Arusha Project

Aang Sarian works to prevent female genital mutilation in rural Massai villages through education and  creating alternative rights of passage.  heir organization is comprised of women who have been circumcised, ex-circumcisers, women who have run away from their homes to avoid circumcision, and concerned community members.  There are 5 common reasons for FGM in the Massai community found by Aang Sarian, which are the focus of their educational campaigns.  They are: provides a common challenge for young girls to attain womanhood, purification (prevention of lao lao, vaginal bacterial infection), faithfulness (control of women’s sexuality by taking away pleasure), education about womanhood, and as a ceremonial graduation of celebration for these young women.  Aang Sarian has worked through all of these, although the first still provides a challenge.   They have a secondary school for the young girls who have left their homes to avoid circumcision, peer educators who conduct seminars to combat myths related to FGM, provide alternative income generating projects for ex-circumcisers, promote and create modified rights of passage where the entire ceremony is the same, but the cutting does not occur, and members to patrol FGM ceremonies to ask that the cutting doesn’t occur.  They have been successful in eliminating FGM in 11 villages thus far, but face serious funding challenges that halt their ability to expand.  Today we have the honor of attending a modified right of passage ceremony, we’ll let you know what it’s like later on in the week.

Hatuchoki Waterfall Hike

Hatuchoki means “We will not tire”, and is the name of our partner organization working to promote education and schooling around HIV/AIDS affected communities. Some of their members are involved in the microcredit program, and we also have had volunteers placed there.  On this cultural excursion, we enjoyed traditional Meru food, local brew and a beautiful waterfall.

Here in Arusha, the dala dala is the form of public transportation.  It’s physical appearance is a white van, with a specific color stripe distinguishing what direction it’s heading.  Each has it’s own name and/or theme.  Favorites have included “In Da Club”, with 50s painted on every window, “Drop It Like It’s Hot”, “Cupcake”, etc. There are anywhere from 12-16 seats inside.  Certain seats fold down to allow the brave traveler to move to the very back when “muisho!” is yelled at them.  For a muzungu (foreigner), the adventure begins before we even step inside.  Dala dala drivers and conductors fight to lure the volunteers into their dala dala, believing they might pay a higher fare.  Tactics range from arguing with other drivers, blocking entrances to other dala dalas so you’ll climb in theirs, or trying to be friendly.  Once inside, we hope to get a seat.  Tanzanians do not have the same concept of personal space as Americans do, we’ve discovered. Especially when everyone wants to get the same place, what’s one more person?  So typically a dala dala ride results with you half sitting on someone else, or someone half sitting on you.  Often if you look up, there will be someone’s face smiling down at you, because they’re standing and leaning over the people lucky enough to have seats.  When you wish to exit, you must tell the driver your stop and hope they understand you, or just bang on the metal interior long enough that they realize you wish to exit.  After climbing over everyone (if they don’t have to exit too so you have enough room to manouver out the door), you hope both feet hit the ground before the van starts moving on swiftly to the next destination.

by Veronica Fuog

I have only half a week left here in Arusha, and I cannot believe how quickly the other 31/2 have flown by! This experience has been more than just working with an organization and attempting to learn Swahili as quickly as possible. Being in Tanzania has made us question the things we take for granted, left us in awe of the generosity of the people here, made us laugh as we tried a new style of dancing, and led us to funny and deep conversations in the house in the evening after the power has randomly gone off.

For the past 31/2 weeks I have been working at an organization called Faraja Women Empowerment. I have had the opportunity to work closely with the organization’s director, Sister Felly, who is one of the most driven and generous women I have ever met. I got to meet about 30 women who invited us into their homes and told us their family history, about their hardship, their business plan, and why they want a microloan from Faraja. I’ve also visited women who are requesting their 4th loan from Faraja, and the visible difference of their standard of living is astounding. Loan distribution days were some of my favorites. After the entire application process was completed, the groups of 5 women each who were accepted into Faraja’s microloan program all gathered at a church, a central location. After each group recieved their money, they often yelled or sang with excitement. It’s so wonderful so see how grateful they are, and know how big a difference a loan could have. These women have such determination to expand their business and pay back their loan themselves, with interest. It’s really inspiring!

Faraja means consolation, and is the name of  our partner org here in Arusha.  Faraja also works to promote gender equity by working with women who are HIV positive and negative, and is a community organization. They are one of the orgs that we conduct our microcredit program through, and Sister Felly, one of their directors, is our chief loan officer. She had recieved ~10 goats from a government program she had applied for, and held a ceremony at their church, wherein members of Faraja would receive these goats. She invited Arusha Project volunteers to attend, so we did!

