Getting up to cruising altitude...

It’s always a challenge to get myself to sit down for 30 minutes and hash out a blog post. I don’t really know why, since there’s not a whole lot of news to write and a few words are valid posts, but I can never seem to consistently do it. It makes me impressed to think about all the blogs I read on a regular basis where someone sits down to write meaningful work every few days, often with little to no monetary benefit but just to talk through ideas.

Anyway, here in Tanzania, things are starting to accelerate. I’ve begun work with a group of students to build and maintain a garden on the school grounds. We started small, digging about 4 beds and planting seeds for various leafy greens (although we’ll see if we had any success with the chickens picking at it for a week). We ran into a problem with miscommunication between myself and the headmaster in terms of what the goals of the group are, as he was disappointed with the size we started with. I wanted the students to show an ability to care for the food but it seems expansion is the priority at this point. When peace corps trains us in gardening methods, they obviously want us to pass those on to the Tanzanian people to spread awareness. However, it’s a battle for every volunteer to try and get the locals to listen to them when teaching because they will never see us as people who know how to farm. We don’t help the image by using the tools efficiently but still it’s frustrating when you have something you want to teach but no one who respects you on the subject enough to listen. I have a couple students beginning to show interest in the concepts so I think maybe I’ll teach a lesson or two on the side and make that a smaller part of the project as a whole. So from here on, I’m hoping to create a system that can be maintained through the constant turn-over that occurs from the school having students run the program. I think seeing something that functions through several leaders would be a big success, especially in this environment.

In other news, the fundraising is officially a go for the health weekends with the local teachers colleges. We had a gap in preparation due to my site mate returning to the states and the other volunteer we are working with needing to take some time off for a few weeks. However, we’re back in the planning stages and while I’m taking a more passive role with these conferences, it’s still exciting to see necessary education done on such a scale.

As for the girls’ empowerment conference, we’re approaching that time where we’re still far enough away to see it as the distant future but close enough to realize work should be started asap. I’m working with at least two other volunteers on putting together a nutrition education program for the girls. We’re finding we have little time to include it in the regular class schedule, so we’re doing our best to design some sort of entertainment teaching on the subject. Other than that, preparations like selecting girls and getting permission slips signed are time consuming necessities that always seem way harder to do that they should be.

I got asked in class today how I felt about the death of Osama Bin Laden. Given that it has been 10 years since 9/11 the response to it emotionally is lacking a bit. I certainly don’t feel like a New Yorker would feel but it’s not like it is lost on me what a horrific day that was. I’ve stood on those grounds before and after the attacks and one of my most unexpected virulent reactions was driving over a bridge in the city, on our way home after visiting Hannah at Wood’s Hole, and realizing that the towers really were gone. However, it was easy to give a sort of politically correct answer and shift the subject. I asked the student how he felt about it, given that before 9/11 Al Qaeda attacked Tanzanians in the American Embassy in Dar es Salaam. Yes it was an attack on the US and even on US soil technically, but the reality is, the attack killed Tanzanians. It was actually a good reminder of just how universal his hatred was for people unlike him. I think the student would have loved to ask more questions but we ran out of class time but it was still an interesting exchange, despite the fact that I’m certain the student was looking for some sort of jubilant response from me.