(Disclaimer: This is long. I'm sorry. Read only if you love me/ are bored.)

The cockroaches are growing. At first, we had baby "mende" creeping onto the walls around dinnertime, just as dusk was turning to dark. Now, they crawl everywhere (even out of the choo) despite my roommate Alaina's deadly foot stompage. Mama and Janet laugh when we run and squeal or stay and squash. "No mende in Ulaya?" they ask. They still either think we're from Europe or that the US and Europe are the same country.

Mama also thinks I know every other mzungu in Arusha. When she picked me up from town last Saturday to come home early for the weekend, she assumed I knew the one blond girl on our dala dala. She urged me to say hello, but I abstained, being about three rows and a whole world of definite awkwardness away from this girl. I went home early so that I could a) experience a Swahili Catholic mass, and b) cook some good ol' American food for mama. The church service turned out to be five hours long and included three weddings and two first communions, in addition to a whole lot of gospel songs about Mungu, throughout the singing of which the older women interjected inspired banshee-like bursts.

Later that night, the other volunteers in my town (Olosiva) came home and Craig and I started cooking. We made a marinara sauce, that we all decided was worthy of repeating at home, with fresh tomatoes, crushed garlic, onions, and olives. We made about twice as much spaghetti as we needed, and a salad of the safe, peelable vegetables: carrots, cucumbers, avocado. Since Craig is very vocal about his obsession for beans ("I swear to God, I could eat them every meal and be happy for the rest of my life"), we wanted to make some too. We started too late, though, and only had time for lentils. We decided that lentils in butter garlic sauce sounded American/Italian enough, so we attempted them. The result: something resembling creamed corn. The best part? That disaster was mama's favorite part of the meal. Forget about the marinara sauce, forget about the salad ("I don't like them that way" were the first words out of her mouth when she saw the fresh veggies on the table) - mama was all about the butter garlic lentils on top of her spaghetti, which she dubbed "American ugali." (Ugali is a mix of hardened maize flour and water rolled up into little balls and eaten with absolutely everything.)

Sunday night planning opened a very very looong week. The week before we had dabbled in community assessment: that week, we rocked it. SIC started a secondary (only in name, not in time or effort) project of assessment this year where each group must map their community, assess condom availability, and interview sixty households in order to guage the community's knowledge of HIV. For the entire week, we were up and out by eight, trecking up and down our hilly town, sometimes up to our ankles in dust. We would have never been motivated to start if it had not been for Ferdas' industry. Our community of Olosiva, which is more like a suburb than a village, has six thousand households and four subvillages; in other words, it's huge. Ferdas, one of our Tanzanian teaching partners (an amazing asset to the program, who declined an offer from Harvard and is now the president of his class during the schoolyear - go figure) took it upon himself to break out his master cartography skills and create a detailed map of Olosiva, outlining assets such as water sources, meeting places, and churches. As the streets are unpaved and unnamed, Ferdas took the task of naming them; I am proud to say that there are now three Ruth Streets in NW Olosiva. With this motivation, we searched for every duka (corner shop selling everyday necessities) and assessed condom availability. Out of the 64 dukas we surveyed, over half carried condoms and supported sales to youth - score. Many of the people who don't currently sell condoms agreed to try it with our facilitation - score again. But of course, there were some who vehemently refused, citing Jesus as the reason and damning HIV as "a punishment from God." Fun times.

Though the condom availability was the most entertaining (allowing people to talk about tabboo subjects, confirming beliefs about crazy wazungu, and such), the household assessment was by far the most educational. We mostly spoke to young women, as most of the men were working in town at the early hour we set off from our toasty houses into the chill. Through a simple four-page survey, we found that most people in Olosiva think that condoms have holes and/or contain HIV. Most of the Maasai women were unsure of their ages and many were in polygamous marriages, as is tradition in more conservative circles. Most women stopped school after Standard 7, the equivalent of seventh grade, if not much earlier. A handful hadn't been to school at all and it wasn't uncommon to find a woman two years older than me already with three kids and set in her daily routine of washing, cooking, tending. It was so encouraging to hear that NO - mosquito bites don't transmit HIV and NO - people can't get HIV from sharing food with someone. When people went into detailed explanations of how they were sure people could get HIV from witchcraft or how you can see that condoms have worms when you expose it to sunlight (a misinterpretation of lubrication), it was a tad disheartening. People we spoke to were largely unaware of the family planning aspect of condoms, too, a fact which painfully came to mind whenever we were trailed by a hoard of unsupervised and half-dressed children. The final question in the survey was compound: first, how big of a problem is HIV in this community, and second, how big a role do the following problems play in HIV transmission. The answer for the gravity of HIV in Olosiva ranged from very small to very big, depending on the perspective of the interviewee. And every single person that we interviewed said that "lack of pocket money for girls" was a very big problem - something I wouldn't necessarily expect. When it came to the issue of "forced sex," however, almost everybody dismissed it as very small. I find this incorrect on so many levels, the most glaring being the fact that forced sex (aka rape in the non-euphemized world) is a huge problem worldwide, with rates of STIs, unwanted pregnancy, and HIV so obviously correlated. The next is that I find the necessity to engage in sex work to pay school fees, put food on the table, etc., (the consequences of "lack of pocket money for girls") a type of involuntary, or forced, sex. Yeesh. The survey, along with many of my experiences here, have really reinforced my belief in the importance of education and empowerment for young women of developing countries.

