{"id":3873,"date":"2010-08-28T21:08:55","date_gmt":"2010-08-29T04:08:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.reed.edu\/chemistry_news\/2010\/08\/28\/from-reed-to-tanzania-and-back-again\/"},"modified":"2014-03-18T10:14:46","modified_gmt":"2014-03-18T17:14:46","slug":"from-reed-to-tanzania-and-back-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chemistry_news\/2010\/08\/from-reed-to-tanzania-and-back-again\/","title":{"rendered":"From Reed to Tanzania and back again"},"content":{"rendered":"

About two years ago Kristen Grauer-Gray ’07<\/b> journeyed to Tanzania to work as a Peace Corps volunteer. A few days ago she wrote to a large number of friends to inform them that she’s counting the days until her return. In “Letters from Tanzania #12” (Aug 21), Kristen writes:<\/p>\n

“Habari zenu? As you’ll see from this e-mail, I’ll be leaving Tanzania
\nsoon. I’d love to travel on my way home, and visit as many friends as
\npossible on the way. So the question is….where in the world will you
\nbe between the beginning of November and the end of December? In case
\nof delayed travels, where will you be at the beginning of 2011? Do you
\nhave a extra bed, couch, or soft floor for a very dazed Peace Corps
\nvolunteer? You provide the floor, I’ll provide the harmonica songs
\nand crazy stories, and we’ll catch up on the last three years of life.
\nLet me know where you’ll be and I’ll start marking the map of the world on my wall. I’m thinking of a long bus trip across the U.S.,
\nwith many many stops on the way.”
–Kristen, 21 August 2010, Karatu district, Tanzania<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I suspect that Kristen didn’t expect her emails to wind up on our news page, but I think her “crazy story” is so wonderful, it deserves to be reported in full, so here is the rest of her email on life in Tanzania (and if you would like to communicate with her, write to her at grauergk@gmail.com<\/a>) … (Aug 31 update: Three more letters from Kristen have arrived in the last couple of days and I’ve added them unedited to this post. They cover the joys and hardships of teaching chemistry, the Peace Corps, and dealing with AIDS in Africa.)<\/b><\/p>\n


\nLetter # 12<\/p>\n

The Last Leg<\/p>\n

For the past few days, I’ve been relentlessly playing the following
\nsong on my harmonica:
\n<\/p>\n

Oh my bags are packed, I’m ready to go,
I’m standing here outside your door,
I hate to wake you up to say goodbye…
‘Cause I’m leaving on a jet plane….
\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are exactly two months and a week left until I officially finish
\nmy Peace Corps service. Counting down the days is a dangerous business
\nhere, where the many setbacks of everyday life can make the hours drag
\nif you let them. Mostly I focus on day-to-day tasks: teaching classes,
\npreparing solutions in the school labs, cooking dinner. But every now
\nand then, I look at the calendar, and I marvel at how much time has
\npassed. After 35 months in Tanzania, two months and a week is nothing.
\nI know it will pass so quickly that I’ll wonder where the time went.
\nAnd while it’s a little early to start packing my bags, I am ready to
\ngo.<\/p>\n

They say that the last leg of any race is the hardest, and it’s true.
\nYou can walk for thousands of miles without worrying about the
\ndistance remaining, but when you only have a few miles left, and you
\ncan see the peak of the mountain you’re climbing in the distance, time
\nseems to slow. Just putting one foot in front of the other requires a
\ngreat effort. So it is with me: with a little over two months to go,
\nthe amount of work to be done at school has multiplied exponentially.
\nMy students have five weeks to go until their national exams. In that
\ntime, they need to practice two separate chemistry practicals,
\nrequiring entirely different apparatus and chemicals. They need to
\nreview what they’ve already learned. I should probably give them notes
\non the topics I skipped for lack of teaching time. On top of that,
\nthere’s a practice exam the week after next, and instead of preparing
\nthe labs I’ve spent the weekend writing that exam. Time will pass
\nwhether I teach all day or sit in my house playing the harmonica, but
\nI believe in finishing strong, and these students are the reason I
\nstayed in Tanzania so long. It will be a busy few weeks.
 
In some ways I’ve become Tanzanian. I never used to understand why Tanzanians plan so little for the future. It seemed to me that
\neveryone around me was living at the brink of chaos, just barely
\nmanaging to deal with each minute as it came, ignoring the future.
\nTeachers would come running to me looking for the labs keys five
\nminutes before their class, expecting the required chemicals to be
\nready even though they hadn’t bothered to check. Neighbors would
\nrealize they were out of sugar when the tea was already on the table,
\nand send a child running to the duka (shop) to buy more. As someone
\nwho plans far into the future, this made no sense to me.<\/p>\n

Well, here I am, as Tanzanian as my neighbors. Do I know where I’m going to be three months from now? Do I know where I’ll travel on my
\nway home? Bado, bado. I’m still trying to figure out what I’ll be
\nteaching tomorrow. I’m so bogged down in the details of daily life
\nthat I can barely see as far as this evening. Will I get back to my
\nvillage in time to prepare dilute nitric acid for tomorrow’s
\npractical? Will I actually have time to correct my students’ homework
\nbefore tomorrow morning’s classes? I don’t know what date I’m leaving
\nTanzania, where I’m traveling on my way home, or what type of work
\nI’ll look for when I get back. The present here is so vivid and
\ndemanding that I’ll be lucky if I even fill out all my close of
\nservice Peace Corps forms in time.<\/p>\n

