My Falling of Faith

April 18th-24th, 2009

"Same old story not much to say- hearts are broken everyday."
- Jewel

I can remember when I used to dread coming back to my village, leaving town and my friends. That certainly is no longer the case. Somehow now coming back when I bump along the road and the village children scream to each other, "Brie Amerudi!" (Brie, she has returned.) Sometimes women shriek and run to hug me like I have been gone for years, children wave and the men shake my hand and I feel like a politician or a princess in the Rose Parade as I wave. This time upon returning I was told some disconcerting news. Juster told me that Mama Johnson was near to die. I should have introduced Mama Johnson earlier into my cast of characters but there are so many people in my life here now that it is hard for me to update about all of them. Mama Johnson I met a few months ago squished next to me in our village car. It was love at first site by both parties. For one thing, she is just someone that you want to be around. She has a huge smile with a cute gap between her front teeth. She laughs a lot and is so patient with my Swahili. She speaks no English and did not finish primary school. She is young (24, I found out today) and she has an almost 2 year old son (Johnson). Before to0day I had visited her a few times at her home. She is VERY poor and lives with her mother a younger siblings. She has come to visit me, always bearing some kind of fruit or vegetable as a gift. So naturally I was unhappy to find out that she was so sick.

I immediately set out for the 45 minute walk to her house, she lives at the far side of our village in a little thatched roof shack with no furniture. When I got there she told me that both she and Johnson were greatly improved and they might not die after all. I was relieved to hear this, of course. She was incredibly thin, however. (So thin that I was hoping to catch whatever she had as a diet plan... haha) Today we sat together on a grass mat in the shade of a banana tree and I heard her story. She decided to leave our village when she was 20. She has no education but she wanted to be in the big city, so she went to Dar es Salaam to be some family's house girl. The father of the family slept with her repeatedly and she was afraid to tell anyone and wanted to keep her job. When she became pregnant, he told his family that she was a liar and a prostitute and did not accept the child as his own. She then had no choice but to return to our village and give birth to Johnson. It is incredible to me how much she loves Johnson when this is the story of his conception. But she is so proud and loving toward him. So now she lives with her mother and has no work. The thing is that she has a building (brick and thatched roof) in our village that she owns and wants to open an mgahawa. There she is hoping to cook Tanzanian food and serve soda and chai. However, she tells me that she does not have the money to start it up and can I give her 200,000 TZ shillings (about $180 USD) to get it going. I get paid a stipend of this exact amount once a month by PC, so clearly I do not have money like that just laying around. This amount is actually a lot of money in TZ. This is the problem with being PC Africa, there are a million people like this. I can't just give her some money because I like her and I should not train Tanzanians to just take American hand outs. So I was thinking about how she could get a bank loan, but Juster says that there will be no way because she has no collateral, so I will have to sign with her and end up paying it anyways. Now i am thinking that there has to be some sort of NGO or something that is doing this because there are a million women who want to start something but have nothing. It should be said that I am not a business person and i do not have a business mind. But if you are reading this and have any idea how I can help Mama Johnson get this money without just handing it to her for nothing. Then please write to me and let me know. I don't get a lot of computer time to research these things. She is a good cause and a good person but I cannot just give her a hand-out. I need to be teaching responsibility. Please let me know if you have an idea! Thanks!

This week I was given 36 avocados. You think that i am exaggerating, but you would be wrong. Do not picture those crappy hass California avocados that are hard and then half rotten. TZ avocados are like butter and bigger than my fists put together. They are so big that when I first saw them I did not know what they were. Being a villager is great, you walk around and people give you things they are growing. So I eat guacamole everyday with a spoon, everything in it was picked that day from one of my neighbors farms from the lemon juice to that tomatoes and onions. It is all fresh. One of my least favorite things at church is people bring in produce instead of money to donate and then people bid on it at the end of church to raise money. The men are the only ones allowed to bid but they bid for there wives until now. Now all the men bid on everything for me. This week was given avocado, bananas, tomatoes, eggs, beans and pineapple. This is incredibly embarrassing when every man bids 'Kwa Brie'. I would think that all the women in my village would hate me because not only are their husbands bidding for me but I am also taking the food. This does not seem to be the case, however, I think in part because I split up what I am given. Because come on, one person cannot eat that much every week.

Everyday this week I have had to go to war... with the Siyafu, that is. I put on my uniform which is as little as I can possibly wear so that I can see when they start to attack my body. And I go in armed with kerosene. Usually there is all sorts of villagers helping me do battle but one day we lost and Kimulimuli and I had to evacuate.

I kicked off my AIDS education with the primary school students. We played a truth or false game which illustrated to me that they know nothing about AIDS. They all chose true when I asked "Wazungu have the cure to AIDS but they are just not sharing it." and "Only immoral or bad people get AIDS." What is funny about those "true" choices is that probably many of these kids parents have AIDS and a a few of them, yet they still think that bad morals is what causes it. Also when I asked why girls are infected more often then boys, the only answer that I got is that girls are more careless and more often morally bad. Really? After being here for almost a year, I would say that I strongly disagree with that statement.

Sometimes, in Tanzania, you have to let your morals go. Lately, I have been like a politician accepting tainted money for my campaign. Isn't the only thing that matters is that I win? Who cares where the money comes from. I know PCVs who refuse to do things with certain people in their villages because of the personal lives of those involved. I had always thought until this week that my villagers were fairly innocent in all the "bad moral" issues we heard Tanzanians practice behind closed doors. Maybe it is because I am more integrated or because each day my Swahili improves a bit, but I have discovered secrets that I wish I knew nothing about. I always knew that I disliked the school beatings but I still go to school because it is just a punishment to the students if I don't teach them. This week I discovered that most of my male teachers have gotten in trouble previously for propositioning dararsa saba girls (girls about the age of 13-14 at the school.) Still I go to school shake these teacher's hands and smile at them and in my stomach I feel disgusted. I have also discovered that Mjemah (Anna's father) does have a wife, she is in Makambako studying to be a nurse. However, while she is gone Mjemah is sleeping with Jen. So while Anna is on my back, apparently I am baby sitting for this adultery to go on. The worst part of it is Mjemah and Jen are my friends, they are two of the most educated people in the village. Yet culture runs so deep. No one is faithful in Tanzania, so while I am sitting there preaching about girls empowerment and being faithful to one partner, no one is really believing anything about this or that it is important at all. It is just me. I can teach all I want but behavior change? I cannot make anyone change unless they want to change themselves. Yet, I continue to go along, be friends with these people and yell about using condoms and having only one wife, but I wonder how effective this really all is. Am I really changing any one's mind? I feel pretty worthless.