27 Feb. 2012
Another month gone! February is just about over and I know I have not been good at keeping up with my blog. First of all, I am thankful that I have been able to Skype/chat with my family (even Grandma and Grandpa have Skype now!!) just about every week, finally got Skype to work with Ali Adams J, got phone calls from Ali and Lucy and Kelsey, and packages and letters every time I went to town. Thank you so much everyone- hearing from you makes me so happy!!
This month, I went to Mtwara for a weekend with all the other volunteers in the Mtwara region. It was about a 5 hour bus ride to the coast and wasn’t too bad at all. Mtwara is a much bigger town than Masasi (my banking town) and definitely has a lot more to it. We all got together for food and drinks and the next day headed to a beach house. There were 18 of us in the beach house that is right on the water. It was so beautiful! A few of us went out to check out the tide pools during low tide and we saw a lot of great things! (Ill post photos on Facebook eventually and Charlotte Grant has more on her Facebook). We made drinks and chilled on the beach all day and when the tide came in we all went swimming. I miss the ocean soooo much! It’s super clear and blue and it was amazing to be in the water again. That night we organized a beer pong tournament- haha. Someone got ping pong balls as a secret Santa gift, we searched all over for plastic cups and eventually found them, and with a couple crates of beer we were all set up! It was a lot of fun and felt like I was right back in SB.
I’ve been staying very busy in my village. Just about every day I am out from morning until late evening either visiting the primary school, secondary school, health clinic (zahanati), or meeting with people. Recently, I met the Community Change Agent (CCA) in my ward district that focuses on Malaria education. He is great! He is very excited to work with me since he has been doing all the Malaria education in our ward (10 villages including mine) by himself. He introduced me to an organization that I will be checking out later today that does Malaria and HIV/AIDS education as well. In April, all the volunteers in the Mtwara region, our counterparts, and our CCAs will be heading back to Mtwara town (coast) for a week-long Malaria Conference to get training on Malaria Education. Malaria is the number one health problem in y ward (and most other places around here) so it will be great to get some tools at the conference. However, it’s frustrating because they diagnose everything as Malaria if you have the symptoms but don’t have the ability to actually test it. So, I am sure many of those cases are a typical food/water poisoning or something other than Malaria that also causes fevers and diarrhea. But oh well, that is a problem way over my head to address since that’s how they do their diagnoses with the equipment that’s available.
At the health clinic, I sit with the head nurse and observe and help her out. She is great with explaining me/ showing me how things are done, and always does a formal introduction for me in front of all the patients waiting so they know who I am and why I am there. I usually go on days that they weigh babies or the pregnant mothers come in to get checked. Healthcare is free and each mother brings a paper that charts the babies’ weight each month to make sure it is in a healthy zone. For the most part, the babies seem to be going up at a healthy rate from the charts I observed and the clinic officer stated that there is not a big problem with nutrition health. (However, there are definitely limits to diets here based on farming seasons. For instance, there is no fruit in my village right now because mango season is over and bananas and oranges and papayas aren’t ready yet). Babies get vaccines and Vitamin A droplets certain months so one day I helped do the Vitamin A droplets for all the kids that needed it. Another day at the clinic, I sat with the main nurse while mothers came in with their sick children. The nurse had me count out the pills and explain when to take them while she documented symptoms and the medications given. (This is when I got frustrated that every mother that mentioned their kid had diarrhea and a fever was then given malaria medication for their child. Maybe when there is more than just the one head nurse they do more verification of symptoms like checking fevers, but so far not that I can tell). On one of my first days at the clinic, I went in the morning with my CCA to watch him do a Malaria education presentation. He did a short lecture (couldn’t understand everything), but the head nurse really got the people waiting involved by passing out some fliers and having the men read about how they can help their pregnant wives if they have signs of malaria. Each morning, there is a half hour scheduled for health education and the clinic officer (who actually speaks English!) definitely stresses the importance of health education. However, he mentioned if it’s only one person at the clinic they don’t do the education since there are always many people waiting to be seen. So, I think I will definitely work with the clinic officer, the head nurse, and my CCA to increase the health education. In my village, people definitely stressed they wanted more health education available in our village since the clinic is about 5k away too so potential groups or projects there too.