Switching gears, the classroom has been amazing. As a group, we teach two to four classes each weekday. In the morning, we have the Forms, high school-aged kids who participate as if their lives depended on it - and they very well may, considering the infection rate is 10% in this area of the country. In the afternoons, we teach Standards 4, 5, and 6. There are upwards of eighty or ninety children crammed into each class (quite standard in the more rural areas) and the classrooms only have bars on the windows. Much of our time is therefore spent competing with the rowdy children outside and the wind. Overall, our subjects (puberty, anatomy, HIV, etc.) are seen as a special treat by the kids, and they give us their attention, as undivided as it can be coming from ten year olds. Our time in the classroom gives us our daily dose of both laughs and frustrations, but it never fails to be rewarding. We'll be in our last class of the day, completely exhausted and trying to make it through until when we can all flop on the couch and eat, and then we hear the ABK (abstinence, be faithful, condoms) song floating through the air from the other end of the playground. Now THAT is the kind of thing that keeps us moving. We only have two weeks left, which is absolutely incredible, during which time we will be training our newly selected Peer Educators to continue education in the schools after we leave.

Today, we held our first official community teaching, where we split up the mamas and babas and taught the entire SIC curriculum, after a nice hour break of cooling our heels while we waited for people to actually show up. In the middle of a small grassy area that serves as the subvillage Ngidut's meeting place, Alaina, Ferdas, and I broke out our posters and taught to a group of 17 sheepish Maasai women. Sheepish, that is, until we gave condoms away after the demo - handfuls of both male and female condoms vanished before our eyes. Score.

Tomorrow morning, early, we're leaving to the mythical Zanzibar for a much-anticipated vacation. Nine of us are going for three nights and four days of Stonetown history, the apparently famous Zanzibar pizza, and beaches, beaches, beaches. I can't wait.

And PS: So much fun last night - there's a peanut butter factory across the street from my house here. Craig put up a video of us (very unsanitarily) tasting the peanut butter at different stages of production. This and more can be seen on his website. Thank you, Mr. Craig.

Love to all!

If I had to eat one meal for the rest of my life, it might just be chillie paneer and naan from Mama Swagat. I just got to McMoody's, our favorite internet/American junk food/ meeting place in Arusha after an impromptu lunch of the best Indian food I've ever had. Ever.

There are about a thousand things that merit a blog entry, but I have little time and they have little relation. So welcome to blog jambalaya!

*My host family is incredible. We live with a mama (clearly the head of the household) who is probably in her late fifties and is one of the most vocal Catholics I've ever met. The living room, the first when entering the house, is overwhelming with imagery: a lifesize Jesus poster, a calendar of the Pope, and a visible burdened Mary are the most obvious. Despite this, my mama is also a lush. She owns "Frigo Bar" five minutes from our house and downs a king-sized glass of Coke and Konyagi on a nightly basis. ("Konyagi - the Spirit of the Nation," btw.) In the morning, we have a stoic mama who demands a respectful "shikamoo" greeting and our agenda for the day. Now that I think of it, we also have a mama who makes strong ginger tea(tangawizi!) in the morning for us all. We've come to believe it's a hangover remedy. When she comes home from the bar at night (where she doesn't serve, but rather drinks with the locals), she communicates mostly in satisfied grunts and "wow"s, all the while calling me Madonna (maybe she means "my daughter?). The TV is usually on for the news, but if a music video comes on, we're all expected to dance while mama exclaims "Tanzania music!" and "Wow!" as she makes the smallest of movements. Only a life impression could do this justice - other volunteers ask for it on a regular basis. We usually then watch her "film," the cheesy "Secreto de Amor," which hails from the Phillipines, as mama passes out on the couch.

