Since being home, I have felt less inspired to write but I suppose it is important to document my recent transition back to the states.

Two weeks ago when I stepped off the plane, I had to wait at SFO for about thirty minutes before my ride arrived. I remember stepping out of my gate, entering the airport and feeling deluded by the initial contact with home. Subconsciously, there was a sense of familiarity as if no time had passed but simultaneously, I felt fear. This fear that I wasn't prepared to face this place that I knew as home for the past twenty- one years.

It was strange, I felt as if I had to brace myself for something, something that I can't really put into words. Perhaps it was disappointment or disapproval, maybe even just pure isolation. In Tanzania, every stranger I crossed paths with was greeted in one way or another as my brother or my sister. Everyone acknowledged their neighbor and everyone was considered a neighbor, never a stranger. If only it was the same in the states.

The impending question has been what's next, what's "my plan"? I have to admit, whenever I'm in the states, I always feel this sense of urgency to "figure things out" because to tell someone I'm just living life simply isn't enough. A recent college graduate like myself would be expected to either further her education or start her career, neither of which feel right for me at this point in time. I'm not sure exactly what I want but I do know what I don't want so with that, I will not break under the pressure. Call it what you will, rebellion, escape, who cares. I just want to live.

We don't live in peace, we live in fear.

Over the last few weeks, this statement has been looming in my head. I find myself constantly asking WHY so many choices are made and I've come to realize that this word "fear" can be used to explain so much of what appears to be nonsensical. I don't think it was until this experience that I have really examined my own fears but at least now, I am fully conscious of that. The only way I can even attempt to rationalize some of the things I have witnessed here is to think about how fear effects the choices that individuals make. Whether or not people use fear as a catalyst for some sort of illusion of control or fear causes people to focus on our differences while over looking our similarities, it ultimately comes down to this: do our choices stem from fear or from love?

Something else that I have been thinking about is my beliefs. This may be a silly example but it's the one that I have been contemplating which is my belief to not eat meat or to rephrase, I do not believe in eating meat. I have made a choice to not eat meat because I do not believe in the torturing of animals and the meat industry as a whole. But if I had a choice to either eat meat or die, what would I do? I know this is an extreme situation, but it's a question that I should be able to answer. If I chose to eat meat then I would contradict my beliefs and what is life worth if I have nothing to believe in? After having this discussion with a few people, one person said that the only belief worth dying for is the belief in God. I'm still trying to figure out how to relate to this because never in my life have I said I believe in God but I realize that I cannot say I don't believe in something I don't know. I've decided once I go home I am going to spend some time studying religion so hopefully I can figure out whether or not it's something I believe. In any case, if I've learned one thing since being here, it is the value of conversation.

Another thought that has remained consistent in my head is the thought of going home. What exactly is home? Does home have to be a physical place? It's strange how we use these words like "home" so loosely yet their meanings are so profound. I am (in the literal sense) returning home to America but I do feel at home here as well. This was another conversation I had here with a few friends and I've come to the realization that home is a psychological state simply because home is where I am. In other words, I create a "home" wherever I go. Someone put it nicely by saying that home is our imagination.

Last Thursday was my last day of teaching at Musa Secondary. Musa is a public school that is about a half-hour drive from town, some of the students walk three hours each way everyday to go there. The drive there is insanely beautiful, the school is in the rural outskirts of town so there's nothing but hills of dirt...sometimes I'll see specs of color in the distance and it's Masai boys in their shukas herding cattle. Everday when we would arrive at the school the first thing everyone would do once they got out of the dala dala is brush off their clothes. Since all of the roads are unpaved, it's impossible to avoid the dust.

At first, my teaching partner and I tried to stick to the curriculum of teaching about HIV/AIDS. We were under the impression that that was what our "purpose" was. I was teaching the oldest cohort of kids, Form 4 (ages 16-21) and I found myself wanting to do more, wanting the students to critically think about things aside from HIV/AIDS. One day we had a debate where I asked the kids whether or not they thought Tanzanian was a democratic country. Right now, the primary elections are going on for the upcoming elections in January. Although they hold elections, this place is far from a democracy. The students don't get much of an opportunity to speak up in class, usually when the teacher is in the room he/she is copying stuff from a textbook, writing it on the chalkboard, and the students copy the notes word for word...that's how they "learn". The debate was a huge success, it was interesting to see some of the girls participate too. In secondary school, the boy to girl ratio is unbelievable, there were about six girls in the class of forty. Girls usually have less of an opportunity to go to school for several reasons: one, if the parents can only afford to send one kid to school, the boy gets preference; two, girls get married at a young age because the dowry is worth more if the girl is younger; three, most girls stay home to help around the house and take care of their siblings; and the list goes on. One of my friends from another class told me something one of their female students said and i'll never forget it: "if you educate a woman, you educate society. if you educate a man, you educate one."

