point.....missed

Wow, it's been a while since my last post.
Two weeks.

I've been insanely busy, working with primary school inspectors from several districts near me to help train them for the AMREF program I participate in [see info on the side of this blog, and AMREF website]. That was for the first week.

Then my friend and fellow teacher here in Misungwi helped me to facilitate a 4-day seminar for secondary school teachers on how to teach HIV/AIDS and Lifeskills to their students. It was fantastic, though fantastically tiresome. But the teachers were passionate, active, inquisitive, really enjoyed an opportunity to speak with some guests who are members of a PLWHA group [living with HIV]... in general it was just a great time.

Maybe the one disturbing part came up during the final evaluation. I asked everyone to write 'one good thing' and 'one bad thing' - the good things were all great, because they were all compliments for me and Dominic on how great we ran things and the interesting topics. The bad points were typical [food, transportation] but then one bad point ran something like this:

"In general, I found the services of the hotel where we stayed unsatisfactory. In particular, that there seem to be many young girls who hang around and have sex for money, and what seems to be a very small amount at that."

This was obviously a concern, as the whole seminar was about trying to help people change these behaviours. So I went and spoke to the guesthouse owner, and showed him the comment. I also showed some of the young women who work in the bar/guesthouse, and whom I suspsect may be the ones mentioned in the comment.

One of them said, and this is almost a direct translation, "How embarassing!! This guy wrote that we have sex for very little money!"

The emphasis there seemed to be on the little money part, i.e. they were ashamed they weren't getting paid more.

Point missed.



However, overall, it was a great experience. One which I will have NO time to digest, because tomorrow my parents are arriving!! That's right, for the next two weeks I will be showing them around my house and Tanzania at large, living it up as much as I can and squeezing them for as many nice meals as possible. So this is an advanced warning for the long blog-entry hiatus forthcoming. But hey, since most of my readers are in the States I assume, and it's summer, get off your butts and go outside and enjoy the weather!!! I'm doing the same - it's the dry season here, and actually a bit cool - or at least not unpleasantly, excruciatingly hot.