finals week....

Not only has the past week been exam week for secondary school students here in Tanzania, but the insane amount of work has brought ME back to Hyde Park for a few days and those fantastic, nauseating feelings of impending finals and papers and all-nighters, oh my....

That said, it really was a fantastic week. On Tuesday I held a small seminar for food-sellers from the Misungwi market, 15 in total. We spent the day discussing 'balanced diet' and 'nutritious meals,' concepts which most of them had heard about, but many felt involved kilos upon kilos of meat and fruit and 3 sodas for every person etc etc. So it was nice to dispel some of these myths and show that a healthy diet is possible on a limited budget, and it didn't hurt that we had some nice examples during our meal breaks (great yogurt, fruit juice, eggs, telapia). They really liked the seminar (one said we should have filmed it to air on TV!!!), and am hoping I can help them take this new knowledge and spread it to the other market vendors and, eventually, to the shoppers themselves.

On Wednesday I went to Mwanza for an AMREF meeting where we brainstormed further areas for intervention as part of the reproductive health program I am working on. Spent a lot of time discussing really interesting techniques and strategies like video shows, parents groups, how to target young mens groups, care for people living with HIV/AIDS, and many more.

Then on Thursday I met with 14 primary school teachers from a nearby ward to discuss how their lessons have been going this year (we trained them in May to teach reproductive health) and to discus the merits of the essay contest that I am help running in their schools as part of World AIDS Day (the topic is 'role models'). Now, the only bad part about this day was that we were scheduled to meet at 8:30 am and people started showing up around 10:30, but THAT is really what Tanzania is like. It is infuriating and frustrating (especially since primary school students are beaten for being late, but for teachers strolling in leisurely 3 hours late seems understandable.....). But once they finally got their shit together and arrived, the discussions went really well and made me very optimistic both regarding the essays as well as their teaching capabilities and the benefits our program may be providing for their students.

Friday was my day to wrap up loose ends work-wise (lots of AIDS related money coming to my area in early December so had some big meetings with people to plan early phases of implementation), and then spent a good chunk of the day saying goodbye to people. Even though I tell people I'm here for two years, if I go away for a few days they invariably tell me when I come back 'oh my, I thought you had left back to Europe for good!' (here in TZ, Europe and America are the same thing).

Tomorrow I am off with the AMREF team for a week long meeting in Arusha, near Mt. Kilimanjaro. Even if it were in the middle of the freakin desert I'd still be thrilled to go, I desperately need a change of scenery. It doesn't hurt that the mountain IS there though, nor that I get to pass through the Serengeti National Park on the way!