It’s hump day! Although I’m not sure that I am looking forward to the weekend because I don’t know that we will have anything to do but perhaps that will change. Yesterday we went to Tukuyu, a town that is about an hour away on the road to Malawi to visit ELCT, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania. We met with the pastor that heads the organization and learned all about what they do. In addition to the usual counseling and testing, home based care, etc., they also deal with human rights, especially relating to gender equality and women’s rights, as well microcredit loans. Unfortunately we were unable to go out in the field as the pastor had a whole bunch of reports whose deadlines were approaching. Before we left he took Melissa and I and our driver, Moses, to tea where we sampled Tanzanian chai (milky tea...this cup tasted sort of like butter and burnt the heck out of my tongue) and some donut like things that reminded me of fried bread. On the way home I saw the 2nd Georgetown item since being here (first a jersey—ish thing, then a jacket) and saw my 3rd (a hat) before we made it back to Mbeya. I plan on returning home with a whole set of Georgetown gear...we’ll see how successful I can be. Talk of Georgetown and basketball led Moses to tell me that he had met one of the big players on University of Conneticut’s team, Hasheem Thabeet who happens to be Tanzanian, in Dar over Christmas which I found very amusing. When we got back to the office there was nothing for us to do as everyone is still tied up with the Americans that are in town, so we headed home early and hung out at the house.
Today was one of the more interesting days we have had. We went to visit another NGO, Oak Tree, that again deals with home based care and voluntary counseling and testing. Our time was spent with one of the counselors who is also the lab person for the organization. He showed us how the blood is tested (using blood they had stored in the facility) which was neat to see especially since we keep hearing about testing but didn’t know the lab specifics. After this, he conducted a counseling and testing session with a girl. The meeting was conducted in Swahili but luckily we had one of the Walter Reed people with us to do some translating. There were definitely some awkward moments, especially when discussing the spread of HIV, but I am very glad that we had the opportunity to see how VCT works. After the girl was counseled, she consented to having blood drawn for the test. The results were ready within five minutes but those five minutes were unbelievably nerve-wracking. Thankfully the test came back negative—I don’t know what I would have done if we had to witness someone being given a diagnosis of HIV.
Once again when we returned to the hospital there was nothing to do so we walked home for lunch (the weather today has been amazing—sunny, breezy, and warm...sorry for all of you who hate the snow and cold even though I don’t see how that is possible). We hung out at the house a bit, walked back, sat on a bench, moved to an office, and walked home. Liss and I had our first big fight since being here and she is still not talking to me (apparently I am the worst big sister ever...makes me feel great!)...I guess I knew fights were inevitable and hopefully this experience will, in the end, bring us closer together. Tomorrow we are scheduled to go back to Oak Tree to do some home based care visits...this should work assuming transport to Oak Tree is available. One thing we have discovered here is that getting to and from places can be a challenge...while Walter Reed has a bunch of trucks it seems that one is always in the garage and others are in Dar and others have been reserved.
