Mambo! That is what everyone shouts when you walk down the street, and the response is POA! It pretty much means "whats up with you?" and "i'm cool!" EVERYONE greets you when you walk down the street, it's very different from America, where if people constantly saying "HELLO! HOW ARE YOU? WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" you'd be sufficiently freaked out. This past weekend I went to a Maasai village with a couple people from my hostel which was incredible! Both guards from my hostel are from the Maasai tribe, a traditional African tribe from Kenya and northern Tanzania. They were happy to take us to meet their families.. one of the guards had FIFTY THREE brothers and sisters.. his father has 10 wives! To get to the Maasai village we hiked through a desert for about three miles ( SO HOT) until we arrived at a collection of mud huts and grazing cattle. We were caught in these dust tornadoes a couple times, so we were almost as brown as the Africans by the time we got there. (ok well not quite...) I will upload pictures soon from the Maasai, they wear these brightly colored robes that clash beautifully against the brown landscape, and don these intricately beaded necklaces and earrings, so the pictures are great!They are very peaceful people and immediately offered us food and tea, and later in the day performed a celebratory dance for us. It was one of the neatest things I have ever seen, and they even gave us bright robes to wear so we could join in. What an amazing culture.
Earlier today Hilary, the boy that translates for me, ( though my Swahili is coming along!) and I met with a group of HIV positive women from Shimbwe, the village in the foothills of Kilimanjaro that I work at. There were about ten women who came to the meeting, and I asked them questions about the problems they have been facing since being diagnosed with AIDS. I was shocked to hear the prejudices and they face just because they were brave enough to admit to the community that they have AIDS. There are many, many people who are HIV positive in this area, but will not come out and say it to the community because they know they will be shunned. All of these women do not have a spouse anymore, either because the spouse has died, or left them because they had HIV. This leaves them with very little money and ways to get food, and only some have family members to take care of them. Even the family members do not understand the sickness, and expect their loved ones to still work and earn money while they are very sick. They can't open shops because no one will buy from them, and they aren't even greeted by anyone on the street. We discussed that the reason for this prejudice against them is ignorance.. the community has not been properly educated about AIDS and has false beliefs about how AIDS can be spread. The problem is these beliefs go back many many years, and will be hard to break. For the rest of my time here I'll be spending a lot of time with my NGO trying to work out ways to educate this community, which will help these women and others infected, and also prevent the infection rate. Lots to think about! If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know! Miss everyone and hope to talk to you soon! Baadaye! Later!
ps - sorry about the captions getting all messed up on the Safari pictures. I'm still new to the blog thing haha. I'll try and figure out how to fix it when my internet is faster!