Welcome to the developing world

Im in Tanzania up north in the Arusha region which is near mt. Kilimanjaro. we are living in Tengeru village in a house with other volunteers who are either working in the orphanage or in the HIV program with us. our village is at the base of Mt Meru and filled with banana trees and chickens and women carrying things on their heads on the way to market. the kids yell out 'Mzungu', which means 'white person' in Swahili, and run after us. They go nuts when you take their photo.

The work we are doing is intense, but we are slowly working out how things work here and what can be done and starting some positive projects. things take time here. African time happens at a slower pace. Our volunteer work here involves a bit of everything. It's good to mix it up and be involved where ever we can. We're teaching English and HIV awareness classes to orphans. It doesnt seem to matter how unqualified you are, the fact that i speak English and can bluff my through basic HIV facts is enough to become a teacher in Africa.

We also do home visits to HIV patients, and work with widow groups.
The stories we hear are overwhelming. there are similarities between them all. Often the women are left after their husband dies and the relatives try to take the house from them. more often than not the husbands have passed away from HIV/AIDS, or the women say he got sick quickly and died and they suspect he was infected but refused to get tested. we get used to asking questions like, how many kids do you look after? how many of them are yours? how do you afford the rent? do they go to school? and then personal questions you would never think to ask someone on your first meeting like: what was your last CD4 count? have all your kids been tested? How do you think you became infected? and occasionally do you think your husband killed himself because he found tested positive?

slowly getting used to life here. catching a dalla-dalla (bus/van, death on wheels thing, which they pack with ridiculous ammounts of people,) to work and having a sheep under your feet or sharing your seat with chickens is becoming normal. people often carry other peoples babies or baskets so they can cram themselves onto the dall-dalla. Often it's nice to go back to our house at the end of the day and shut the gate and forget you're in a developing country for a moment; until the power goes out.