Life in Arusha

I got back from my safari last night. It was great! I'll post something about that in the next few days. Sleeping in a tent in Serengeti is quite an experience. Again, I am unable to upload pictures. For now I'll just talk about Arusha and my host family.

My family is very nice. I am glad I'm not at a hostel. They already have one other volunteer staying with them - a woman from Canada (Danielle). They have two children, Wilson (age 17) and Jovena (age 22). Both are in school and they're thinking of sending Willie to America for college. The father is named Will and the mother just goes by Mama. That's pretty typical here. Once someone has children, they are often called mama or baba (father) by anyone younger than them who does not have children. The family is pretty well off by Tanzanian standards. The father owns a company that buys and sells Tanzanite (a gem found only in Tanzania). They have a four bedroom home, which is slightly larger than my apartment. It's a modest home, but very large compared to most homes here.

I think my host family would like to convert me to Christianity. Pretty ironic since it's usually Americans coming here to convert people. I said I would go to the Swahili church next week, which should be interesting. They wanted to go to an English speaking church, but that wouldn't be anything new. I'm curious to see if it's very different.

Life in Arusha is interesting. Almost everyone here wears slacks and button down shirts no matter what they are doing. There is an expectation that if you can afford to dress formally, you will. I heard a little about that before I left, so I'm not completely underdressed. Many people have cell phones too - they're cheap and you just buy charge cards to use them. I don't know what's going on in America, but our cell phone coverage sucks compared to Tanzania. You can get a signal in the middle of Serengeti park and I can't even get one if I go 5 miles outside of Athens, GA.

So far I've had some down-time to settle in. My project coordinators are always around, so we spend a lot of time in the local bars and restaurants. The food is actually very good here. If we weren't always walking everywhere I would probably gain weight. The bars are very different here. For the most part, only men go to bars. Women work in bars, but other than that, there are only prostitutes. As you can imagine, this is a big source of the HIV problem. Actually, not the source, but just one location of the problem. At first glance you might wonder why anyone would be a prostitute or willing to hire a prostitute when the HIV infection rate is so high. But with the poverty rate, it isn't too surprising. Most of these women have the choice between risking death from HIV/AIDS 10 or 15 years from now or going hungry today (or seeing their children starve). The country still has somewhat of a dowry system, where a man must pay the bride's family for the right to marry her (although this system isn't as strict as it used to be). So, many men are unable to afford marriage until they are in their 30's. That leaves many of them to the bars.

I met the woman who runs the HIV/AIDS project I am volunteering with. Her name is Flora and she is pretty amazing. She was diagnosed with HIV in 1992, after contracting it from her husband. She is still very healthy, which is amazing enough on its own. In 1992, HIV was heavily stigmatized (it isn't quite as bad now), but she consented to be interviewed by a national newspaper to talk about the disease. At that time people did not know much about HIV/AIDS, so that was a very courageous thing to do. A group in Dar es Salaam (the largest city in Tanzania) read the article and arranged to extend their local HIV project to Arusha, putting her in charge of this region. The project is very grassroots, run almost exclusively by women with HIV. They secure money and resources to help people who contract HIV.

I'll start with the project on Monday. I'm still not exactly sure what they want me to do. If they don't tell me, I'll just approach it as a counselor. One thing I've learned is that you never know what you're going to be doing here until it actually happens. They just come pick us up and tell us what we'll be doing. For example, my safari was supposed to start on Tuesday, but instead they showed up and said I would be meeting Flora and would start the safari on Wednesday. I don't really mind because it keeps things interesting. They are very good about keeping in contact and taking care of the safety of the volunteers, which is the important part.

I'll put something up about the safari in the next few days.