Hamna shida!

Monday morning arrived and Marta headed off to pick up Emily from the Airport.  At the apartment Steph, Dane and I worked on filming Mama Paskwalina (and Esther doing the translating) for promotional material to be used back in Canada. She had many great things to say about the impact of the project on empowering women, improving the quality of life for people living with HIV/AIDS and the community in general. While filming, Esther received a call from Mary Mushi at the St. Augustine’s University (SAUT) that the Ivey Interns were also arriving at the same time today. Since Marta was already out there we phoned her to let her know and everyone soon arrived back at the apartment. It was a little cramped with 12 people and piles of luggage so Marta and I took the new interns around town to exchange money, get phones and food, while Dane and Steph finished filming.

After returning to the apartment late afternoon, the filming had been completed so Steph and I took the Ivey students out to SAUT where they would be staying for the next two weeks. Steph and I were also going to have a meeting with Esther, Mama Paskwalina and Mary Mushi regarding the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between SAUT and the WHE project while on campus. Unfortunately, as things always seem to take much longer than anticipated in Mwanza, there was not enough time to do this after Mary Mushi gave a tour of the campus to the Ivey students. The meeting was deferred and I will need to go back out there with Esther and Mama Paskwalina on another day.

I took my first Dala dala back home from SAUT and it was a pretty entertaining experience. If you are careful with your purses and bags, it’s not bad, but I can see how things get stolen when they cram people into every possible free space!

On Tuesday, Dane was leaving to go back to the Mara region and Olivia had left early in the morning to Nairobi to get the packaging. Emily, Marta and I went to the kitchen, where we introduced Emily to the all the Mamas and had her try her first chapatti!  Chapattis are pretty tasty despite being only flour and water rolled out to look like a pancake/crepe then deep-fried; but from a nutrition perspective, I can’t help thinking how little nutrients are contained in the foods they love most. They have so many variations of deep-fried food, each one called something different based on the type of flour used – corn, rice, wheat, cassava flours. The kids do enjoy buying their chapatti and chai, but it would be great if they bought yoghurt along with their meal to add some nutrition. The students are of out of school from June to July, but when they start back up, we would like to try making some sort of package deal; if they buy a cup of yoghurt, they get a chapatti. This is still just an idea, but hopefully the Ivey students can see whether the Mama’s would be profitable making the package. Ideally they would still make a profit from the deal, in addition to providing the kids with a more nutritious lunch.

Another project that I will be working on, which I began today and am realizing how long it may take, is updating the Mwanza Steering Committee member profiles for the WHE website. I am also making my way through Steph and Olivia’s documents from their internship that I got from her before she left. One of the documents I read through was for Joke’s protocol for her research trials looking at the impact of probiotic bacteria on the efficacy of anti-retrovirals (ARVs) and recurrence of bacterial vaginosis. It was very interesting and I am excited to see the results. There are also many other useful documents and I am now making a plan for I want to accomplish over the summer. Often because there is no overlap between interns (outgoing and incoming) there is some lack of communication and continuation of projects started by the previous group. I feel that having been here with Olivia and Steph for a few weeks, there will be less disconnect between our goals and what they have accomplished. The momentum of what they have initiated can be carried through more effectively as a result of having this overlap.

In the evening, Joke invited Marta, Emily and I to see the Sukuma tribe dances at the cultural centre about 20 minutes past Mabatini. They performed traditional dances; one for good harvest, a dance for celebrating a good harvest, a dangerous one that involved a snake – during which they invited us up to dance. All the kids laughed as we danced, I’m sure our dance skills were very impressive to them!

The next day I went with Sabrina (past intern) and the Ivey students to the Kitchen. I tried rolling the chapatti for the first time! It was much more difficult than it appears; the Mama’s definitely have the technique down. This was a lot of fun and I feel like I’m getting to know the Mama’s a bit better now.

The rest of the day I walked around doing some errands, while Emily and Marta finalized their start up package for the Arusha team at the apartment. Sabrina and I met Yolanda and Arja later at NIMR to go swimming at the International School pool. It was really nice and Joke met us at the pool as well.On my walk home to the apartment I was pretty tired and at first thought I was seeing things. Kids starting laughing at me as I walked by to get my attention. When I looked over I had to double take because sitting in the tree was a monkey. But even more strange than a monkey in a tree for me was the fact that it was wearing pants and had a string tied from its foot to the tree. I think it must have been someone’s pet, but my contorted, confused face really sent the kids into hysterical laughter now.

That evening the Arusha team arrived; their trip ended up taking over 12 hours, the distance is about 500 km, but the roads are not great and the bus broke down. The next day the first stop to visit was the kitchen. Mama Leah and Mama Howa explained the yoghurt making process, and then we headed up to the other site to have a meeting with all the Mamas. This was very useful for the Arusha people and allowed them to ask as many questions about their business – good and bad, successes and challenges. The Mamas from Arusha were very nice and spoke fairly good English, which will probably make communication a little easier between Mamas and the interns in Arusha. However, I know Emily and Marta are determined to learn Swahili, so I’m sure they will still make every effort to speak Swahili with them. Boniface speaks very good English and has expressed how impressed with the project he is; he is very optimistic about getting up to 100 L of yoghurt per day fairly quickly. I can’t wait to hear about their first week in Arusha!

In the evening I went to dinner with Sabrina and Attique, the director of Catholic Relief Services (CRS) – and one of the organizations that we could potentially collaborate with to distribute a nutrition package containing the fortified probiotic yoghurt and porridge.

On Friday, the Arusha team went to NIMR to learn about the culturing of the probiotic bacteria and procedures. I met them for lunch because I needed to do some organizing and emails at the apartment. I took the group to Kivulini for their meeting with Maimuna. After waiting around for a bit and experiencing our first Mwanza rainfall, Maimuna was done her meeting. She was able to explain her role as founder/current Executive director of Kivulini, a Women’s Rights Organization and its role in forming the Tukwamaune Women’s Group, which are comprised of the Mamas that run the kitchen.

For dinner Friday night, since it was Steph’s last weekend here, we invited all the Mamas over and the Arusha team to have a big feast at our place! It was delicious and there were so much food my stomach was definitely stretched to capacity.

Tomorrow the Ivey interns were going to be moving into the apartment a week early because Emily and Marta were off, Dane was still away, as well as Olivia and Steph was out at Tunza until her flight on Monday. I am staying at Sabrina’s for the upcoming week, which I had no problem doing and was very excited for because she has hot water at her place (not to mention Sabrina is super nice and has been a great help this past week)!

All in all, the week was pretty productive and I feel now like I’m getting a handle on what I want to accomplish over the summer. I cannot believe I’ve been here three weeks, which I don’t want to think about because it means I’m almost a third into the internship and will be leaving soon(ish).