Tanzania Summer 2008

This morning we woke up at 6:00 am like we had planned. Kiran, Kayla, Jenna, Andy, and I (Ice stayed home to catch up on sleep) went hiking up a hill that I must say is comparable to Mount Kilimanjaro (just kidding). The elevation change made it really difficult and thus, a good work out.

After the hike, we went home to wash clothes (While washing our clothes, Kiran and I were attacked by lizards and a loose chicken.) and clean the rice. Back at home, the rice you purchase at the store is clean and clear of stones. The rice here is dirty and full of stones.

At 2:30 pm we went to Habiba’s home to begin the leveling of the ground since the house was on a hill (instead of building the roof). It was hard work digging dirt with crappy shovels and hoes (which looked like they were made from a stick and a piece of metal). Anyway, it was so much fun to level the ground because we attracted the entire village to help us. Leveling took two hours!

While we were leveling the ground I saw a little boy chewing on a sugar cane, a food that I ate in Vietnam. I asked the boy where he got it and he said down the street. An hour later, Habiba and her grandmother came up to us and gave us two huge sugar canes! That was very sweet of them. The sugar cane was our dessert that night. All in all, a good day.

Today, half the group will continue work at the Kagera Regional Hospital and the other half will meet with Father Peter to arrange transportation to three other hospitals. We can’t believe that this trip is almost over. It is sad but also exciting because upon returning, we will begin the planning of next summer’s trip. We hope to have two groups next summer: one group back to Bukoba and a second group to a new destination, Arusha.

Anh

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Yesterday (Friday) we celebrated a local Tanzanian holiday known as Farmer’s Day…kind of like our Labor Day by 1) sleeping in 2) playing Uno while waiting for the rain to stop 3) spending an afternoon at the beach and 4) having pizza and chips mayai (chips with eggs) for dinner. The pizza was amazing because it was cooked in a wood fired oven. The pizza took forever to make (about 2 hours) but it was well worth it.

Today was an adventure. In the morning, we went hiking around town before our meeting with Father Peter, who is the church liaison with the government hospitals (namely Kidongo, Lybia and one other that I forgot). We met him at 10:00 am to talk about our diabetes project and about possibly collecting data from other hospitals. The meeting went great. We are meeting with him on Monday to arrange transportation to the other hospitals.

After the meeting with Father Peter, we spent a few hours visiting curio and gift shops. I took the group to the ELCT hotel (the hotel we stayed at last summer) and to my surprise, the receptionist remembered me! That was exciting! After visiting the ELCT, we spent a half an hour at an Internet Café before heading off to Mr. Raza to meet the fundi to begin the building of Habiba’s house.

At 3:00ish, we walked to the location of Habiba’s house. As we were walking, I realized that I visited her house last summer before leaving Tanzania. I remember her mud house and thinking how in the world can this house last a rain storm? Well, it can’t and that is why we are building her an iron sheet house. I don’t know how this house will last the hot summers and chilly winters but I guess we’ll see. Mr. Rutta (an assistant of Mr. Raza) showed me the financial breakdown of the house and it was surprising to see that the house cost a total of 810,000 shillings (roughly $800.00). That includes material and labor fees, which is only 60,000 shillings (roughly $60.00)! We, of course, are working for free.

At 4:00ish, we finally began building after the fundi laid out the shape of the house using wooden sticks and string. The house will be 12 feet by 12 feet! Then we began digging holes to layout the frame of the house. The best part was next….we had to use blades to chop up trees that were used to create the skeleton of the house. It was almost dark by the time the skeleton of the house was finished. We said goodbye to the fundi.

Tomorrow, we are waking up at 6:00 am to go out hiking. If time permits, we are going to church before heading back to Habiba’s to continue building her house. Our goal tomorrow is to build the roof…or at least help the fundi build the roof.

Anh

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Over the past few days, our handyman abilities, resourcefulness, and survival techniques have been tested…to say the least! Although the new house that we are living in has spacious bedrooms, high ceilings, chandeliers, and a wraparound veranda, it has its own little quirks that take some getting used to.

Day 1:

So Anh, Kayla, and I had the bright idea of getting up at 5 AM to exercise on our incredibly hard, almost gym mat, bed. I went to the kitchen to fill a pot for tea/coffee and no water came out of the faucet, or any faucet for that matter. We woke up Andy, who we say is in “husband training� because we make him fix everything and has to put up with our whining (poor guy), and he went outside and started messing with the water tank, but had no luck. Not only did no water mean no tea or coffee, but there were no showers or flushing toilets and with six people who hadn’t showered in two days having to do both, it was a little disgusting.

The combination of being tired, dirty, and angry wasn’t exactly the best situation at 5 AM, but only to make it better was the dead cockroach outside of the bathroom. I had never seen a cockroach in my life, dead or alive, and that was the last straw for all of us at this point- we were moving out!

