Babati, Tanzania

For the past two weeks I've been in a small city in Northern Tanzania called Babati. We left Arusha to come here for our orientation training. It's halfway between Arusha and Dodoma (the capital) and for over half the drive we were on a dirt freeway. The lack of infrastructure here amazes me. And Tanzania is one of the more developed African nations. It was so weird that a main road to their capital wasn't paved! It's amazing the things we take for granted.

While here we've gotten to know our Tanzanian teaching partners very well. It's so cool to talk to them about Tanzania and they are very interested in learning about the US as well. Things I've discovered: They've never seen sidewalks meant for pedestrians, the average monthly income of a teacher is $300 dollars. A "well off" doctor makes between $1200-1500 a month. The rent I pay in Seattle astounds them; they thought I meant for a year instead of a month. Most of them have never been outside Tanzania and I guess it would be really hard to when you're only making $300 a month. A ticket to the US is like six months of work for them. And most of them have several "girlfriends" or "boyfriends" although I couldn't quite figure out if they meant what I thought or if that was just how they referred to friends. When I told them about my boyfriend at home they asked about his other girlfriends and didn't really understand that he had no other ones... When I told them that he only loves me they go, "Oh that's what you think..." I guess it's just part of their culture.

We have a mama that cooks for us while we are at orientation. Her name is Mama Sia. It isn't her first name but mamas take the name of their first born daughter. She is one hell of a gal. She's larger than life and has a personality that's bigger than she is. Her husband left her so she is mad at men but she loves us kids! She takes care of us while we are here. She owns two restaurants in Babati and is kind of the queen bee around here. We all love her. She makes about five different meals that she rotates all of them consisting of beans, mchicha (steamed spinach) and some sort of starch, usually rice. We had this thing called ugali, which everyone hated. It's basically water and flour that makes a dough like substance. Absolutely flavorless. Hopefully my homestay mama won't make it much. It's weird because they seem to have all of the things we have at home: vegetables, livestock, etc but they don't add things like grilled onions to food or have cheese or yogurt. I guess those things require lots of equipment and pasteurization. Which aren't exactly easy to come by out here. I just really am starting to miss food from home. I'm so sick of beans and rice I can't even tell you. The one saving grace is that they make a lot of "chips" here which are french fries and they make this awesome thing called chips myie which is like an omelette with potato in it mmmmm... pretty much the only yummy thing we can find here.

There's a lake near the city that's full of hippos. We go to dinner near the water and they pop up every now and then to take a breath. There's even a baby one that roams around the streets at night and is SO cute. I've seen him three times already cruising down the road. One night at dinner there was a guy with a canoe (actually a hollowed out log of cedar it smelled like) that was letting us take rides out on the lake. It was cool to be so close to the water and see the hippos swimming around and opening their mouth. We didn't get close good thing or I probably would have hyperventilated haha. They're actually quite scary for as cute as they are.

We've been doing a lot of lesson planning and trying to factor in life skills with our teachings. It's been difficult because I've never done this kind of thing before but everyone seems to think I've been doing a great job. Instead of just giving them information we are trying to arm them with the skills necessary to enact the behavior change we want them to do, for example: choose an ABC (abstinence, be faithful, condom) to have safe sex, get tested, or reduce stigma. It seems like it will be a really effective way to teach the kids and community groups.

That being said, all of us are really getting tired of orientation. We are all very ready to get out into the villages tomorrow and start teaching! Finally being able to put to use all the things we've been practicing. We're very excited. Megan and I got put in the same homestay so we'll be living together and teaching together.

Kwahedi!

Chelsea