The Friday Rand-O List

I was thinking today that it might be fun to post a list of a few of the random thoughts/happenings that color my days here; and Friday seems like the right day to do it! So, no guarantees on the Friday Rand-O List appearing every week...but let's get this thing started:

1. AMEET-PIE IS COMING TO MOGO TODAY! The sheer awesomeness of this is only tempered by the fact that we'll be one member short of an all A-team reunion, since Andrew can't make it. We'll miss him greatly, but it does mean there will be more beer for us to drink!

2. In honor of Ameet's visit, I made apple-zucchini bread and chocolate-chunk peanut butter cookies last night. The apple-zucchini bread is kind of meh, due to some miscommunication about how hot the over needed to be, but the cookies? Solid.

3. I don't have my passport. Immigration dude took it from me yesterday and is *supposedly* giving it back today after (?)...our fee is processed (?) we wait some more (?). Yea, not quite sure. After three trips there...still no passport.

4. Latest food-from-home craving: Honey Nut Cheerios. I really can't say why....

5. Our promised, but as-of-yet-elusive mobile modems and Black Berrys made a cameo in our office yesterday. After two trips to the Zain (mobile phone company) store yesterday, sandwiched between a trip back to Sokoine accompanied by two Zain employees AND said modems/BBs, we returned back empty-handed. Something about needing to make the administration think we'd bought them so they'd actually issue the check for them.

6. I've been thinking I'd like to plant a mini-herb garden. Mom, Dad, Brooke, Nick...would one of you be kind enough to send me some basil seeds? I can't find them here.

7. Favorite Swahili phrase I learned this week: lala salama (sleep peacefully).

I will leave you with a sampling of a typical conversation between Onesmo (SACIDS co-worker) and myself:

Onesmo: Do you have [insert a request for some totally random thing or piece of information that I have never previously been told I needed, much less likely even know what it is]?

Me: No.

Onesmo: Why??

Me: (Pause) What do you want?

Onesmo: Hmmm?

Me: What is it you're asking me for?

Onesmo: What?

Me: Onesmo, I don't understand you.

Onesmo: Which one?

This more or less repeats itself until some sort of actual communication takes place or one of us gives up. It's amazing to witness.

Apparently I am Into Trees (or Photos from Around Mogo)

Morning, over the Uruguru Mountains

For some reason this tree reminded me of fall...

View of the sunset from in front of my house (ATS, that one's for you)

Keepin it real. Keepin it together.

I haven’t posted on here too many personal reflections about my experiences so far in Tanzania, partly because when everything you do and experience is so new it can be easier to simply stay on intake (rather than reflection) mode, and partly because I’m still trying to feel out my comfort level with posting on the internet my personal ruminations.

That said; disclaimer aside…diving in.

By the end of last week I’d been in Morogoro for almost three weeks. Enough time to get moved into my house, know my way to the office/market/town, learn a little bit of Swahili…begin to picture what it’ll be like to live here. I’d had a lot of small victories that mean a great deal when you’re learning your way around a new country (mailing a letter, finding a place to buy fruit) and moments of excited contentment (taking in the awesome view of the mountains on my walk home every day).

But by Friday evening some of the loneliness of being in an unfamiliar place, coupled with some of the angst that comes with navigating a new professional, as well as cultural, situation began to set in and I could feel myself spiraling towards that chaotic and uneasy place called panic. This was mostly related to work, but when you don’t know how to do things like take out your garbage, your life can meld into one emotional roller-coaster where the boundaries between your personal and professional selves get thin, if not non-existent.

The thing about being in a new country is that you loose the cultural, personal, social and professional accoutrements that we all look to to tell us who we are and why we’re ok. The great thing about being somewhere for a year, is that I’ll have the chance to build those again in TZ, but for right now they’re sparse. Fortunately, amidst my emotional flailing about, I remembered something that had been central to my time in Nigeria: above all else, remember who you are and keep a hold on that.

That might sound cheesy, or self-helpy, or whatever, but in a new city/country/job/continent it can be very easy to loose your self-confidence…the things you knew how to do, the situations you knew how to handle, the tasks you could complete, are all different now and it can be a short and slippery road into questioning whether or not you can do this. So for me, remembering who I am, why I moved to Tanzania, what I hope to get out of this year and what I think I can contribute is central to not just feeling good about myself, but keepin it together in general.

So, after lying in bed not being able to go to sleep for like the 20^th time in the last few weeks, I decided to get up. I grabbed my computer and wrote out a two page list of concrete and proactive things that I can do to feel successful in my job and life in TZ. If there is one thing I know about myself it’s that feeling alone + feeling overwhelmed is absolutely guaranteed to produce a kind of wide-eyed terror in me that is as incapacitating as it is unnecessary. The reality is that nobody wants me to do anything but thrive during this year and it’s silly to waste my time and energy feeling overwhelmed and scared when there are people who can and will help me.

