Just got back from a week of shadowing a Peace Corps Volunteer. I barely know where to start; there was a lot to see in just a few days. This is a bit of a long post, but I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of the past week. Good thing I've got pictures to fill in some of the gaps!
Shadow is a chance for trainees to see a volunteer in action at their site. Steve (one of my fellow trainees) and I got assigned to visit a volunteer named Kenzie in the Iringa region. She lives in a rural area that's pretty arid and is colder than a lot of Tanzania (lows in the 30s and 40s at night). Most of the people living in the area are subsistence farmers. Corn is the most common crop and makes up most of the local diet.
Kenzie was great person to spend a week with. She's an environment volunteer, which means that her work is MUCH less structured than mine will be as an education volunteer. When I get to site I'll have a schedule of classes to teach, whereas environment volunteers build their projects and activities from scratch. Kenzie has a wide variety of projects going; she does everything from teaching life skills classes at the secondary school to helping villagers acquire milk cows. I really can't do her work justice in the space of this blog.
We cooked and ate like there was no tomorrow. Creative meals, and dessert every night. Kenzie has really mastered the art of cooking with limited resources. With two small charcoal stoves and an array of pots and pans we were able to make:
Pineapple upside down cake
Tacos ("Tako" means "butt" in kiswhili. This is a source of constant amusement.)
Stir fry and rice
Chocolate chip cookies
Ginger snaps
Deep dish pizza
and much more.... we were pretty proud of ourselves
One day we visited an amazing woman in the village. Her husband died a few years ago and she has several children. She knocked our socks off with her huge smile and big heart. She's one of those people that makes you feel like the sun is shining on you when you're with her. After leaving her house, Kenzie told us that the woman was HIV positive. She had almost died the year before, but was able to pull through and recovered very well after getting access to ARVs (which is not as easy as it should be). It was pretty sobering to hear this about such an awesome woman; at the same time it was inspiring to see that she was still so upbeat.
HIV is hugely stigmatized in rural communities; it's not talked about at all, and anyone who is sick with it claims to have malaria (although there are basically no mosquitos in such a dry and cold area). There are a lot of orphans in the village, and AIDS is the main culprit. Most of the orphans seem to float between different homes that are willing to share a little food from time to time.
It was an odd experience to be faced with all the sober reality of Kenzie's village. Despite all the suffering in the community, at the end of the day we could retreat to Kenzie's house, cook decadent meals and make juvenile jokes about "tako" vs. "taco." Sometimes I felt guilty for all the fun we were having- a part of me screams "Dave, how dare you sit back and enjoy pineapple upsidedown cake while there are hungry orphans living down the street??" But I have to take a step back and look at the bigger reality here. Kenzie does a lot of work to help the village, and Steve and I were just visitors for the week. At some point we have to allow ourselves to continue our lives; to close the door and have a little version of America in the kitchen. We'd go nuts here if we constantly compared our lifestyle to the poorest around us. I could spend my whole Peace Corps allowance trying to feed the village orphans, but it wouldn't root out the problem, and I'd be gone in no time. We have to be okay with the fact that we can't fix everything while we're here, and remember that we need a deep dish pizza once in a while to keep ourselves going mentally.
I want to upload some photos from the trip, but the internet is a little stubborn right now. I might try to start a new post and see if I can make it work.