We called the landlord a few hours later and he sent over the fundi, which is Swahili for anyone who fixes something (I think). He forgot to mention this when we moved in, but apparently there is a little valve inside the tubing that directs where the water goes, whether it be to our house or to the neighbor’s, so all of our water went next door. He told us that it would take essentially all day for our tank to fill up and that the city water shuts off at some absurd time like 5 PM, so we would probably have normal running water the next day.

Anh and Andy went to the hospital around 9 AM to meet with Christine, the diabetes nurse. She gave them even more data, around 80 more pages from three other hospitals in the Kagera region! We’re all pretty excited about that and we can’t believe how well our projects are coming!

We came back for lunch and to maybe take a shower, thinking there would be some water in the tank. When we turned on the faucet the water was BLACK! It was just disgusting but there was nothing we could do about it. We all had to take showers because like I said, it had been a while since any of us had bathed, and we had to be in town for 1:30 to go to the orphanage. So we boiled the dirty water, let it settle, and used the cleaner water on top to bathe (what an experience…). As the night went on, the water was becoming clearer and clearer, which was good. Thank God for bottled water because 24 hours without water would not be good! That night we all went to bed happy, semi-clean, and a little wary of cockroaches.

Day 2:

Since we couldn’t exercise yesterday morning, we decided to get up at 5 AM again today only to find that we had no electricity! The water worked fine and was clear, but I guess it’s either one or the other! We got the flashlight and started searching for the circuit box, but no circuits were broken. Again it was too early to call the landlord so the three of us just sat in the living room and complained. Living in this house makes me feel like I’m at camp (or cabin to you Minnesotans) and it’s hard to get used to, but I guess it’s how a majority of people in Bukoba live.

At around 7:30 the lights magically just turned back on. We don’t know if it was a power outage or if the city decided to turn off the power during the night like the water, but it ended up being O.K. because we had to be at the hospital around 9.

Day 2.5:

While walking to the hospital, we got caught in a downpour. Good thing we brought our rain jackets, otherwise we would have been soaked. Even though I looked like a giant blue marshmallow, my $1 Wal-Mart plastic poncho kept me nice and dry � We were supposed to rebuild a little orphan girl’s home today, but the rain would have made it really difficult, so we postponed it until Saturday. Since those plans were cancelled, we decided to head back home.

I’m not sure if we’ve kept you posted on our terrible luck with cars in Tanzania. Anyways, we’ve had five incidents so far where we were in the car when it broke down; we just must be bad luck. The fifth break down happened today when our friend William’s driver was bringing us home. We were at the beginning of our dirt road and it’s really rocky. We aren’t too sure what happened but we just heard a big “boom� when we were going up a hill and we ended up having to walk back to our house, which was only 10 minutes but it was pretty muddy. When we arrived home we put all our shoes outside to dry, but the house inevitably became dirty and I decided to get the vacuum and clean up. After vacuuming our room, I started in the hallway. It wasn’t really picking anything up and it was emitting a little heat so I decided to slow down, but apparently I should have taken the heat as a warning sign because the vacuum essentially blew up and fried! I can’t really explain the sound it made but I dropped it and ran and hid behind Anh and Kayla as the vacuum billowed smoke. So, our house, minus mine and Kayla’s room, is still a little dirty, but we can manage for one more week.

Tonight we had dinner at William’s house, BUDAP’s coordinator. We’re all really excited to work with him over the coming years! He has a really nice family and his wife is an amazing cook. Everyone but Ice, our vegetarian, tried eating our first grasshoppers, a Tanzanian delicacy. I’m not sure if I would eat like a whole bowl of them or anything, but they weren’t too bad- kind of tasted like a crunchy, smoked piece of chicken.

It’s been an adventure living in this house and we all got a few good laughs out of it. I keep telling myself that it’s all part of the experience and we should embrace it. We all would like to come back to Tanzania next year, possibly against our parents’ discretion (at least mine maybe!), but we all are really enjoying ourselves here! Now that our projects are essentially put in place, we’re going to take some time and absorb the culture. Tomorrow is Nani Nani (not sure how to spell it), which is a community-wide holiday where businesses shut down and farmers set up a market to sell their produce for cheap- kind of like our Labor Day maybe? Depending upon the weather we hope to make it to the farmers’ market and maybe go on a hike in the villages.

Kwaheri ya kuonona! We’ll write again soon!

Jenna

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Group photo at Maasai Mara camp back in Kenya.

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As you may know, one of our main goals is to raise diabetes awareness in the US while financially supporting the disabled community of Bukoba (BUDAP). Above is the diabetes key chain with a touch of African culture that BWB and BUDAP have created. They will be sold in the US to raise awareness with all proceeds returned to BUDAP.

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This is Kiran writing the blog today, and it has been another interesting day in Tanzania. We spent our first night in our new house and it feels wonderful to be settled in our own place for the next two weeks. Our morning started with serenades from howling dogs that sounded like they were possibly being attacked by a lion or some other fierce creature. After finally waking up, we took a scenic walk into town while munching on our Cliff and Luna bars as we headed towards the regional hospital. Jenna, Kayla and I spent the morning in the HIV unit, specifically in the Prevention of Maternal Transmission Center, while Andy, Ice and Anh left to schedule a meeting with the Regional General Secretary of the Kagera Region to confirm our diabetes research project. In the end, we fought drooping eyes due to a lack of coffee and tea this morning to see four negative HIV tests—great news!

