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Published: April 21st 2007
...has been insightful. I have been busy since the moment I got here with my placement, cultural visits and the occasional evening out! I am pleased to report that I had my first glass of red wine last night at the bar next to our home-base and it tasted very good.
I spend weekday mornings at the TUPO community centre in Tenguru. All the members there have HIV or AIDS. There are three volunteers at the centre so it is less intimidating than being the only mzungu (white person). We have primarily been teaching English to AIDS orphans at the day care. There are only 8 of the kids there at the moment because of the Easter holidays. I don't know how we will cope when the other 40 arrive in the next couple of weeks! Aside from teaching 5/6 year olds we attend group support sessions at an HIV testing clinic and I participated in a community visit last Wednesday. This was the hardest thing I have had to do in my short time here. I caught the dala-dala (an extremely crazy minibus full of people, goats and chickens) into town with one of the community centre members.
The member did not speak any English which was tough. We went into the slums where people live in one room huts, cook on a fire and basically don't have anything. The first lady I visited is dying from AIDS. I sat in her small room whilst she cooked porridge over a small fire. The food looked like black sludge, and the whole room smelled really stale. There was no plumbing or electricity and there was raw sewage running outside her small door. I have never been so humbled in my life. All I could do for her was give her some rice, smile and listen. It is tough to witness, but I suppose that these people don't know any other way of life, and they somehow adapt to this extreme poverty. I am amazed at how they cope, but they do.
On a different, amusing note; I will be playing football in the Arusha Town Football Club stadium on Monday afternoon! It is a sponsored event for the TUPO centre. Our volunteers play (in Juventus kits) against the TUPO members. It has already been advertised on local radio and we expect a huge crowd (in the thousands). I
promise I will get pictures. Thankfully we only have to play 25 min each way. The event is used to spread AIDS awareness in the local community by distributing educational flyers during the match. All the TUPO members have HIV/AIDS and so the aim of the match is to demonstrate that those who have HIV and those who don't, can still mix and have fun at the same time.
Overall, my first week here has been filled with new sights, smells, tastes and sounds. I can't wait for the next thirteen!
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Juleun
non-member comment
Dude, I am very proud of you for what you are doing. Rock on!