Nanja Secondary School Visit

So an update on the human rights project is probably due since the last time I talked about it was over a week ago. Last Thursday, the two other volunteers and I joined two members of HIMS and headed to Nanja Secondary School, a Maasai school an hour and a half outside Arusha, in order to discuss the issue of female genital mutilation (FGM) with some Maasai girls. Set, just off the highway to Dodoma, the school sits in the middle of a vast plain, with the school buildings scattered about and a volleyball court sitting with a football pitch in the centre of the school.

When the introductions were done, we began to talk with the sixty or so girls who were about fourteen or fifteen about the issue of FGM. The first questions was if anyone supported the practice and, not surprisingly, not one hand was raised. We assumed that all were against the practice but it could be that some were not willing to show their support for it in front of the other girls. We followed up with the 'why' question. The answers were those of educated young women: loss of blood, psychological implications, transmission of HIV. We then asked them what their male peers thought of the practice. They replied that some of their male friends were against it but the decision makers in the tribe were all men who supported the practice. We were immediately suggested to go and speak to the leaders of the clans in order to tell them to educate the young men of the clans. However, most felt that their male counterparts supported circumcision and want their wives and daughters to be circumcised as it is their culture.

We then began asking questions in order to find out the prevailing attitudes towards FGM from the girls and what they thought the solution was. The girls spoke remarkably good English and one of the more vocal girls was quick to stand up and give her account of what she thought needed to be done. She argued that there are things in Tanzania that women wanted eradicated, the two main ones being FGM and forced marriages. She suggested that education was the key to stopping FGM and said that, for those who supported the practice in order to keep their culture, “culture is dynamic”. After, we asked about whether the girls were circumcised or not, some were and some weren't. Focusing on the ones that had not been circumcised yet, we asked them if they had any plans as to what would happen when their time came. A few had plans to run away and find NGOs and other authorities who would be able to help them but many others were resigned to having it done to them without their own consent. Some said that they would have it done in order to be respected within their society and were unwilling to fight it due to the lack of support from others within their clan especially the elders, who are all male and pro-circumcision. She said the only thing that gained a girl respect, other than circumcision, was education, secondary school at least and beyond to university.

There were brighter stories though regarding what they would do to find a husband without being circumcised, with one telling us that her tribe does not force them to marry within their own tribe so she could marry someone who did not support the practice of FGM. Another told us she would become a Catholic nun as a solution. When we asked how they would be able to escape the circumciser if they came suddenly to prevent her running away and one girl told us that there was a long period of celebration leading up to the ceremony and that she would use that time to educate her parents in an attempt to get them to stop the ritual.

Another point that kept cropping up as a way of circumventing the ritual in terms of respect and marriage prospects was education. A girl told us that many Maasai parents did not want their daughters to be educated and celebrated when they received bad marks. My final question to them was where else in the world was FGM practised. One girl said Kenya although she got the type of FGM incorrect, another said America.

Unfortunately, time ran out and we had to return to town but we had found the day useful even if it did not really tell us much that we had not already been told. It was nice to hear it from the girls themselves, though. The truth of it is that these are extremely well-educated girls, whose English was extremely impressive who know about the health implications of the practice and are able or willing to fight against the practice in their own tribes. Some may go to university and become professionals through which they will be able to gain respect and a significant dowry for their family. Although some of these girls will inevitably fail in their quest to educate their parents and elders, a large majority will probably not even attempt to resist. Additionally, none of those girls we interviewed will ever be major decision makers in their tribes. It is the young men, the leaders of the next generation that we must engage with and educate.

The Following Takes Place Between 9am and 1pm

Today on the human rights project we visited a private pre-school in Morombo to discuss with the director how his school, one of very few in the area, had come about and to gauge how we could help as volunteers. It was extremely interesting for me having come from the teaching project at Gohechi to another school in a very poor area. The class, for there was only one, consisted of around twenty students with a wide variety of ages and abilities. There are two classrooms, with three teachers, and the classrooms are extremely basic. Unfortunately, I did not take my camera this time so was unable to take photos of the conditions they were in but it was still better than the makeshift shack a few hundred yards away that served as a classroom for less fortunate children who could not afford to pay for the established schools. The price of three months at this school was 100,000TSH but many could not afford to pay that and were charged a discounted 60,000TSH instead. The price included porridge but as they could not afford to buy lunch for the children, much like Gohechi, they were unable to keep the children there for lunch and afternoon lessons. However, the director told me that many of the children stayed anyway because their parents worked until 4 or 5pm. There will generally be someone there to look after them, the director told us, because the school doubles up as his house.

