Happy Birthday to Neyree! I hope everyone is ok thats heading to kilimanjaro tonight.  Good luck!  Now…everything that happened this week has been a blur, but its safe to say that AFrica does a lot of things differnetly than we do in the US - especially the hospitals.  Now i know its not my place to say anything about hospital practices, but even some of their own guidelines were broken this week when I was at the hospital - i.e. illegal HIV/AIDS tests without consent, etc…Needless to say its been a rough week.  But I’ve come to accept the fact that its really differnet here and thats just the way it is.  THey ahve operated indepentnly at the hopsital for a long time, and thats just the way i should come to accept it.

I also have come to realize the importance of more service based and locally based NGO here in Africa.  Those organizations that just throw money at the country hoping to fix the problems are just wasting it.  I seriously believe that only grassroot groups here in Africa who are willing to help communities help themselves in an accountable and sustainable manner is the only effective way that we can finally start helping people here in Tanzania.  Let’s hope that the job i’m doing does just that.

Tuesday and Thursday I will be doing site visits with a group called WAMATA, assessing whether their organization is worthy of a microfinancing grant from the NGO I’m with, Arusha Project, INC. I will be presenting my findings to the board of directors so hopefully I don’t screw up.  NERVOUS. but I’m really excited to be doing this.  I’ll tell u how it all goes.

Two days a go, we had a tribal dance thing and it was super cool.  This old tanzanian lady totally was all over me, kissing me 3 times.  I was a pimp.  It was weird.  And yesterday we went to a camping group/club area called masai camp.  It was super fun since I got to eat PIZZA and tried a bit of african beer - not as good as i thought it would be.  But I will be returning next time to try some more stuff :) i also met a dude named mtongo who totally dug my dancing skills and watched me most of the time, mimicking my every move.  There are pictures.  You will see :)

More Soon!

Kwaheri!