Tanzania

poo irony

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.

KA: Kitenge-holics Anonymous

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]

OUT with a BANG!

[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 …

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Kahama: Dude Town from Hell

[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 …

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a day in the life…

[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 …

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Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan in Tanzania!

[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 …

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Even the Yellow Ones!

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 …

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