Bearings

I have pretty much given up on trying to become at all functional in Swahili. I am just trying to focus on learning some basic words and phrases. I am not talented at learning new languages. At this point, I just want to know enough to show I that made an effort.

Instead, I'm spending my energy trying to get a better understanding of the culture in Tanzania, which is always important when doing counseling in a population you are unfamiliar with. I'm reading two books: "Tanzania: The Land and Its Peoples" by John Ndembwike and "A Plague of Paradoxes: AIDS, Culture, and Demography in Northern Tanzania" by Philip W. Setel. These are actually the only two books I was able to find about Tanzania, so I'm lucky that one is specifically about Northern Tanzania. The first book is pretty general. It covers mainly history and geography, with very general discussion of the culture. That part isn't very helpful, since Tanzania has 130 different ethnic groups! Many are not at all similar. Some groups are traditionally farmers, while other have traditionally been hunters or herders. Religion is also diverse. 30% of Tanzanians are Muslim, 30% are Christian, and 40% practice one of many different indigenous religions. Even many of the Christians and Muslims still practice aspects of various indigenous religions.

Interesting fact from my reading - about 8% of the people in Tanzania (like most of Sub-Saharan Africa) are HIV positive. But in Northern Africa, the HIV infection rate is less than half the rate in the United States (where it is about 0.5%).

Project Details

I received the details of the project I will be volunteering with. I will primarily be providing counseling to women who have been infected with HIV. All of the counseling is done in-home, in the areas surrounding the city of Arusha. I am told the program primarily deals with self-esteem building, coping with the illness, and health and prevention. Not exactly my area of expertise, but I'm looking forward to challenging myself. The main reason I wanted to do this trip was to get some first-hand experience in social justice work around an important problem. Looks like I have that covered. One aspect of this work that is in my area of expertise is that they also try to destigmatize HIV in the local communities. Not that I have hands-on experience with that kind of activism, but I wrote my Master's thesis on the topic of stigma.

I was initially worried I wouldn't be able to do much counseling because of the cultural and language barriers, but it shouldn't be a problem. English is the second most common language in Tanzania (after Swahili). So, I am told I might be able to work in English with women who are proficient, and that I will work with another counselor who is fluent in Swahili the rest of the time.