I spent two months in Sub-Saharan Africa, eating local food at street stands and at roadside holes-in-the-wall and had perfectly fine poops. Solid, every dang morning. Then I come back to the US, eat some gourmet food at fancy restaurants, and have the most violent cramping diarrhea ever. Go figure.
Hi, my name is sophy, and i’m addicted to KITENGE!!!! Yeah! [above: Rita, the amazing tailor-seamstress-textile-artist, and me – with the bags she made with my design sketches] [above: Joelle sporting a hoodie made out of kitenge]
[above: mentoring Team TZ – Jenny, me, Guy] My LAST week of fellowship and work in Tanzania is now OVER! We came back to Moshi to do direct mentoring at the Mawenzi Hospital HIV clinic. Mawenzi is dreadfully representative of the broken health care system in Tanzania. It’s the regional referral hospital for all of …
[above: dude carrying a load of sponge-bed-square-pants mattresses for one of the many motels for migrant miners along the main road in Kahama] Kahama is a dusty dry dude town on the highway to Rwanda and Burundi, between Tinde and Bukombe. Its existence depends on gold mining, and all of its industry is built around …
Tonight was a welcome departure from the norm. After a long day of training and some disappointing sessions from the doctor I’ve been trying to train (mostly disappointing to me and probably of relatively high quality for the Tanzanians – which illustrates the poor teaching they are regularly subjected to), I did not feel like …
The waxing moon, three cats, and a bowl of tiny lake anchovies. Read More »
[above: HIV Care and Treatment Refresher Training participants, trainers and UCSF help-staff (i.e. the team i work with in Tanzania) in Shinyanga, picture taken on 15 August at the Ngoloko Hostel, Catholic Arch Diocese centre; this was a historic Refresher training because all of the direct trainers were Tanzanian and a majority of the training …
[above left: Tanzanian stamp honoring The Scholar and the Athlete, Bruce Lee… and above right: Tanzanian stamp sheet honoring Jackie Chan (The Clown and the Athlete?)] Yes, my people are AWEsome. My colleague Elitumaini told me the other day that Tanzanians view Chinese people as friends. “We have been a socialist country, and so for …
Bukombe is a trip. It’s a diamond and gem mining town in the interior of Tanzania, on the road towards the Rwanda and Burundi borders from Nzega and Shinyanga. Because this region is built around the mining industry, it’s filled with young men from all different parts of Tanzania (and other East African countries) who …
[above: (picture on left) Young Whan, Bibi and Babu of Valerie, sophy (picture on right) Valerie, Bibi, Babu, cousin, sophy, cousins in the front] Tanzanians have a wonderfully welcoming culture. You don’t necessarily experience it as a tourist – Tanzanian tourist culture is an entirely different beast. You really have to be living or working …
chakula cha mchana: lunch at Tanzanian family homes Read More »
Haraka haraka haina baraka. If you hurry hurry, you will not receive blessings. The pace of life in Tanzania, particularly the rural inland region of Shinyanga (where we are working now), is pole pole. It is a remarkable departure from our compulsive, over-scheduled, and micromanaged culture at home in the US. Here, we are less …
African Standard Time (AST): living in the present moment Read More »
