Tanzania and Beyond

This week saw the first of our nutrition seminars held at WALIPO. The day kicked off only two hours behind schedule, which is pretty good for here where everything happens in Africa time - pole-pole (slowly-slowly). They have a completely different concept of time here which after almost 3 months of living here, i still cant get used too. They are so into making timetables for seminars here but i often wonder why when you know how unrealistic it is.

Anyway the nutrition seminar included POSA and WALIPO memebers as well as a hand-full of people from the community. I was pretty impressed by the turn out. Yet again there seemed to be an overwhellming majority of women participating. I counted all of 2 men in the room of about 30 people.
This was something Emma and i noticed when we first arrived and were doing home-visits to people living with HIV; they were all women. This trend was what had kicked off our idea for a women's centre.

HIV/AIDS leaves so many widows behind. When the women who we visited in their homes told us their stories we found so many similarities that the stories started to blend together. often the husbands are too stubborn to get tested or scared of stigma and soon get sick and die leaving behind widows and orphans. It seems the women are often the brave ones to go and test their health when they suspect their husband is sick or are concerned about their own health. Some husbands left their wives when the wife tested positive. sometimes the men were sleeping around and bringing the infection home, and often the wives are all too aware of this.

Those attending the nutrition seminar have a morning of introductions and then chai and breakfast together. They are all HIV positive and during the day learn about good nutrition, a balenced diet and living a healthy lifestyle which is so important when living with HIV. They are also taught about budgeting for food, which would only be taught at a seminar in Africa. The price inflation here lately has been unbelievable, and food at the market is getting more expensive be the fortnight.

At the end of the seminar, everyone is given food from the nutrition seminar to take home with them. This week large sacks of maize were dished out. Thanks to some very generous donations from friends and family at home, i spent the day at the market yesterday buying more food to stock the nutrition seminar. The food is not only used at the seminars but also to feed the orphans, who come to the centre 5 days a week, breakfast and it is also for the women members. Little money goes such a long way here. A big thank you from me and everyone in the community who is benefitting.

Overall it was a very successfull day and as a result we have five new women members joining WALIPO! The nutrition seminars are planned to be held monthly from now on.

WALIPO
Women in Arumeru Living Positive

HIV Resource Centre for Women

Background
Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is an epidemic which affects over 41 million people worldwide. Twenty-three million of these cases are in sub-Saharan Africa. The disease has enormous and devastating consequences socially, economically and politically. There is a particularly high infection rate in Usa River due to poverty, ignorance about the disease and negligence.

WALIPO is a community organisation which emerged out of a need for information and resources for the many women silently struggling with HIV. The non-governmental group was formed in February 2008 by fifteen local women living positive. The aims of the group are to empower women through sustainable projects and to support the local community.

Projects

Orphan Centre
The orphan centre looks after a group of local orphans who meet at the centre five mornings a week, where they get a meal, literacy and numeracy training and the freedom to play in a safe environment.

Sewing project
The centre provides tailoring training to local orphan girls to empower them and provide them with employable skills. This allows them to break free from the cycle of poverty and earn an income.

Nutrition Centre
Adequate nutrition is essential for people living with HIV. Nutrition seminars provide education about the importance of good nutrition and provides basic food supplies.

Poultry Project
The poultry project provides an income for the group and allows money to be put back into the centre. This enables the project to be self-sufficient.

Vegetable Garden
The WALIPO women have been trained in sustainable vegetable production and cultivation. The garden provides fresh food for the nutrition store and for group members.

Outreach program
WALIPO women have been trained as community counsellors, who visit a network of people living with HIV in their homes. These patients would otherwise be suffering alone, and the counsellors provide much needed support and assistance.

Important events

Onsite HIV testing
The centre provides regular HV testing days where local people can test their health in a safe and confidential environment.

Nutrition seminar
Seminars on nutrition education provide people with an understanding of the importance of nutrition and how to maintain a healthy diet.

HIV seminar
HIV awareness and education is the first line of defence against stopping the disease spreading and preventing stigma. Monthly seminars provide information about ways of prevention, transmission and reducing stigma.

Dates to be advertised. Contact WALPO for details.

How you can help
WALIPO is self sufficient to a small extent, but largely relies on financial support. If you are interested in donating, please contact TAMIHA for more information.

How WALIPO can help you
The centre provides assistance to those living with HIV. It is a community resource centre where anyone can drop in and get help and support.

Contact details:
WALIPO
Ngarasero St
Legunga, Usa River
Tanzania

Postal address:
Tanzanian Millennium Hand Foundation
(TAMIHA)
P.O Box 541, Usa River,
Arusha, Tanzania
Email: tamiha06@yahoo.com

We had our official opening of our womens centre yesterday. It's called WALIPO - Women in Arumeru Living Positive. They are very into accronims here in a big way. It was a good day and it felt like a big relief when it was over; a bit like, finally we have acheived something, and now it's done.

When people have a party here, everyone comes over and helps prepare. It started thursday arfternoon, which we spent sitting around with the women from the neighbourhood peeling potatos and cleaning rice. Friday morning i arrived at 9 and so much had already been done i think everyone must of been there since 6am. A big tarp had been constructed outside, some trees looked like they had been cut down to use as supports. We hired chairs and even had a dj, which meant running cables to a neighbours house somewhere in the village who had power.
We felt pretty useless as we often do here at times. We just get in the way or do things wrong because their way is so different. After sufficiently getting in the way in the outside make-shift kitchen with open fires, I decided to usy myself with decorations - thinking this is something i can handle, finally i can be of use -so I started blowing up balloons that Emma and i had bought but apparenly i was doing that wrong too and the girls soon took over. Very frustrating for me but i think they probably just wanted to help and sometimes, actually a lot of the time, you just have to stand back and let people here do it their way.