One of the biggest challenges I was faced with is that the Form 4 students have their national exams coming up and these exams are a determinant of whether or not they graduate from Secondary School and whether or not they are qualified for University. Because of this, the students were consumed with studying for the exams and only covering material that would be on the exmas. When I wanted to teach about HIV/AIDS, sometimes a group of students would just walk out and other times students would speak out and demand that we stop teaching about HIV. Over the course of my time there, I was able to look at practice exams for the national exam and these exams are HARD, extremely hard. A lot of the stuff I did not learn until I attended college and even with that knowledge, I was limited in what I knew. I still do not understand how the kids are expected to study for the exams when there's not enough books for every student and when they're taught in English and they only speak Swahili.

I felt conflicted in how effective I spent my time in the classroom: part of me just wanted to tutor them for their exams because I knew they needed the help but the other part of me did not want to devalue the value of learning about HIV/AIDS. Everyday was a tough call.

Something unexpected happened our last day. My teaching partner and I put together a lesson plan where the first half of class would be about HIV/AIDS and the second half of class would be a discussion about other things. When we walked into the classroom, the assistant headmaster told us we weren't teaching. After trying to convince the asst. headmaster to allow us our last lesson, he decided to let the students vote. The kids voted us not to teach about HIV/AIDS but instead tutor them for their national exams. I didn't know how to feel about it, I still don't really know. It was great to witness the students taking control of their education and having a say in what happens in the classroom but at the same time, I felt that they just didn't care to learn about HIV. Their reasoning was that they wanted to self study and that our presence in the classroom causes "noise" that distracts them. So on our last day we tutored the kids in math (interesting note: tutoring in Tanzania is called tuition).

Now with two weeks left, I think the remainder of my time will be spent doing physical labor. Every school needs attention. At Mateves Primary, OHS is currently digging a cho (or bathroom)for the kids. It's basically a 20 x 30 foot hole in the ground. At another school called Saint Jema (a private school) we found out one man was hired to rebuild a whole classroom and was trying to finish it before the new school year in January and so he could desperately use our help. Although I've been living in a homestay the past seven weeks, the language barrier has limited my interaction with my family so hopefully I'll have more down time to spend with them.

Lately I've been trying to process everything that I've seen here, I know once I get back to the states it'll all feel too surreal to process. An early morning last week, I heard the kids in my boma outside laughing and a few women talking. At first, I didn't think anything of it but then the noise became louder and it almost sounded like a commotion. Soon, women were yelling at one another. I found out that one of the woman who live in my boma was being accused of having an affair with the husband of the another woman. The two women were arguing but soon it was no longer just a vocal confrontation, the women of the husband brought a knife. It all happened so fast, one of the women was stabbed and there was blood. The children were no longer laughing, all I could hear were the two women outside. Fortunately, there were enough people around to stop the violence but it was the first time that I saw what utter freight looks like and it was the first time that I saw blood from an intentional act of violence. My first thought when it was all happening was to call the police but quickly realize that was not an option because this was a "family matter" that needed to be resolved within the boma. It just doesn't make sense how polygamy is completely acceptable but an affair is a sin worth death.

I know it's impossible to make sense out of things that are nonsensical but I'm constantly finding myself in this trap. I don't know if it is just this place or maybe it's that I'm more aware of what is going on. Either way, there's always something to learn and I must keep telling myself that I know nothing.

I'm not on a mission, I'm just here to live.

Two weeks ago, the headmaster of Mateves Secondary School "terminated" our presence at his school. I found out that last year one of the children of OHS attended Mateves Secondary School but was removed when her twenty-one year old teacher tried to hit on her and when she refused, she was slapped across the face. When OHS found out what happened, they went straight to the Ministry of Education to try and get the teacher in jail but he was able to pay off the officials with no consequence.

After teaching at Mateves for nearly three weeks, our coordinator received a letter from the headmaster saying that until the issue from last year was settled, we were no longer welcome to teach at his school. I think the headmaster feared having a bad reputation at the village but there is no reconciling what happened. One thing I've learned from this is that we live in a beautiful world, but there are ugly souls.

Last week I started teaching at a new school called Musa. It's been such a whirlwind, I find myself trying to find consistency but realizing it's impossible when life is so inconsistent.

