Back "home" from my first week in the village

I just got back to Arusha from my first week in a small Maasai village called Engi Karet. It is only about an hour drive from town and right off the main road. Unlike the greenness of the plants in Arusha, Engi Karet is in the dry, dry desert. It is definitely going to take a lot of scrubbing to get all the dust off my clothes! The whole group stayed in a very nice guesthouse. The sitting room had a TV! They didn't have enough beds for everyone, so when we got there they broke out the saws and hammers and put together an extra bunk bed.

We started teaching secondary school students only an hour after we arrived in the village. Myself and my fellow volunteer, Pat, taught this first class for an hour with two Tanzanian interns, Emmanuel and Peter, who helped us translate. This first class was about fifteen students and they were very eager to learn! After a quick lunch, we went down to the primary school and taught another class. This one was a little bigger (and kept growing throughout the week!), but they were equally as excited to learn.

In the afternoon, we started up a little game of keep-away football (no, not the American kind). The kids, as usual, were awesome at it.

The next morning we woke up at 5:30 in the morning to do chicken vaccinations - or kuku vaccinations as we called them. It was definitely rough, but seeing the sun rising over Mount Kilimanjaro was definitely worth it. Chicken vaccinations consisted of catching the chickens at different compounds around the village and putting drops in their eyes. We vaccinated them against Newcastle disease, which is a highly infectious airborne illness that kills chickens. Many Tanzanian farmers rely on chickens for food and livelihood, so they lose a lot of income when their chickens die.

We got back from chicken vaccinations around 9 in the morning every day to eat breakfast and get ready to teach. Every day was pretty much the same., but definitely fulfilling. Our students continued to be very enthusiastic. More and more came every day to learn, even though they wouldn't all get certificates at the end. It was very encouraging to see how much the kids wanted to learn about HIV.

It was definitely sad to leave the village today, especially leaving my favorite student, Kato. It is nice to be back in Arusha, and I'm looking forward to a meal out tonight without any rice!

Siku njema!