When Emma and i thought of the idea to have a party to launch the centre a simple casual affair with snacks and drinks came to mind. But this is Afirca and everything is so totally different from eerything we know. So this is how its done:
The idea is to invite 100 people, cater for all of them and serve lunch. Lunch includes fried chicken which came from our new chicken house. i saw a man with a handfull of chickens and a knife so i decided to look else where. Emma and i had recently named the new members toour chicken house but we decided to keep that to ourselves to avoid being the crazy Australian girls. Lunch of course includes lots of rice and being a special occasion, a rice and meet dish called pilau. Then theres a stewy meet thing and vegies and fruit and salad. Soon the whole neighbourhood was turning up to be fed and we soon ran out of food which is hard when all these street kids turn up looking at you hopefully with hungry eyes.

There is also this other concept that happens at parties which i find difficult. There's a high table where the guest of honour (usually the chairman of the village) and the important people sit. Then theres a group of lesser important guests who sit on chairs next to the high table and then facing them is everyone else and the kids sit on the ground.
There were lots of speeches in the morning (in swahili) the music/drama group which we have met and do a lot of work with (because they do songs and comedy sketches about HIV) performed, some kids from the orphans group performed acrobatics which was funny and then more speeches from the high table and then lunch.
After lunch Crispin who we work with got us to come up and make seeches and then he thanked us. It actually felt really good to be appreciated and thanked and have a round of applause. It's under-reated.
To finish we led people around our centre to the office (which Em and i proudly painted ourselves) the nutrition centre (a room with bags of maize and rice) the orphan day care room, the vegie garden which is starting to sprout and the chicken shed which is now 6 chickens short (R.I.P jermima and bruce) and that officially opened the centre.
Then the best bit of the day... we all relaxed and everyone started dancing out on the grass. We even got Crispin dancing which he likes to refer to as 'making jig jig'. We then bought all the builders (who have worked so hard on renovating the house and turning it into a HIV recource centre) and the music group Raha, which is like banana wine but fizzy like beer. Tts very cheap and very strong so therefore quite popular here. The music went into the evening and being able to relax and dance with the kids and the people we work with was probably the highlight.

It was a big day but i think worth it. Emma and i are now taking the weekend off to fall in a heap. Now the real work begins. The centre has to become self-sufficient and sustainable. We want to get monthly nutrition and HIV seminars running at the centre and at the moment are waiting to hear back from a local hospital about having on-site testing days. Another thing is to train some of the women members to become community councellors and set up a network of HIV sufferers in the area for them to visit and monitor and work out ways for them to benefit from the centre. Also we need more members. We thought we had fifteen women but now there are 5. Apparently they feel like they cant contribute and are overwhelmed. Crispin has assured us it was like this with other projects like POSA (Positive Steps in Arumeru) when he started them and it takes time but people will come and get involved. fingers crossed for now.

Im no expert on HIV/AIDS. I know the basics; and that's about it. The little i do know came from some last minute internet search sessions i did before i left Australia. But it seems that the basics are enough for teaching students about HIV awareness in Tansania.

Our teaching experience starts with a couple of Saturday morning classes with an orphans club and us making it up as we go. The questions they ask us continually suprise me but also remind me why we are here. We thought we were going well; we covered: prevention, modes of transmission, getting tested/medication and stigma. However we were unprepared when presented with myths the students had heared about HIV. Such as "my pastor says he can cure HIV/AIDS with prayer". We take a second to compose ourselves as we explain if the boys pastor could cure HIV/AIDS he'd be a very wealthy man and we wouldn't need doctors and 25 million people in sub-saharan Africa wouldnt be dying of AIDS. We try to stress there is no cure or vaccine for the virus. It becomes a balencing act between trying to scare the hell out of the kids so they will practice safe sex and trying to let them know people who are living positive can maintain a healthy normal life so that the students will be accepting of those infected and not add to the stigma.

The questions start flying and we do ok with some of them such as: " Ive heared that condoms cant really protect you from HIV and there are actually holes in them that lets the virus through, is this true?"
(Obviously we denied this at the time and thought it was a silly rumour the student had heared. However 2 months later, while speaking to some local friends, we find out that the main local brand of condoms, 'Salama', are actually so poorly made that they do in fact have small holes in them. The sick thing is, that the same company who make the condoms, manufacture the ARV's - the HIV medication- and to keep up the demand for the pills, they need people to be infected, so they produce poor quaility condoms. The thing is i'ts hard for local people to get any other brand of condom as they would have to go into the city to buy them and spend 4 times the price. No wonder safe sex is not high on the priority list if you have to spend the cost of a days food on a condom.)

We're slightly appalled when one student tells us about the HIV/AIDS prevention campaign in South Africa where the message is that men who are circumcised cant spread the infection; but when a student tells us they've heared that female circumsition protects girls from the virrus because it means they wo't enjoy sex and therefore wont become a prostitute, we are left speechless. we are totally unprepared to talk about genital mutilation. but this is Africa we remind ourselves. of course these are reasonale questions. so we take a breath and try to calmly explain that genital mutilation will not stop the spread of HIV and will not protect any girl from unwanted sex or from contracting HIV.

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.