Last Wednesday I went to a market with other people in my boma. The markets here are so overwhelming, there's just so much going on...hundreds of people, sitting, walking, standing around, animals for sale, music or maybe just noise, food cooking and clouds of smoke, cars trying to drive through the crowds of people...just everything at once. Someone yelled "thief" and all of the chaos merged into one. In the distance, I saw a herd of people with wooden sticks and gardening picks and other tools start running and then there were so many people they couldn't move, they were standing together, waving their weapons in the air. They caught the thief. A few minutes later, I saw two men dragging a third man by his arms and a procession of people followed. They disappeared down an alley but I knew that man probably wouldn't come out a live. I can't describe how I felt when I witnessed this happening...nearly forty people wanting to participate in the death of this man.

Everyday I find myself lost in thought, sometimes to a point where I'm so far out I can't find the end. At least now though I feel awake.

Every morning I wake up around 7am to fetch water. After only living in my home-stay for about a week, my arms are sore and my body is tired. Life here is not easy, despite how simple it may seem. I did laundry for the first time last week, using two buckets and my hands. After attempting to wash my clothes for ten minutes or so, my friend Side (pronounced c-de) came over and showed me how to wash my clothes. All the Tanzanian women who were at the water hole fetching water were definitely making fun of my lack of experience doing laundry. Each item had to be scrubbed, piece by piece, using a technique. By the time I was done, my hands ached and my arms were numb.

Another experience: I had my first bucket shower. Usually we come into Arusha on the weekends so I've been showering in the hostel we stay in. Last week though I decided it was time to experience a bucket shower. Mama was nice enough to warm the water for me (it's been so cold here, I've been sleeping in my fleece every night) so I went outside where our boma made an enclosed closet-sized room for a shower. It was basically four tin walls pinned up against one another, no roof, and just dirt for the ground. I took about five minutes to wash my hair and after a week of not showering, I felt surprisingly clean.

Aside from fetching water, I also help mama with the dishes every day, usually after lunch. The kitchen is separate from the home, it looks similar to the shower except a little bigger and has a roof. Inside mama keeps the buckets that we use to fetch water and then one of the corners there's a stack of wood and rocks that she uses to make a fire each day for cooking. When we do the dishes, I usually just sit on the dirt ground, grab two buckets where I use one to soap the dishes and the other to rinse. The other day Side washed our cups from Chai inside the home, in the living room where we usually have Chai every morning. He poured clean water in the cups and then just poured the water on the floor, the dirt ground that made up the floor to our living room. I asked why he did that, thinking mama would get mad, and he said that the water helps get rid of the dust that builds up on the floor. I've been learning something new everyday.

At home, my mama, Mama Lea, has one older daughter named Lea who lives with the grandmother and one younger daughter named Nipa who lives with us. Nipa is only 18 months old and is so cute. Out of all of the volunteers in our boma, she's only able to say my name which makes me feel special. There is another younger girl named Aisha who is seven years old who lives with us but is not Mama Lea's child. Her mother works at a factory in Mateves named A-Z which makes mosquito nets. It employees nearly 10,000 Tanzanians but is supposed to be horrific, like beyond sweatshop nightmare. Aisha's mama is always working, probably fourteen hours a day or something, I've never met her mama and every morning I wake up Aisha is still at our home. As far as I can tell, Mama Lea takes care of Aisha in return for her help around the home. Aisha usually serves our food, takes care of Nipa, and sometimes does the dishes too. She should be in school but her mother can't afford it.

The education here is so twisted and just incomprehensibly screwed up. The public schools cost money, about 300 dollars a year per student but the education is horrible. The school that I'm teaching at, Mateves Secondary, there are five teachers for 800 students. The students are taught in Swahili all through primary and then when they get to secondary, are no longer taught in Swahili but in English. So all of their books and everything are in English but they can't speak or understand the language. Makes perfect sense, right? On top of that, to qualify to be a teacher, a person just has to graduate with a diploma, or high school, which is like another year of education after secondary school. To put into context, in the states this means that someone who graduates from high school would be qualified to teach anything from K-10th grade.

Most of the families here in Tanzania have at least three kids and 300 dollars/year for an education is really expensive. Therefore, the families have to pick and choose which child gets sent to school and usually that ends up by being the boy, or the oldest son. There are extreme gender inequalities here, not just in school but in all of Tanzania.

