project, milking goat project, an AIDS seminar and a water project (they even thanked her for a cow project that she had no part in).
By far the best part of the presentation, however, was the giving of gifts and singing of songs. In addition to the typical Kiswahili celebration songs, the small choir tried their hand at a couple of English-language selections (especially impressive as no one in the village speaks any English – actually most of the villagers speak a mixture of Kibena and Kiswahili that can be difficult to follow). This means, of course, that some of the lyrics lost or occasionally gained new meanings in their translation. Witness the following sample:
“When I think of Sister Jessica, I am very sorry.” This was the sole lyric for a song and dance that lasted roughly 5 minutes. As I have mentioned before, “Pole” or “sorry” is used far more broadly and with more frequency in Kiswahili than in English. I don’t believe the villagers intended to imply their regret at having known sister Jessica, for example.
The giving of gifts (mostly a barrage of baskets of various size, shape and color) was also accompanied by songs and dances. With each single basket, a small group stood up, sang, played drums and a horn and danced the gift up front. Jessica and I began to stand and dance on these occasions as well. When one woman put a basket on my head as I danced, the women smiled and ululated loudly. The whole affair was concluded by a meal prepared for Jessica, myself and a few of the village leaders. While I had been impressed with the preparations and the turn-out, Jessica was somewhat let-down: “I had 500 people at my AIDS seminar. Where were they?” As it turned out, the funeral of a prominent elder was being held at the same time.
When Jessica had her village tested for HIV, she came up with a percentage rate of around 11%. This, mind you, is in a tiny village that is relatively isolated from other communities and major roads. And, of course, rates in towns and heavily trafficked villages is higher. All of which makes the official statistics of around 7% hard to swallow. Almost any party, therefore, may well be in competition with a funeral. When my parents came to visit my own village, we had planned a party for the whole school community. It too was postponed by a day because a young woman and member of Parliament, who had grown up in my village, was being buried.
Saying good-bye to the village, it seems to me, means not only saying good-bye to the life you have built over the past two years; it also means saying good-bye to people who may not be around when you come back to visit even 5 years later.
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