Yesterday we started community profiling. We split into groups of 3 or 4 and went to our assigned communities (all within 20 minutes from here) and figured out what their local government, education system, irrigation/farming plans, economy, etc. are like. From this we can do a Needs Assessment to figure out which community would be best for an HIV campaign and a safe-stove project.
My group went to Suye. It was just Seth, Tanya, and I. Of course, none of us speak Swahili. We didn’t even know where Suye began so we walked around and asked anyone we could find that could understand our crazy sign language and random key words we were looking up in our dictionaries as we were trying to have conversation. It was pretty hilarious. After a while, we found a man that understood that we were trying to get to Suye.
He took us on this little trail up to the top of this hill and pointed over to the other side of the valley and said “Suye, Suye”. Between Suye and us was a really muddy 8-in wide trail with corn and peas growing on one side and a cliff on the other. It was practically a slip-and-slide. By the time we got to Suye, we were covered in mud and couldn’t stop laughing. I’m sure the natives that were standing at the top of the hill were pretty entertained. Crazy wazungu. To get to the middle of the city, we had to trespass through a few yards, avoid a scary looking Rottweiler, and convince a little boy that we weren’t as scary as we looked so that he would give us directions.
The whole village seemed really deserted compared to Kimandolu (where we live) but we found a huge Lutheran church and figured that we could probably find some people to talk to there. There were 3 men doing construction on the roof and one of them, William (an engineer from another village), spoke about 50 words of English – more than anyone we had found all day. He didn’t really understand us, so he took us to meet with Mama Nembra (the woman that ran the Lutheran church). She didn’t speak a single word of English.
We walked over to her house with William and none of us really knew what to do – she didn’t understand what we wanted and we didn’t know how to explain our selves any other way. After about 10 minutes of trying to communicate, we finally were able to ask her that we wanted to talk to someone that governed the village.
She told William to tell us to go to the Pentagon. The chairman (Mr. Mila) worked there. It all sounded really bizarre, but we hoped that he would speak a little bit more English than Mama Nembra and William. William had to go back to work, so Mama Nembra guided us back to the road that would take us to the Pentagon. Well it turns out that the Pentagon is an event center. I’m pretty sure Mr. Mila was the party chairman for the city, not the actual chairman…we asked if there was a market there and how many people lived in the village and the only answer we could get out of him was “Saturday and Sunday”. We were all trying not to laugh. It was pretty hilarious though.
After 10 minutes of that, we decided to walk around town and see what we could figure out just by observing. We ended up at a little restaurant to get sodas.
A group of African men invited us to eat with them. They shared their “African goat and chips” with us. I felt rude saying no, but was positive we were all going to get sick based on the amount of flies around the place. We all tried a piece, then kept them talking so that they didn’t realize that we weren’t actually sharing lunch with them. We got most of our community profile information from them, then they started asking us for phone numbers and told us we should go dancing with them soo we made up some excuses about appointments we had to get to and went back to the center of the village.
There was no way we could get back up that muddy hill to our village, so we decided to follow the road that went up another hill to the side and see where it took us. We hiked around for about 3 km and finally found the main road. It was so beautiful up there! We got some pictures of the village from up high and then found the dala-dala to get back to Arusha town and meet up with the big group.
So that was my first real adventure in Africa. Everyday is an adventure really, but it was fun to try to talk to the people and make up our own plan and figure everything out without a translator or a huge group that attracts crazy attention. People still think we’re psycho by the amount of mud we attract by the end of the day. The African women walk the muddy trails with 50 pounds of bananas on their head, a child on their back, another in their arms, and flip flops that are barely held together and they don’t even get their toes dirty. That’s talent right there. I can’t even walk to the main road without falling. Thank goodness for wipes!
No comments:
Post a Comment