A house wife from the 1800's

Are you impressed yet??

Well hello again, since my last blog post I have been living in Berega, getting used to village life, but because school doesn’t start until Monday I have not had much to do.  Hence, the title of this post.  This has pretty much been my every day life:  cooking, cleaning, and…well that’s about it.  Every week on Monday, I go to the market to buy fresh fruits, vegetables, and spices for our home.  Then I usually stop by a neighbor’s house to pick up some freshly made bread, cooked right over an open fire.  I then go home, do the dishes from last night’s dinner, use the water from the dishes to wipe off all the kitchen and bathroom surfaces, sweep the entire house, and then use the dishwater again to mop (conservation of water is really important!).  The first two weeks I even washed our own clothes by hand just to see if I could do it… never again!  Rubbing the clothes made my hands so raw and trying to get the water and soap out of the clothes took all day, it was the hardest work I have ever done.  So now we are paying a girl to wash our clothes.  I’ve definitely taken having a washer and dryer for granted!  Every night I cook dinner from scratch using fresh ingredients, and for those of you who know me as the queen of frozen meals, this should be pretty surprising.  I have been able to make homemade spaghetti (after lots of peeling, cutting, and smashing of tomatoes), stews from scratch using lots of veggies and potatoes, fried eggplant parmesan, and my favorite rice and beans (although it does take an hour to pick out all the sticks and stones..);  I have also made my own French bread (see pictures), banana bread, brownies, and chocolate cake.  I hope these things are healthier for us since we don’t use anything that is pre-packaged or canned.. but even if they aren’t we can’t afford to be picky! There is a lot of repetition here since food is so limited. Scott helps some in the kitchen, but mostly with the meat.  We eat a lot of goat and it’s as fresh as meat can be… straight from an animal that was killed that day or the day before.  Preparing the meat takes forever because all the bone and connective tissue has to be cut out, but after its been marinated and sautéed it it is actually really tasty.  So I am positive by the end of this year we will both have mastered the art of preparing and cooking our own meals from the simplest of ingredients.  Maybe I'll even get rid of my microwave!  (Just kidding...)  

Besides being a housewife, I have been able to do a few other things in the village.  I talked to some people at the hospital about doing alcohol abuse education and they asked me to give a presentation on it for all the doctors, nurses, and students.  So I made a powerpoint on what alcoholism is, and what negative physical, emotional, and circumstantial consequences can occur.  I talked about the difference between a normal drinker, a hard drinker, and an alcoholic, and what the symptoms are of each one.  Then I talked about AA and how it has been able to help thousands of people get sober.  When it was over, you should have seen their faces…. People were shocked that I would even discuss such an issue.  The thing you should know about Tanzanians is that no one really talks about anything.  They have this idea that if everything looks good on the outside, everything is good- so people don’t ever mention things like alcoholism, unprotected sex, or HIV. Everyone knows it happens but no one acknowledges it, either because they are too afraid or too uneducated to know anything about it.  Especially in the villages where there aren’t TVs, newspapers, radios, or billboards, people don’t get exposed to really important sociological issues so it just keeps snow balling until it becomes a huge problem.  Anyway, the people who watched my presentation were pretty surprised by the information but the good thing is that they also had several questions. I don’t think anyone has ever approached the subject of alcoholism before so they all wanted to know more about it.  My goal is to start an informational session once a week to discuss important problems in this area, alcohol abuse being one of them.  If enough people show interest, I want to start an AA meeting.  Just like everything else here, it may or may not work and it may not produce anything substantial, but if a seed is planted for one person who may be able to get help in the future then it will be totally worth it.  Also, the great thing about educating the medical staff is that they will hopefully be able to recognize signs of alcohol abuse in their patients and talk to them about it.  Oh well, we will see what happens and I’ll keep you updated! 

