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?