The director outlined his plan to expand the schools classes into class one, two and three in time and gave us a detailed description of his vision to build a separate building, in which he could live, so the main building could have an extra classroom, as well as his idea to buy the land adjacent to the school as either a plot for a new building or as a dedicated playground for the children. He also showed us his little vegetable garden in which he had grown some spinach, which he fed to the children, and some chilli, which he fed to us (and occasionally sold). I took a small bite and it was hot enough to make my eyes water but not unbearable. I still needed a swig from my bottle of water though. He seemed like a good man, wanting the best for his children but he also told us why he was unwilling to accept a lot of students for free, even though he had the space, suggesting that the paying parents would be unhappy if they had to pay while others get free education.

After we left the school we stopped by a funeral to pay our respects to a man, with whom HIMS was close to agreeing a deal to use his land to grow vegetables, who had recently lost his father. It was a sombre event and the first funeral that I have ever been to. Of course, we did not stay for long, stopping only to say pole sana to the man and his family but the pain was evident on their faces. Death and hardship are facts of life in Tanzania and this was evident when we then visited the site of a half-completed house, that had been repossessed by one of the banks in Arusha after the prospective owner had been unable to pay back his loan, before visiting the home of a man living in another half-built house with AIDS. Seeing people coping with things that I have absolutely no experience in is in itself a difficult situation. I just can not relate to any of these people. I've lost an uncle that, regrettably, I was not close to but no one extremely close to me; I've always had somewhere to live; the worst affliction I have is being insufferable to the average human being. I am really, really fortunate. Something I must appreciate.

For the majority of you who read this will know me personally, I have posted two new albums on my Facebook page, one regarding the Lake Duluti trip the other a bunch of pictures from International Women's Day that seems so long ago. I hope you enjoy them.

Human Rights and Wongs

Today I began the human rights project for April and May. Before I came, I thought the project would be focused on gender equality, HIV/AIDS awareness, elimination of stigmas surrounding mental health issues and disabilities. It turns out it's more focused on the people's right to a good quality of life. Much of it is based around teaching the people we help about how to improve their quality of life, whether that be by learning practical skills or improving their English. I was taken to my placement by another volunteer via dala-dala. We headed to Murombo, a few kilometres outside of Arusha, where Healthy Integrated Multi-sectorial Services (HIMS) was hosting an entrepreneurial workshop for the locals. Hosting I thought meant facilitating a businessman or speaker to give a seminar on how to start a small business but it actually was the other volunteer and me who gave a workshop on how to transform an idea into a business plan, how to raise the capital needed and how to put the plan into action. Now as someone who has never studied a business course in my life, this was a very interesting introduction into the project and one of the poorer areas of Tanzania. The people there were middle-aged men who had skills and ideas that they wanted to turn into profitable businesses.

We started by attempting to estimate the minimum amount needed for one single person to live. We estimated with help of the local men that one would need per month in rent, 210,000TSH for food and around 60,000TSH for miscellaneous expenses. That totals to about £120. We used this plus a figure of 200,000TSH for material costs for any sort of business plus savings and used the total figure of 500,000TSH for our total expenditure figure. Thus any business plan we had needed to exceed this. A tall order, first of all, for the people to find something to make that sort of money and, secondly, the people in the area have no way to raise the money needed to start up their business. They have no savings, barely any belongings and either the banks refuse to lend them micro-finance loans due to the inability to secure it against a property or the people are unwilling to risk their house.

Next up was the formation of a business plan. Which no one knew how to make. So I suggested that I try to get in touch with some university friends who did business degrees in order to try and get a “master copy”, as the locals had started calling it. We then moved back to the problem of capital. This had us pretty stumped, with saving what little you can by doing what you're doing now or finding outside help in the form of a not-for-profit organisation. Here, I suggested working as a community to form relationships between businesses where, for example, the person growing vegetables would sell to the people who cooked food to sell on the street for slightly cheaper than others and they would, in turn, guarantee them business. After this, we had a small discussion about cutting costs, discovering that one man makes 5000TSH (£2) a day covering only a third of his expenses.

When we arrived back at the office, after some very lengthy closing speeches, I was given an overview of the project and the stuff they do. I think the ones that most interest me are the business related ones and the projects to help the youth groups, including teaching them how to play football. Doesn't sound particularly human rights-y if I compare to the equality issues you deal with in the Western world in the Lancaster bubble but I think this projects is going to be what I make of it.

Later that afternoon, Quirine and I lunched at Africafe spending way more that we should have and then went to the bookshop opposite. Here I decided to buy Hemingway's The Snows of Kilimanjaro simply because I love Hemingway and I'm in Tanzania.