But Tanzania has taught me that the future has a way of working
\nitself out. For the next few weeks, I’ll be focusing on my students,
\non keeping the promises I’ve made to them and myself, and on finishing
\nstrong. When they start their exams, I’ll have a little breathing
\nroom. That’s when I’ll finally look around, pack my bags, and start
\ntrying to process all that’s happened in the past three years.<\/p>\n

Hope all is well in America, Tanzania, or wherever you are!
\n
-Kristen<\/p>\n

—-<\/p>\n

28 August 2010
\n
Karatu district, Tanzania
\n
Letter #13<\/p>\n

Practicals, Part 1<\/p>\n

“Don’t become like Newton,” a teacher tells me when I emerge from the
\nlabs for lunch.<\/p>\n

“Newton? What do you mean, like Newton.”
\n
 
“Newton spent so much time in the lab that he forgot to eat. He also
\nforgot to get married.”
\n
 
I didn’t forget to eat, I explain. My students just had so many
\nquestions that I never got a chance to leave the labs for chai. And as
\nfor marriage, my thoughts weren’t tending in that direction anyway.<\/p>\n

But yeah, I am spending too much time in the labs. What else to do
\nwhen there are two hundred students relying on me to teach them
\nchemistry practicals?<\/p>\n

Here’s the situation. A student’s chemistry score on the national exams is based fifty percent on the theory portion of the exam, and
\nfifty percent on the lab practical. Theory is difficult for my
\nstudents. It covers about twenty different topics from all four years
\nof O-level chemistry. The English is difficult, and sometimes just
\nbad. The questions are often poorly written, or lack important data,
\nor focus on tiny and unimportant parts of the curriculum. I’ve been
\nteaching these students for almost three years straight, and I’ve
\ncovered nearly all the topics in the syllabus, to the point where I
\nwas sure they could pass. Even they were sure. We’re not worried about
\nchemistry, they told me. We’ll all get high marks on the mock exams.<\/p>\n

Well. The mock exam in chemistry is worth a hundred points. Most of
\nthem got less than thirty. Out of 196 students, zero got an A. Only
\nthree got a B. This in a country where 61% is considered a B.<\/p>\n

My students were depressed for days after the results came back. Some
\nof them stopped coming to school. Why bother? they told me. We’re just
\ngoing to fail the national exams anyway.<\/p>\n

I could have told them that the system is unfair. That the exams are
\nwritten poorly. That the mock exams are corrected badly. That some of
\nthe questions on the exam weren’t even on the syllabus. That the
\nsystem is inherently against students who studied at a village primary
\nschool and never learned English well.  But I didn’t. There was no
\npoint in depressing them about a system they’re stuck with.<\/p>\n

Or I could have lectured them like the academic master. I could have
\ntold them that their scores were equal to the numbers on shoe sizes. I
\ncould have told them they were lazy, and should study harder.  But I
\ndidn’t, because laziness isn’t the main problem. Some of my hardest
\nworking students failed that exam. They’re studying as hard as they
\ncan, and they do well on my tests. Yet they didn’t even manage a C on
\nthe mock exam.<\/p>\n

There are many problems in the system, but the fact is, I can’t
\nchange them. So I swallowed my annoyance and turned to the one route
\nthat I knew would help the students pass.<\/p>\n

Practical, I told them. Practical ni tumaini yenu. Practical
\nitakuinua. This mock exam had only theory. But in the national exams,
\nthe practical is fifty percent of your grade. And the practical is
\npredictable. It has the same two kinds of questions every year, and if
\nyou can answer those two questions you can pass your chemistry exam.
\nWe’re doing nothing but practicals for the next month.
\n—<\/p>\n

At the beginning of August, we started with practical one:
\nqualitative analysis. Man is this practical a pain. Students are given a salt, and they have to identify it. Is it copper (II) sulphate? Lead
\nnitrate? Sodium carbonate? There are eight possible cations, and five
\npossible anions, and ten steps to follow in identifying the salt.  The
\npractical requires about fifteen different solutions to be available,
\nmany of which are dangerous. All groups need to have access to
\nconcentrated acid. And a source of heat. And sodium hydroxide. And
\nammonia. You can’t open the windows because the wind will put out the
\nBunsen burner flames, but you can’t close them because the experiments
\ncreate fumes.<\/p>\n

This experiment is a safety nightmare. Imagine fifty students in a
\nlab, with five or six students crowded around each table. Bunsen
\nburner flames burn merrily beside flimsy paper notebooks. Students
\nreach over the flame for bottles of chemicals. Others cheerfully chat
\nwith their friends while holding a test tube full of acid in one hand.
\nThe teacher walks around the room, turning off gas faucets that have been left on, telling students to point their test tubes at the sink
\nand not their friends. Why are you heating a test tube full to the brim! Is that acid? Punguza, punguza! It’s going to jump out at your face when it starts boiling! And whatever you do, don’t aim that test
\ntube at your friend.<\/p>\n

