PICTURES AND A FEW WORDS

I decided to post lots of pictures and only a few words this time since I've been busy digging in the garden in preparation for the rains (which finally started this past week). I've included photos of our friends in Kibakwe and Mpwapwa and a glimpse of what the landscape is looking like these days.

Here We Are, Home Again.

We have finally returned home to Mpwapwa District. Tomorrow we will return to our quaint village of Kibakwe and hopefully we won't leave for quite a while. I just want to get back home, plant the garden, finish the fence, and start doing some work. We plan to send out letters of invitation to a permaculture workshop at our house and taught by Zizo and Gilbert. These letters will be sent to the village offices and the leaders of the surrounding communities and to the various church and mosque congregations in our area. I know that our "dudes," as we call them, will do a fantastic job of teaching, since we saw them in action this past week in Dodoma. We went to a PEPFAR(President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief) workshop in Dodoma where one day was spent teaching HIV/AIDS awareness to 12-16-year-olds at the local school. We decided to let the dudes do everything and we would just be there for support if they needed it. They did a fantastic job and were totally into it. Zizo is a natural born teacher and Gilbert is so attentive to what the students want to know. The only thing that we might try to emphasize more to them is the importance of planning, rehearsing, and time management. I'll start a small tree nursery and try to get others in Kibakwe to do the same. These will most likely be the major environmental projects I do while I'm here. I'd like to start an art club at the secondary school whose focus would be in health education sign making: malaria prevention, HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention, nutrition, and water safety. We're still trying to figure out the feasibility of starting a video night in our village where people would meet somewhere (maybe a church or the village hall) and watch educational videos about HIV/AIDS or STIs, reproductive health, etc. Well, it's a good thing we don't have anywhere to go for a while. If anyone has any opinions, suggestions, or other input regarding what we'll be doing in Kibakwe, please don't hesitate to contact us through our blogs.

Happy New Year From Zanzibar!

Hello from Tanzania! Above is a photo of Paje, where Carla and I spent Christmas with a group of our fellow volunteers. Good friends, good food, and a great place to hang out. Though, we have been incredibly homesick for family and friends during the holidays. We traveled from Paje across the island to the main port of Stone Town to celebrate a pretty low key New Year's Eve. We are in Dar es Salaam now, heading to the village and back to work again. We plan to initiate a few projects once we get back to Kibakwe, including going full steam ahead with demonstrations of bio-intensive gardening and involving local secondary students in a photo exchange project with students in the US. Well, we have our work cut out for us over the next few months.

To everyone in the upper midwest, I hope that the picture I posted above doesn't upset you too much considering what your landscape looks like right now. I hope that everyone back home is doing great and that everyone had a wonderful holiday season. Happy New Year!