We found out yesterday that all of the teachers at Mateves Secondary took a "study tour" to Dar es Salaam BUT the students are still expected to show up for class. So when I went to start teaching on Thursday, the students were just sitting at their desks with no teacher to teach them...some were sleeping, some were drawing, some were chit chatting, and others were outside shoveling dirt (which was their punishment for being late). It is absurd. I heard that last year, the headmaster asked each student to pay 1,000 shilling in order for them to provide a graduation ceremony but when the day came, he canceled the ceremony and just pocketed the money.

I wish I could fill you all in more but I'm in a rush--it's so strange because I always feel this sense of urgency. It's such a dilemma, life here is so lax yet I'm inpatient and always on the go. Anyways, on the bright side...every night I get to see the milky way and venus. The night sky is unbelievable.

I'm finally settled in. After arriving to Arusha last week we spent one day in the city before leaving to Mateves village. When I was walking over to the internet cafe a man stopped me and asked if he could talk to the "mzungu" (the white foreigner). He said that "white people send him to school." He was studying Tourism at a university in Arusha so I think he wanted to practice talking to a group of "mzungu". Like most Tanzanians, he asked us where we come from and why we are here. I told him that we we're here with OHS and we were teaching about HIV/AIDS in schools around Mateves village and he was very supportive of our cause.

Most of the people in Arusha are Masai, which is a tribe. Masai men usually have multiple wives, the first wife is said to have special privileges. The man that we met was Masai and he said his father had three wives, he told us one day he tried to explain to his father the risks of HIV and his father simply told him his "education was all lies." I've quickly learned that talking about HIV is taboo, hopefully that'll change once I'm the classroom.

I had my first day of teaching on Thursday. I'm teaching at Mateves secondary school and have the oldest age cohort (16-18 years old) and it's just me, my friend Noah, and a Tanzanian volunteer named Rose. There are about 62 students in our class but the classroom is so small, a couple of students were sharing seats and most students were sharing desks. I think there are nearly 800 students and only 5 teachers in the whole school, it just blows my mind. On our first day we decided to give a test to see how much the students already know about HIV, just as a guideline for our curriculum. Most of the students didn't have paper to take the test so I had to rip pages from my journal. After we gave the test we wanted to see what sort of questions the students had about HIV/AIDS before jumping into the curriculum. I knew that there were a lot of misconceptions about the virus but I didn't know to what extent--one kid stood up and said that the only way to get rid of HIV is to kill everyone who has it. I know it's going to be challenge for me and my teaching group to try and break down these beliefs but we're here to teach, to teach the facts.

We only have five weeks at Mateves school because the kids go on break so for the remaining three weeks of the program, I'm going to teach at a private school. I realize that my time at Mateves is short(especially because I only teach Monday and Thursdays for an hour and a half) so aside from sticking to the curriculum and teaching about HIV/AIDS, I really want to empower the kids. From looking over the
tests, a lot of the kids are so smart... they just need to find their voice.

Aside from teaching, I've moved into my home-stay! I'm leaving with Mama Lea, most of the women in the village go by "Mama ____" usually the name of their first son but my mama only has girls, her oldest is named Lea. The home in the is made from mud and cow dung and has tin roofs and all of the door ways have clothes/curtains instead of doors. There are no windows so even during the daytime I usually need my headlamp to get dressed and stuff and at night we have one lantern that we all sit around when we eat dinner and play cards in the evening. We always play the same game, it's called Last Card but I like to think of it as Tanzanian Uno.

I live with two other OHS volunteers and one Tanzanian volunteer, but in our "boma" (or neighborhood), there are about twelve other OHS volunteers. Mateves village is huge, there are probably about 700 families or so, and four to five families live in one boma. OHS is working in about six of the bomas and so the volunteers are spread throughout Mateves, according to which boma their homestay is in.

There are so many kids in my boma! Probably about fifteen or so, one kid is named Baracka and another kid is named is Obama. Basically, they LOVE Obama here. The children also really love soccer, I noticed the other day they found a way to make a ball from tying a rope around a bundle of plastic bags. The women do most of the work around the village, as far as taking care the children, cooking, cleaning, fetching water. I haven't really seen any men around my boma, I found out that there is one man that fathers all of the children. All of the women in my boma are Masai so there is a first wife, a second wife, and a third wife.

Since this week was just my first week in my home-stay, I'm just starting to settle into a routine. Like I said earlier, there's no electricity in the village so I've been going to bed pretty early. Every night I'm in bed by 9 and I wake up around 6 in the morning, my roommates and I will usually walk down to the water hole to fetch water for mama before eating breakfast and beginning our day.

