Finally

Hello everyone,
Habari gani?
Ten months to start an on-line journal, that has to be a record. Well, I'm not sure were to start but I suppose it would be best to start ten months ago in the beautiful village of Chanzuru.

Training took place in the district of Kilosa about a 3 hr bus ride from the town of Morogoro. We were split into groups of five and sent to neighboring villages around the training compound. I was placed in Chanzuru with a wonderful homestay family, the Ndaiga's. I lived with 13 other tanzanians and was the only family member with my own room. Training lasted 2 months and consisted of intensive language, culture, and field training.

From there we were shipped off to our sites all over the country. I was sent to the southern highlands to a village called Maduma. It is located 22 kilometers from Mafinga in the district of Iringa.

Maduma has a population of just over 1000 people. There is a primary school with grades 1-7 and sadly that's about as far as the villagers get in their education. It is, however, more education than most of the student's parents.

Almost all of the villagers are farmers. The main crop is corn, but some villagers plant beans, spinach or sunflower as well. There are a few small shops that sell the basics for tanzanians: oil, petroleum jelly, matches, and of coarse Coke-Cola.

The first 3 months of service were devoted to integration into the community. Our job everyday was to walk around the village and just talk to as many people as we could about the village and ways we could work together to improve the village. After these 3 months we decided on a list of awesome projects to do over the next year and a half.

The main project is a dispensary. We are building it with a neighboring village called Kikombo so it took a while for the two villages to agree on a place to build but now that the site has been chosen, and the blueprints drawn, we are moving quickly. The villages are meeting Tuesday to start collecting rocks for the foundation. Also, the budget is finished so the grant will be online hopefully this month.

Other projects that we are starting now are bees, fish, and trees. The bee group has 30 members and we are building 100 bee hives. They are also getting hats, gloves and smokers to work the bees.

For the fish group there are about 20 members split into 3 smaller groups, each of which are building 2 fish pounds. We are hoping to stock them with tilapia within a couple months.

They have tons of other great project ideas that we will get to after these are self sustaining.

I think that is enough to get started. I know it was extremely brief and formal. The future entries should be much more entertaining but I figured I would start with a quick informational entry. Im sure you have lots of questions. I think you can reply on this website but if you can't feel free to email me. chbrown@alum.hws.edu

I'm also hoping to put some pictures up when my digital camera arrives in June.

I hope everyone is doing well. Talk to you all soon.