So, there you have it. My first day of the human rights project. It is nothing like I expected it would be, structure and guidance is almost non-existent but from a CV point of view, I suppose it's good to get more business related stuff on there, even if it is dealing with small individual projects rather than huge corporations. Anyway, I got called a son-of-a-bitch today by a Tanzanian trying to sell me a safari. Apparently. I didn't understand the Swahili. However, my new tactic to anyone who tries to sell me a safari is to offer to pay them $50 for a five day safari. That gets them riled.

Lego!

Thursday marked the end of exams for class two while class three had one final exam in the morning. The day was used to allow the children to relax after the exams and as we moved all the tables to the side of the room, a box full of Lego appeared. I wasn't entirely sure who was more excited by this, the children or their twenty-two year old teacher. Getting the children to be quiet and play nicely was a huge challenge and we were constantly bombarded with complaints of one person stealing something off another. However, when the children finally did start behaving and building stuff on their own, it was nice to see how something that gave me endless amounts of joy when I was younger could do the same for these children brought up in another part of the world with a completely different background. The children built a variety of things, most simply stacking things to make a tower before holding it triumphantly like a trophy when I went round with my camera. Others were building forts and space stations with one child in particular, one who is usually very disruptive, showed a concentration which could only be dreamed of when it came to academic work to build a large manned station complete with wings and a makeshift Tanzanian flag. Photos will be on my Facebook soon! Soon after it was the turn of class three and similar towers began popping up. They were much better behaved though, probably because of the smaller class size meaning there was more Lego to go around. Two other things caught my eye: one was the large ship one child managed to build, as well as making a wheelbarrow-like machine out of Lego technik stuff (or whatever it's called); the second was that there was far more co-operation between classmates. After school, we were subjected to a workshop on various topics, explained mostly in Swahili so I was pretty damn bored throughout.

Later that evening was the Projects Abroad social, starting with a dance show where volunteers would have the chance to learn some traditional Tanzanian dances. Some volunteers took part when we were given the chance and I was one of them. Many of the moves were fairly simple, using at most four steps, but the speed at which some of it went meant that it was really tiring, especially in the heat. Afterwards, we headed to the Chinese Dragon restaurant for, you guessed it, Chinese food. Having not eaten noodles for nearly a month, it was a relief, although the owners spoke Mandarin and not Cantonese. I had beef ho fun, which wasn't on the menu but the manager told me they could have it made. The portion was huge and the food was goo enough. We then headed back to Via Via for the night.

Waking in the morning, late, I had to run to catch the dala-dala to get to school on time while feeling pretty rough. It was the last of my volunteering and the last day of school before Easter break for the children. They were having a party for the last day, with the school providing food and drinks. There was a lot of singing and drumming of tables which doesn't do hangovers any good but it was nice to watch. I have a video to upload, but that may have to wait until I'm back in the UK with broadband.

Friday afternoon consisted of a HIV/AIDS workshop put on by Projects Abroad which was basically a refresher of my Biology lessons but there were useful bits on the rate and methods of infection specifically for Tanzania and the work that some organisations are attempting to do. It lasted for an hour and a half and included a, frankly ridiculous, clapping game. Afterwards, Quirine and I met some other volunteers and headed to Africafe for a drink and then on to Picasso, a restaurant based near the Impala hotel. The menu was extensive and the cocktails being prepared for another table looked rather tempting but I decided to rest my liver for a day. The menu is fairly extensive, with European dishes ranging upwards of 15000TSH for a main course. I had calamari with some sautéed vegetables and French fries for 17500TSH, a Sprite for 1500TSH and a rich chocolate brownie, which was delightful, for 4000TSH. Speaking of desserts, too, the café has a nice selection of desserts including: the brownie I had, huge slices of Black Forest gateaux, lemon meringue pie, cheesecake, and carrot cake. So a main, drink and dessert for under £10 and this was one of the more expensive meals that I have eaten so far in Tanzania.

The whole dinner was arranged by a girl who is leaving Tanzania on Sunday and even though I have only known her for less than a month, it's sad to see someone leave. But those are the facts I suppose. I have met so many great people over this last month, and will meet so many more until I fly back to the UK in June, but it is hard to say who, if any, I will ever see again in my lifetime. I hope I keep in touch with as many as possible but I'm notoriously bad at that, as my friends back home can probably attest to after this last month. Definitely need to get on Facebook more so I can find out what's going on with everyone at home. Blogging is great method of telling people what's happening to you. This, for example, is informing anyone at home wanting to read what I have done in this truly wonderful past month but it is a one way conversation. Now that I have blogged for an entire month, I need to make more of an effort to find out how everyone else is. Be less self-absorbed should probably have been one of my goals! Speaking of which, I'll give an update of those tomorrow but tonight I head to watch the mighty Arsenal. 'Til tomorrow.