After an hour or so, I had a list in hand of small steps I can take to feel professionally productive, as well as emotionally sane. And better still, coming up with a plan helped me remind myself why I felt like I could do this, and do it well. I doubt one list will alleviate all of the jitters and questioning that’s bound to come with any new job and new life. But a brightly colored, bolded text set of reminders about how and why you’re a competent person…well, it can’t hurt.

I closed my computer, flipped off the lights, and the best part of all…fell right to sleep.

Invest in maternal health...save the world

You might have already read/seen this article from the NY Times Magazine from Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn's forthcoming book, “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide", but I wanted to post it because towards the end of the long article, the authors posit a couple of development solutions that could dramatically help women, and consequently they argue, contribute poverty alleviation and development:

iodizing salt & eliminating obstetric fistula

The connection between iodized salt and maternal health is that a lack of iodine can lead to a micro-nutrient deficiency in mothers that can impair the cognitive development of their babies while they are still preganant. By having access to salt (SALT!!!!) that has been iodized, this problem could be basically eliminated.

Besides the obvious shout-out to the problem of obstetric fistula, I just think this article is worth mentioning because it shows that maternal health isn't just about keeping women from being dead mothers. I think that should be enough to shock the world into improving maternal health, but it isn't, or at least hasn't been. Healthier (and thus by default, alive) moms mean healthier babies, stronger kids, and incidentally, as the article argues, more prosperous families and stabler communities. Is that enough to make us care about dead mothers? I hope so.

Human Development Report 2007/2008 - Tanzania (United Republic of)

Human Development Report 2007/2008 - Tanzania (United Republic of)

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Home!

A few pics from my new home! Living room

Kitchen - note the fresh baked bread on the counter. I more or less had the right ingredients; it more or less turned out.

My backdoor/main door. You walk into my living room, and the other end is the side Clement lives in.

Coming down

The only downside to beginning my life in Tanzania on a major high is that, like all good highs, it ends. ....thud. A bit of an explanation:

Before coming to Tanzania, all of the Global Health Corps Fellows spent two weeks at Stanford for training/orientation. It was a sort of freshman year-meets-global health camp experience, complete with campfires, eating in dining halls and lots of group drinking activities. We bonded, shared about our lives, stayed up late and made fast and deep friendships; it was great. And then we got on a plane with our teammates and slept/ate/drank/watched movies all the way to Africa. We landed in Dar, found a bar on the ocean and marvelled at how awesome our life was going to be here. Even though I came to Morogoro last week, I went back to Dar for the weekend and stayed with Ameet and Andrew...where we basically continued our day-drinking/beachey/relaxed life. Again, it was great.

And so now I'm here, in Morogoro. I'm generally not into broadcasting my personal thoughts and feelings in very public spaces, like a blog, but I figure...new country, new job, why not? I don't want to sound overly dramatic, because I really do like Morogoro and I think it's going to be a great place for a year. It's just that the reality, and a couple of the frustrations of being here on my own, are setting in. For instance, just the mere act of figuring out when and where I can eat has been a major challenge this week. Trying to understand people, fumble through with my very nascent Swahili and constantly never be understood, all is a challenge.

This weekend we move into our house, and I've been promised a trip to the market on Saturday, so hopefully with a little more control over when and if I get to eat and a place to call home, I'll be able to begin the process of making Morogoro home. But it will take some time; I know that. The last month (well, last several months, let's be honest) have been one big collection of huge highs/lows and changes. It's been an amazing ride to go from Nigeria-Denver-Minneapolis-California-Tanzania, but one thing sounds really good right now: equilibrium.

We live here.

The A-Team goes to tanzania

Week One: so far, heart tz.

So, we are here.

After a few weeks of reprising dorm life at Standford and some all-out team bonding, the inagural class of Global Health Corps Fellows has officially headed out for their placements. Fellowship teams will be in the US, Malawi, Rwanda and of course...Tanzania.

Team TZ consists of three fellowship teams, including myself and my partner Clement, as well as two other fellowship teams. My fellow American fellows (see if you can keep up with the double meaning of fellow!) Andrew and Ameet, and their respective partners Goodluck and Jafari. That's a lot of names, but basically all you need to remember is that the American fellows = the A-Team (Andrew, Ameet, Angie) and the whole of Team TZ is the jam.

We all arrived in Dar es Salaam last week, and on Tuesday Clement and I made our way to Morogoro, Tanzania, where we'll be living for the next year. We'll be working with the Southern African Centre for Infectious Disease Surveillance (SACIDS), which is based at Sokoine University in Morogoro.

The details of our work are still coming together, but basically SACIDS is a regional disease surveillance network that is trying to manage and mitigate the impact of infectious diseases in southern Africa. The first few days have mostly been devoted to getting settled and trying to get things set up, but I'm sure there will be more info to come on what we'll be up to. Stay tuned...