The weekends are a bit different because we usually come into a Arusha so volunteers can shower and use the internet. Yesterday I went on a hike near Mt. Meru, it was about a 4 mile hike. At the end of the hike there was a waterfall that was probably 100 feet or so, it was absolutely beautiful. Next weekend is our first long weekend (I think four days) so I'm either going to go on a Safari or another hike.

The other night I was playing "Tanzanian Pictionary" with some of the kids which was basically them telling me riddles. I leave you with this one: my grandfather sleeps inside, his beard sleeps outside. What is it?

The world is a village. After leaving Stone Town, my friends and I met up with a guy named Mohammad (aka "Striker") who offered us a ride to Jambiani, which is on the east coast of Zanzibar. On our way to Jambiani we were stopped nearly four times by men in uniform. I asked Striker why we kept stopping and he said he had to pay the police--that was the first time I saw corruption up close and personal.

The beach in Jambiani was breathtaking. The sand was white and as soft as powder and the water was a turquoise/sea foam green. Also, the tide broke a few hundred meters from the water so there were no waves breaking on the shore. The water was just still and quiet, unlike any ocean shore I've ever been to. All of the homes of Jambiani were made from the ground, some had clay walls but most of the homes were made from wood and tree leaves that were sewn together. One thing that I found odd was the telephone polls that were throughout the village. Everyone here has cell phones, I can't quite figure out why they're such a necessity.

Many of the locals are entrepreneurs, selling either Kangas, jewelry, food, and/or inviting us on their boat to go snorkeling/swimming. The locals are so persistent too, they won't take no for an answer so usually we end up by haggling and trying to support the locals. We ended up by going snorkeling with a local for only 15,000 shillings, or approximately $11.00. The boat was amazing--the man had hand crafted the boat from wood and sewn together old rice bags to make a sail. His name was Captain Frido, he showed us how to dive down and pick shrimp from the sea floor and feed it to the fish.

A lot of the locals also had restaurants and wanted us to try their food so we decided to explore a bit into the village and get a taste of authentic Jambiani food. One night we made dinner reservations around 7:30 but the man took our order around noon, he said he had to know what we wanted so that him and his brother could go fishing before we arrived. Talk about FRESH food. Later when we arrived I found out his "restaurant" was basically his home that he had added a hut to his backyard to showcase as a restaurant. Our motto for the trip so far has been "we have no plans" but one man told me that the "Swahili word is different than the American word," which I quickly learned. Everyday we made reservations to eat at local restaurants and all of them relied on our "word" because they spent all day gathering and making the food with the trust that we would show up for our reservation. Strange to think that back in the states we blow people off all the time and hardly think twice about it.

I also met a group of local kids on the beach who were willing to entertain us. I told them my name was Amy and one of the girls responded "si gina nzuri" which means "your name is not beautiful" . I asked my friend Ali (who was a local Jambiani that we met our first day there) what name I should have instead and he said Hadiya which means "gift" so from now on, I introduce myself as Hadiya. The children were so full of life and find ways to entertain themselves, without any toys or television and all of the other luxuries that we have back in the states. They performed and played us a song that they learned in school, they even walked to the water and picked a snail out of a shell and cooked it for us to eat.

I noticed that there are hardly any pets in Zanzibar. There was a stray dog in Jambiani that my friends and I were petting but the children were so scared of it. They pick crabs up by their legs, squish spiders with their hands, and walk around the village barefoot but they scream when a dog comes around. I learned that dogs are thought to be dirty and if a person touches it or if it sniffs a person's clothes, that person will be prohibited from going in a mosque.

So far, my impressions and expectations have not quite matched up. First off, a lot of people speak English. I wish I knew more Swahili but I've managed with the greetings that I know and the English that the locals have picked up. Secondly, Tanzania is so beautiful--I never imagined it to be so lush and green. On our way back from Jambiani I decided to stop by the Jambiani forest where I got to see the Red Colobus Monkeys, when we were walking through the forest our tour guide told us to keep a look out because sometimes the monkeys will jump on our heads...at first I thought he was joking. Luckily, one didn't jump on my head but I got hit in the head by a tree branch from one that was jumping from tree to tree looking for food. I was also able to get a picture standing about a foot away from one. Lastly, I feel safe here. I brought pepper spray with me, thinking that I would have to be on my guard at all times and I feel more safe here than in my hometown.

In Zanzibar I bought a Kanga that had an African proverb on it but I didn't know what it translated as. I asked someone who spoke Swahili and I found out it translated as "find your path" which is exactly why I am here. Hopefully in the next two months I'll have some sort of direction. I have arrived in Arusha and tomorrow I will leave with the other volunteers to Mateves to meet my home-stay family and begin teaching.