I did also want to mention that before I went on vacation, I noticed that the children’s ward had a very poor scale made of a rucksack and a hook attached to a dial- very inaccurate and not effective for weighing children who are unconscious.  One of the doctors said they needed another one so while I was in Arusha, I bought a manual scale that children can lie on that gives really good readings and is useful for children who are not awake.  The weight of a sick child is very important so this is a significant contribution to the hospital.  I was able to pay for this scale because of the wonderful Camille Morgan!  Because of your generous donation Camille, these children will get weighed properly and be given the right amount of medication or nutrition in order to nurse them back to health.  You have no idea how much this means to the people of Berega, so we all say thank you very much.

The scale they used to weigh babies in

The new scale donated by Camille

I did say I would talk about the orphanage here so this would be a good time.   We went to a fundraiser at the orphanage last week and that was really good.

The fundraiser.. Six.. hours... long!

The orphanage is run by Mama Ute, a German lady who has been here for 14 years so she really knows what she is doing by now.  This orphanage is not like the one I was at in Arusha where kids just live by themselves with hardly any supervision or care.  The one here in Berega is really unique because it takes children whose mothers have died, and raises them for the first two years of their lives.  After this time, a relative like a sister or aunt or grandmother takes the child home, that way the child does not permanently stay at the orphanage (in the big cities, children just roam the streets and no one knows who they belong to, but in small villages, it is easier to know who the child is and someone usually steps up to take responsibility).  The reason for taking care of them the first two years is because without proper formula or care after birth, the child will likely die without the mother.  So the workers at the orphanage feed the babies, change their diapers, and care for them until they are at the right age to eat solid food and go home with their relatives.  It’s a really good system and the children are pretty well taken care of, but I really enjoy going and playing with all the sweet babies.  They were short on clothes and shoes when I got here so I was also really glad to get to donate many of the items I brought from America (thank you so much to everyone who donated, especially Aunt Kim and Nancy!  Now the kids will get to brush their teeth everyday :)).

Maranda hard at work in his Sesame Street book

Another productive thing I have been doing with my time is teaching English to a very nice man named Maranda.  Me and Scott met him at the beginning of our trip and have gotten quite close to him.  He expressed a great interest in learning English and eventually going to America to make money for his family.  So for the last three weeks I have been teaching him English, starting from the very beginning.. This has been difficult because when you have been speaking a language so long, you don’t realize how the little things add up to the big things.  Like the ABC’s, I learned that so long ago I forget its importance, but Maranda is having the hardest time learning each letter and the sounds that go with it.  It can be frustrating but it is really good practice for teaching the kids.  He is slowly getting better and starting to piece words together, I really hope over the course of this next year he will be speaking in full sentences.  This has been nice too because he has helped me with my Swahili and I am almost able to have a whole conversation with him now!  More on my developing Swahili later.

Other than that, me and Liz (the other American teacher at St. Mary's) have been talking about strategies for the school, what classes we are teaching, and ways of helping the children learn.  Unfortunately, two teachers have quit (one of them waited until 5 pm the night before school started to tell anyone she was not going to return).  This was so frustrating because now we are even more short staffed. There is absolutely no accountability for workers here in Tanzania, they show up when they feel like it and stay home when they don't.  If they do show up, they may work or they may talk on their phone outside the classroom letting the students run wild.  If they get a new job, they don't feel there is any reason to give notice. And when they do teach, they teach the wrong information because they haven't had much schooling themselves!  This is probably a big reason why the educational system here is such a failure, it is impossible to find teachers who are well educated who will actually teach the children, so they end up getting a crappy education and then can't get into secondary school (even though the passing grade is 40%), and with no education beyond the 7th grade there is little chance of them ever finding a decent job... and the cycle of poverty continues.  But I guess that's the reason St. Mary's was started in the first place and the reason I am here in Berega!  We hope to give these kids a shot at healthy, meaningful lives... and the way you do that is through education.

Well that’s about all that has been happening around here, things are getting more exciting now that school is about to start..  I have never been more ready to be back to work!  Hope everyone is doing well, I miss you all!  Can’t wait to tell you about all my precious students!

A few of the students I will be teaching!