Habari za asubuhi!!

 It’s been a crazy few weeks here. I can’t believe it’s almost been 2 months since I arrived in Tanzania, time is flying too fast! I know it’s also almost a month since I promised I would try to post every week. Sorry, I promise I really do miss you all! We just arrived back in Dar from traveling for a few weeks. Two and half weeks ago we headed north to Lake Victoria to visit the VSO Lake Zone Youth Empowerment (LZYE) project in Mwanza and Shinyanga. The LZYE project works with vulnerable youth (youth here is 15-35 yrs), focusing on girls and women, by helping them gain vocational and entrepreneurial skills to become economically empowered. The project also aims to challenge cultural practices that enable gender based inequalities. The rate of teenage pregnancy and gender based violence is relatively high in Lake Zone area; so through education, VSO has been working to positively influence social change.  

We spent 3 days in Mwanza, and then went to Shinyanga for 4 days and back to Mwanza for a week. Those first 3 days I spent going on field visits with some of the local volunteers. Nothing too exciting, just a lot of information gathering. Mwanza is located on the south end of Lake Victoria, the second largest fresh water lake in the world. Mwanza is absolutely beautiful with tons of mini mountains and boulders; consequently its nickname is Rock City. The weather there would have been perfect for camping! There were some great hikes straight from the hotel that provided an aerial view of the lake and some amazing sunsets! That was essentially my workout most days.  Lake Victoria is also famous for Tilapia and it’s on the menu in every single restaurant. Restaurants don’t have just one theme here, most of the menus are 12-15 pages long with typically your choice of Tanzanian, Indian, Chinese, and “western” food. Word to the wise, just skip the western section. The expat population in Mwanza isn’t quite as big as Dar, and nonexistent in Shinyanga, so this trip really provided a deeper cultural experience that what we typically get in Dar. I loved it and quickly realized, we’re a bit spoiled in the capital. Haha!

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Shinyanga is about 95 miles south of Mwanza, and takes about 3 -3.5hrs to drive there, if you have a private vehicle- which we did, luckily we were able to use one of the VSO project vehicles. If we had taken bus, it could have taken up to 10hrs. That actually happened with some other volunteers who went to Bukoba for the holiday weekend. Our work trip happened to fall on a week with holidays on Thursday and Monday, so all the VSO Tanzania offices were closed Thurs-Monday. I didn’t mind working though, because when you work on holidays and/or weekends you can take off other days; I plan on taking a couple off in September when my friend comes to visit. So on Thursday we loaded 7 people into an SUV and hit the road (re: gravel). Of course we stopped 3 times within the first 40 minutes; because you know Tanzanian time is real “go with the flow”. Sometimes I love, sometimes I don’t. Shinyanga is a city, but there’s not much there and pretty rural. Here we were able to meet with several entrepreneurs that had been through one of two training programs at VETA. Have I talked about VETA yet? VETA stands for Vocational Education Training Authority; VETA is a gov’t run vocational training center that partners with VSO. Essentially they have the training programs, VSO helps find the most marginalized youth to join the programs, then VSO works with private sector to provide internships, apprenticeships, and full time employment for those in the program or recently graduated. The 2 types of programs they offer are theory & practical, and mastercraft. The former is 3 months in class and 3 months internship; the latter is basically a full time apprenticeship. All participants in each program are required to join a savings and loan group for 1 year. All the members meet once a week, contribute money to the pot from which they can take business/hardship loans, and then they basically spend the year learning how to manage the money and finance their businesses. We were able to spend Saturday at their weekly meeting and really great to see how they operate together. It’s amazing!

We arrived back in Mwanza and spent the week testing a new participatory tool with a few outside consultants and youth from the community. The sessions were facilitated in Swahili, so the international volunteers really just observed while someone translated.

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We flew home Saturday night, our flight was 4hrs delayed in an airport that is smaller the FSC! In the above picture, I’m standing in front of a sign that says you cannot wrap your pale of fish until after you go through security. Yes, many people travel to other regions with gallon size buckets of fresh fish from Lake Victoria. Below is another view of the airport.

To cap off the lovely day of travel, my roommate and I were not feeling too hot, turns out we both picked up a stomach amoeba somewhere along the trip. We’ve spent the past few days at the clinic and home recuperating, but we’re both on the up and up! That’s just life in Tanzania, you can be as careful as possible with food you eat but it’s going to happen- you just have to roll with the punches and move on! I fear I won’t have too much work to up date you on the next couple weeks, as I’ll be writing reports… so I guess it’ll just be food pics for you all! 😉