Baba is jolly and mostly absent. A retired military officer, he owns multiple transport enterprises and has been traversing the country for most of our stay. When he is here, he is welcoming and also likes his Konyagi.

The only daughter of their youngest son lives with mama and baba so she can attend school nearby. Ima, Imaculata, or Irene (whichever name she prefers on a certain day, really) is seven and a half, learning English, and a punk. During our first encounter with her, she sidled up next to me and stole my hardboiled egg and demanded I peel it for her. She often sneaks into our room to take inventory of our goodies and later whines for an SIC "maka pen" to color with. We attribute most brattiness to her lack of playmates. Outside of school, she spends most of her time following Janet, the live-in housekeeper.

Janet is the most stable person in our household. In her late twenties, she does everything in the house. She is also a fabulous cook - something I am very grateful for, considering some of my friends' situations.

*"I'm a rasta." - The easiest answer to the common "Why don't you eat meat?" question.

*Our Tanzanian teaching partners translate everything we say into euphemisms. My favorite is the anus: "the hole of the big need."

*I shelled peas and de-kerneled corn with my fam until my "soft fingers" blistered.

*I can once again pee anywhere. The worst choos are badges of honor.

*We see Maasai in traditional attire - necks laden with beads, bodies wrapped in red cloth, shaved heads, everywhere. There is a sacred tree in our village where the Maasai women worship their gods.

*My friend Craig, who lives in Olosiva with me, is super diligent and already has put all of his videos online. There should be one of us at an orphanage holding Mark, the tiniest little boy, soon. http://youtube.com/craigmcf

:)

AY.
Tomorrow will be the first day of my fourth week in Africa and the first - yes, the first - day of actual work. Boggles the mind, really, that we're just now beginning the work we came here for. After two weeks of superflous daily orientation, Emma, Lori and I decided to forego the more popular options of safari (yes, we're so jaded that we turned down a safari) and a ten hour treck up Langai, an active volcano that can easily swallow inexperienced hikers, for the beach.
We broke out our iPods (discreetly, of course) and took the seven-hour busride from Arusha to Tanga on a crowded bus that didn't fit us longlegged wazungu. Our bus was blessed with not only abundant rainbow decals on the outside and strings of fake roses across the dashboard, but also with a horn that blasted tunes reminiscent of a Mexican wedding procession at the most inopportune of times. So, clearly, I loved it. I've noticed that there is little concept of personal space here, as I practically adopted a little eight-year-old boy for the trip after he had nowhere to be but on my lap.
When we finally got to the Tanga bus stop, we were hassled like no other. There were handfuls of taxi drivers vying for our patronage, and we picked one duo that our bus driver harangued for long enough, we figured they must be safe. It took us only 10 minutes to get to Penori, our hotel, which we thought was strange. We were sure that our hotel was at least 35 minutes away. We also found it strange that we had a 20 minute walk to the beach once we arrived. Later that night, after a horrific dinner in the Penori restaurant where Jimmy Carter apparently once dined, we were casually flipping through my trusty Lonely Planet to see if there was something more interesting in the area. This is when we realized that we were at the wrong hotel. A page before the Penori listing was Peponi, a lovely beachside compound about thirty minutes down the coast. After some incredulous looks and much laughing at our stupidity, we befriended the head concierge at Penori, a shy 19 year who ate up the attention from three hyper white girls. Peponi was fully booked. We begged. In the end, we got the caravan.
We woke up at the crack of dawn, hopped a bus (which was sent to Tanzania after the filming of Speed, according to Lori), and finally made it to Peponi in time for breakfast. The caravan, which we Americans call a trailer, was absolute luxury after a week of rural life. (My feet were so scrubbed clean by the sand by the end of the weekend that I had to take a picture.) We had the whole day ahead of us and decided to rent snorkeling gear and go out on the Peponi dhow, a traditional Swahili fishing boat, to a sandbar an hour into the ocean. The water was too choppy to snorkle, but we lunched with a handful of British volunteers and a friendly family from Mauritius in the middle of the sea.
The rest of the weekend was spent yoga-ing on the beach and refueling our minds and bodies for the next six weeks of bona fide, much-anticipated WORK!
Next post to bring: first teaching amazingness, host family craziness, and chai tangawizi-ness.
:)