When we met at the mti (tree) in the morning, our team leader Ashley wasn't there. We were told the head master of the school we had been teaching at decided we couldn't teach there anymore. Bummed. They had had a 2.5 hour meeting with the head master, but he didn't budge. However, they already have another school set up for us- Musa Primary School. This school is in the worst shape of them all. It is in a Masai village which will be a cool change of scenery, up in the hills about an hour away. Therefore, we'll have to take a dala dala to get there. However, the head master at this school is extremely thankful to us and believes that our work is essential to these students' knowledge. We will be at the ... read more

Monday morning we came back from the hostel. Gotta love those dala dala rides! It was time to lesson plan again before our next class. About 20 kids were absent from before, and about 30 more kids were there- up to 130! We're planning to take role every day because there is no other way to keep track of the children. The school systems definitely do not have an up-to-date list of who is in school.We gave out a pre-test on HIV to see what the kids know already or what they think, so those should be interesting to review. I've learned a lot about the stigma that comes along with HIV here. People are so religious that they think HIV is a punishment from God, but that it can also be cured by the prayers ... read more

Yesterday we taught for the first time. I am paired up with Callan, a recent graduate of UCSC, and Frank as our translator, one of the smartest young men I know. (He'lll probably be the president of Tanzania in the future.) We teach M,W,F to Standard 5, which is similar to 5th grade. However, age isn't the determining factor of attending school. Children attend school when they have the money to pay for their uniforms. The teachers here get paid poorly, and therefore many times don't show up to classes. We have combined both Standard 5 classes for our lesson, so we have 97 students, ages 10 to 17 in our class. We introduced ourselves, me as my new name 'Malaika,' and all the kids thought that was hilarious. We introduced HIV/AIDS and allowed them to ... read more

Every morning, dressed in our long skirts and t-shirts, we join our group at our meeting place under a big mti (tree). We'll have a short discussion and talk about our plan that day and sometimes have a Swahili lesson. On Tuesday we practiced teaching our lessons. In the next few days we will begin to teach HIV education in the nearby schools, so we are finalizing our lesson plans. We also worked at the OHS site today, leveling the field behind the orphanage. In the next few months they will be building a chicken coop for fresh eggs for the kids! Wednesday, today, we went back to site, which is about a half hour walk from our houses, a lot of which is through corn fields and neighborhoods, or "bomas". Today we met the kids ... read more

We arrived in Tanzania tonight. Staying in the city of Arusha, tomorrow going to our village, Meteves, which is close by. Got picked up at the airport by managers of our program, a few UCLA kids, taken to the hostel where we will spend our weekends. During the week we'll stay with our homestay families, and come into town on weekends to have a break, relax a little, take a shower with running water, and use the internet. They drive on the wrong side of the road, and they probably have no traffic laws because they drive crazy! But it's slow enough that if there was ever a problem, they could stop. We met up with the other volunteers when we arrived at the hostel, and exchanged our money into "Shilingi." 1450TZ = $1. It's fun ... read more