In the afternoon, the six of us met up for peanut butter and pineapple jelly sandwiches and then marched from the cyber café to Kiroyera Tours, where we would work on the beads project. During our wait before leaving for BUDAP to see how the beads project was progressing, we bought some garlic, a wooden spoon, and some bowls so that we could make our first home cooked meal, spaghetti and tomato sauce. At BUDAP, we finalized the key chain designs and were excited to see how the diabetes awareness products were being made. We also got to watch Anh chase a duck around the yard.

Dinner was interesting. That is really the best way to say it. Anh and I tried to make spaghetti in water that would not boil and make spaghetti sauce from scratch. Apparently, tomato sauce in Africa is not tomato sauce. It is ketchup. The onions, garlic and green peppers were fresh and smelled amazing, but the tomato sauce did not taste like sauce. We tried adding chili sauce but it still turned the noodles pink. In the end, we ended up eating pink, soggy, ketchup noodles. Everyone but Andy ended their meals early due to loss of appetite. The best part of dinner was the fifty cent fresh pineapple. After dinner, we were serenaded again, this time by the toilet and the cow outside our house. Let us just say that we have all learned how to “hold it� until we absolutely cannot anymore and how to use a toilet in the dark. All in all, it has been a good day.

Kiran

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Today has been eventful. At ten this morning, we went to the ground breaking ceremony of COSAD. They had invited their partner organizations- Global Citizen Network, Biology without Borders and government officials. COSAD had also organized choirs from surrounding villages to sing as part of the ceremony.

The speech given by the officials were in Swahili and we could not understand much of it. However, we could appreciate the music and the culture of the people of Tanzania. The choir was different from one we were used to since it contained singing and dancing and was very expressive. The choir singers swayed to drum beats. It was surprising to see young boys playing drums and providing drum beats for the choir. The whole community from a particular village was participating in the choir- including the children.

Anh was invited to give a speech about our organization and mission of the trip as part of the program. She was able to give part of the speech in Swahili and the rest in English. Everyone laughed when she explained why (Kwa nini) we love coming back to Bukoba.

The ceremony went on until about 2:30pm after which lunch was served. We were grateful to have good food since we were getting tired of eating Luna bars and Ramen noodles.

For the rest of the afternoon we finalized a house to live in. We decided on living in a house closer to the town to save money on gas. We will move into the house tomorrow morning. It will be nice to have independence since we will be able to walk to work and not rely on someone to pick us up.

Andy

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Hey, peeps!

Time for a new update from your favorite travel-volunteer group, Biology Without Borders! So, we have lots more news to share, but we’ll tell you mainly about the advancements we made on our DATAE project! This morning, we spoke with Mr. Hussein of the Bukoba Lion’s Club and had an incredibly productive meeting. Through him, we hope to acquire more information and data from the different hospitals in the Kagera Region. He helped set up meetings for us with different doctors and health-care providers. Along with that, we’ve successfully managed to acquire permission to execute our project from almost all of the officials here in Bukoba.

Now to go more into our other projects, we spoke to a gentleman named Mr. Raza yesterday. He coordinates several projects in Tanzania and abroad. He owns an orphanage as well and there is a young girl named Habiba who lost her home to a heavy storm recently. Since we’re learning to be careful with our money, we decided to do more meaningful work with Mr. Raza and will start helping build a new home for Habiba starting next week! It’s going to be a small hut—originally thought to be of mud, but now with iron sheets. Yup, that’s right! We’re going to be doing some full-blown manual labor, getting muddy and sweaty! Most of us have already saved some of our dirty clothes to wear so we don’t have to worry about having another laundry-day episode! Hopefully, we’ll be able to post some pictures for you guys to see and laugh at!

Next up: updates on the town. There’s no better opportunity to get a queen/celebrity treatment if you’ve ever craved it. Everywhere we go, infants to seniors are always staring at us. A couple of school boys stopped by the street today, pointed at Jenna and said, “Mzungu!� (“white person�). We couldn’t help but laugh. It’s so precious how the children clutter on the streets just to get a wave or a piece of gum out of us. We all bought gum and candy to give to the children but you can never have enough of a supply. You only wish you can see those brilliant smiles every second of the day.

It’s raining very heavily today! We returned to our home much earlier than we usually do and settled down with a nice mug of tea. We will be having dinner with COSAD tonight and will help welcome their guests who are also coming here from America to help out with the community. We have the usual chores still left to do—boiling water being the most important—but we decided to take a break and write you all a little note. After tonight, though, it’s back to business. We have several meetings planned all next week—with doctors, nurses, administrative figures, patients, etc. I know I’m speaking for the rest of the group when I say I’m very excited for next week.

We hope you’re having as great of a time there as we are here.

Ice

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