After the long wait (Swahili time is like Indian time which is like many other folks’ times which means anytime within 20 minutes to an hour late is still on time), the goats finally arrived (they arrived by public bus, escorted by the government officer), the goats were fed and the ceremony began. A social welfare officer was the primary guest of honor, along with the village chairperson, directors of Faraja, and of course the women of Faraja. There was soda and water for the guests of honor (us, and the aforementioned folks), and a representative from each entity made a speech, as is also customary (the more important the folk, the longer the talk). The social welfare officer talked for a while, of course this is all in Swahili and there was no translation, so we were kind of guessing, but a few pieces that were translated went as follows; first that these goats are not handouts, they have been worked for and are for the benefit of these women as members of the community, and second that the virus (HIV) doesn’t deserve respect, and it is everyone’s problem. Then each of the women went up to receive their goats, among lots of cheering.  Afterward, the welfare officer symbolically  fed the goats, so that they would never be hungry. There was a lot of beautiful singing and dancing, and afterward we went to the priests house to have another soda and then said our goodbyes.

Hello Friends and Family of Arusha Project Volunteers!

My name is Jessi Ristau, I am the Arusha Project Volunteer Coordinator
for this summer.  I will update the blog at least once a week with stories
and information about our experience.  The current volunteers are welcome
to participate in writing the entries as well.  Its taken me a while to put up this first week’s entry, so here it is at the beginning of our 3rd week! I’ve enclosed some background information about the project and the volunteer’s
schedule of activities.

We are staying in the Arusha Project Center, a house we rent in a
neighborhood on the outskirts of Arusha proper. The house has 3 rooms, with
bunk beds for the volunteers, a few bathrooms (complete with porcelain
thrones:), and showers (although the power goes off frequently so cold
showers are frequent). We have our “green room”, the living room with green
couches that gives the room a green glow, with a projector for presentations
and movies, and a chalk board for Swahili classes for the volunteers. There’s a dinning room
area in the kitchen, and a pantry area with a refrigerator. Nick (Director),
Stephanie (Project coordinator) and I sleep in the “annex” which is
disconnected from the main house in close proximity.  Outside we have a lot
of fruit trees, a chicken coop with lots of chickens, a fire stone for
fires, and a cat. We are surrounded by other gated houses (all houses
and some apartment complexes are gated, other apartment complexes and
houses are not in rural areas).

Our general weekday schedule goes as follows:

7:30 am – Breakfast (mangos, avacados, peanut butter and toast, oogi
(cornmeal), chai/instant coffee, eggs, bananas, watermelon, and other
fruit).

8:00 am – Leave for placement in the Arusha Project dala dala or
public dala dala (local buses), Stephanie, Chahe (Country Coordinator)
drive the volunteers to their placement, introduce them to their org
directors pick them up at around 12:30pm.

1:00 am – Lunch at the house

2- 6:00 pm – Varies from day to day, for example;

-Cultural excursions to other CBOs (community based organizations)
such as BOSI, a
support organization for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA), and
includes an orphanage,
choir, support group, home based care (HBC).  BOSI is founded by Anna
Yoeza, an incredible woman who is HIV positive herself.
-Discussions about reading material regarding international
volunteering, visits to CBO’s, and HIV/AIDS.
-Free time for the volunteers to use the internet to contact home,
work on things back home, check out town and prepare for the next day.
-Swahili lessons 3 times a week for the first week, 2 times the second
week (we work on a three week reoccurring schedule, as each
program is in a 3 week blogs at which time we get new volunteers, some of
the old leave and some stay).
-We will also be doing site visits for our grant program, and have
information sessions about our micro finance program as well.

6:00 pm – Dinner

7:00 pm and on – Down time, can include group outings to local hang
out spots, or cultural programs.

Weekends are always different, this weekend we had our grant program
orientation, where the volunteers learned about the program, and will
prepare them to conduct site visits and their presentation of the
organization to the grant review board (all tanzanian). The grant program is
new this year and the process has begun before the volunteers arrived.

The participants have been trained through a weekend seminar held by
the Arusha Project and have submitted their proposals.  The proposals
were then separated by topic and distributed over the next 12 weeks (4
programs of 3 weeks each). The volunteers are assigned to a proposal
in pairs, and will be conducting 3 site visits to verify, clarify and
ask questions about the proposal.  The purpose is for the organization
to show how they have started  preparing for their grant project
according to their proposal to see if they
should get the funding. This summer we will fund about 4 project
proposals, each $5,000 USD.

Our first project funded this last year was for a solar panel project
for Yullensoni Health clinic, and we hope to fund projects relating to
microcredit, peer education and other empowerment programs that are
related to gender and HIV/AIDS. The volunteers will present the
information collected from the site visits to the Board of Trustees,
all of whom are Tanzanian and community leaders in Arusha.

In addition to the grants, we also have a microcredit program.  Whole
organizations apply for grants, teams of  5 people (mostly women  and
members of our partner organizations) can apply for the Microcredit
program. These loans are smaller, and are conducted by our grant
officers (community leaders) and Nick (director). In the past we have
funded a chicken project for a local CBO that provided schooling and
social networks for the HIV positive community in our neighborhood.

Next weekend we will go on a short day safari, and the next day to
Moshi, Tanzania and the last weekend will be the volunteer’s proposal
presentations and announcement of loan recipients.