I’ve gone to the primary school (my village but 3k away in the other sub-village) and secondary school (the ward village that’s 5k away) to observe teachers, meet students, and discuss ways I can help. The primary school’s main request is teaching English. They have a pretty messed up (I think) system of education, language-wise, here. The primary school is classrooms 1-7 and are taught in Swahili; there are the typical subjects of Swahili, Science, Math, Work (farm skills, craft skills, sports), History, and English. The tests and books provided for English are awful for kids not really learning English. For example, they are given a story in English with comprehension questions in English, but the students don’t know any words in English so cannot understand the story. Or, I watch as lesson on “too…to” and the students were expected to write sentences (i.e. This is too hot for me to drink), but they don’t know the words that make up the sentence. So the teachers have to translate everything into Swahili, but students don’t have anyone translating for them on their final exams and thus fail. Instead of replacing the teachers and the typical methods of teaching with the government books and tests, I spoke with the teachers and agreed to teach English afterschool 3 days a week. That way I can start from the beginning with simple vocabulary words and simple grammar. Any advice on English teaching or ESL type books would be greatly appreciated. Right now I am working with two older boys (one’s in secondary school) to tutor them in English, but also help me get an idea of how to go about teaching a foreign language- so far just doing my Swahili book I used in training and flipping the exercises around. Anyways, the main problem with the education system is not that the primary teachers often don’t know English well (especially enough to be teaching it) or that the tests and books are not written for non-English speaking learners, but that if the students pass their exams and get into secondary school, every subject in secondary school is taught in English. They have American and European textbooks for biology and chemistry, for example, and yet do not know English but somehow learn from these. It’s crazy to me what students have to do to learn and yet still value it so much. The teachers at the secondary school know English well, but said it is a problem that the students do not know English so they translate just about everything as well. I observed the first year students in secondary school, and the teacher was teaching them basic English grammar to help with the adjustment to the new education system of learning in English. So it seems that education is definitely delayed and more difficult because of this language barrier. So despite the fact that I did not want to teach English here, I think this is something that many people want, especially in my village, and hoping that I can help teachers out at the primary school (but not replace them). That’s why I agreed to an after school tuition, so that teachers still teach like they usually do, and they can observe me/help me with the afterschool program to see another way of teaching English. Additionally, I think having an afterschool program will be an easier way to add in health and environment education eventually (maybe starting clubs at the school). So far, that’s my only set task for after my in-service training with Peace Corps in March.
I recently held two village meetings to do activities that we learned in training in Tanga to aide learning about the community and involving village members. I did two projects: drawing a village map, and writing out daily activities. Each meeting, I separated groups into men, women, young men, and young women. (Typically my village separates groups into all women, old men, and young men so I wanted to give the young women a voice as well). The meetings were extremely difficult to plan since the Chairman and Village Executive Officer (VEO) in my village often have communication issues and conflicting ideas and therefore the messages for village meeting times and dates is difficult to settle and tell all the villagers. But, after stressful mitigating between the two, I had a great turn out for both meetings of around 63 people. All groups were well represented as well which was great, and people really enjoyed the activities, especially the map drawing. Ill post some pictures of the meetings on Facebook. The older men’s group tended to be very quiet but had organized discussions. The older women’s group had a few main leaders in the activities but discussion with most of the group too. And the two younger groups were very involved- they drew on the chalkboards before they did the final map to argue who drew something correctly and the boys and girls group were trying to spy on each other to get ideas- over all very energetic and all members were involved. My Chairman ended the meeting by having each group pick 5 needs not present on the map (I passed out sticky notes for identifying needs not present on the map for part of this activity) and we wrote them all down and figured out the top 5 needs of all groups. They involved different aspects of Health, Education, Water, Sports and Games for Youth, and Better Agricultural Practices. My next activity had a very similar turnout of people and since my Chairman and VEO couldn’t make it, I had my counterpart run the meeting. She did great as a facilitator, which confirmed my decision to bring her to the training in March for Peace Corps (each volunteer has to pick one counterpart from the village to get a week training in Peace Corps and act as the facilitator between you and your village so that work remains in the hands of a Tanzanian). Overall, I was extremely pleased with the participation, how my Chairman and counterpart facilitated the meetings, and got great results! It was well worth the struggle to set them up with my Chairman and VEO and the villagers asked me to do another meeting (I am planning one to identify specific projects and groups people are interested in creating and forming).
This weekend, I was supposed to type up a report on all my analysis and information gained about my village through house to house surveys, informal interviews, visits to institutions, and the village activities. But…my procrastination with writing reports is still part of me J So, I thought I’d catch you all up instead. I miss you all tons and keep sending me letters!! It’s always a highlight to get mail here. I’ll be heading to Morogoro March 14 (I’ll have to spend one night in Masasi, bus from Masasi to Dar another day, then a bus from Dar to Morogoro another day- long trip!!) for my 2 week training and then planning on visiting with other volunteers after training for a little. I should have much better access to power and internet while in Morogoro so if you haven’t yet, add me on Skype (Skype name: stephaniegaffney). Also, for those of you who have moved recently please send me your new addresses or anyone who has not gotten a letter from me, send me your address too- I promise to write since I’ve got lots of time here haha
I’ll post what I have started on random notes about my life here in Tanzania that talks more about culture and what not. Still a work in progress since it’s turning into a book but thought you might enjoy learning about what I am experiencing here! Love you all tons and hope you are doing well and staying healthy and happy. Miss you!! xoxo
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