No one has goggles. No one has gloves. At least there’s a fire
\nextinguisher and eight buckets of water in case of any accidents with
\nthe Bunsen burners.<\/p>\n

Qualitative analysis is a hazard and a headache. But there’s a small
\nand irrational part of me that loves teaching it.  To put it simply,
\nthis practical is cool. Beautiful blue copper salts sit in beakers on
\nthe table, turn flames green, and form a inky blue solution in
\nammonia. Precipitates appear at the addition of a single drop of base,
\nthen vanish when more base is added. Carbonates produce masses of
\nbubbles with acid, which spill out of the test tube and into the sink.
\nLitmus paper changes colour when an invisible gas passes through it.<\/p>\n

And the best part of it all is, all of these reactions have been
\ntaught. Students have written them in their notebooks, memorized them,
\nwritten them on tests. Every now and then, I even get enough of a
\nbreak from the constant student questions to explain what is
\nhappening. You know this reaction, I tell a student. Copper sulphate
\nplus sodium hydroxide. What precipitate are you looking at here?<\/p>\n

Carbonate plus acid. Why are bubbles forming? Their eyes light up when
\nthey realize they can actually explain what they’re seeing. When they
\nfinally, finally connect the theory they’ve been studying to reality.<\/p>\n

But it’s exhausting. Two hundred students. Three ninety minute
\npracticals on Monday, two on Tuesday, three on Thursday. Wednesday and Friday are for making new solutions and catching just enough rest to stay sane.  It’s a crazy schedule, and I wouldn’t recommend it to
\nanyone.<\/p>\n

Yet the students are truly getting it, and they’re becoming
\nconfident. And some of the most skilled students at the practical are the ones who have always failed chemistry exams. They’re excited.
\nThey’re motivated. And their energy is just enough to keep me going as
\nwell.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Practicals (Part 2)<\/p>\n

Nearly a month straight of qualitative analysis. And then, it’s time
\nfor practical two: titration.<\/p>\n

Ah, but titration is easy. All you have to do is make two large
\nbuckets of acid and base. Each table needs some beakers, a flask, a
\nburette, a pipette, some indicator. There’s no flames, and the acid is
\ndilute and fairly harmless to touch. Yes, this practical will be
\nsimple.<\/p>\n

Okay, I admit it. Tanzania has destroyed my sense of perspective.
\nTeaching four lab sessions of fifty students isn’t exactly simple. But
\nthe lack of open flames did make for a nice break.<\/p>\n

The first, and most overwhelming step in preparing the titration
\npractical: to wash the dust off the apparatus. I call eight students
\nwho have previously broken a test tube to the lab, and tell them their
\npunishment is to wash all the apparatus required for titration. All
\nthe burettes, beakers, and flasks are ready within an hour. The
\nbenches are clean. The retort stands have been dusted off. Sure, there
\nare some burettes with broken tips that need fixing, and I need to
\nlabel the beakers. But the apparatus are basically ready.<\/p>\n

Second step: to prepare solutions. There are two student teachers from the University of Dar es Salaam at my school, who have
\nenthusiastically volunteered to help out in the labs. Having the help
\nis awesome, but actually gives me more work: I can’t employ my usual
\nsloppy shortcuts while teaching student teachers how to make
\nsolutions. So we measure everything slowly and carefully, and spend about two hours making the solutions: fifteen liters of base in one
\nlarge bucket, ten liters of acid in another. Then we spend about two
\nhours standardizing the solution, adding small amounts of water or a
\nlittle more acid until our measured titration volume is equal to the
\none we wanted. Finally, around five-thirty in the evening, we
\npronounce the solutions ready and go home.<\/p>\n

Third step: to introduce the students to a new apparatus. Glass
\npipettes are a beautiful and elegant chemistry tool, when used by a
\ncareful chemist in a well-equipped lab. They’re a fragile pain in the neck in a village secondary school. They constantly break. They’re
\nexpensive. They’re poorly calibrated and don’t measure the volume they
\nclaim to hold.  And since students fill them with their mouths, nearly
\nevery practical features a student sucking up a mouthful of sodium
\nhydroxide.<\/p>\n

Besides, who needs a pipette when you can buy a syringe for fifteen
\ncents? I hold up a 20 mL syringe to my students. “Hii ni pipette mpya
\nya kisasa,” I tell them. This is a new and modern pipette. This is
\n
what you’ll be using on the exams.<\/p>\n

The plastic syringe looks like a toy compared to the imported glass
\npipettes that the students have used in the past. I’m a little afraid
\nthat they’ll ask me why we’re employing a tool used to give shots to cattle. But they don’t. They love the syringes. “Inarahisisha kazi,”
\none of my best students tells me. It makes the practical easier. The
\nfifteen cent syringes gives beautiful data, and not a single student
\n
accidentally drinks the base.<\/p>\n

The syringes made my life easier, and I’m thankful to my Peace Corps
\nfriends for convincing me to use them in the lab. But was the
\npractical easy? Well, not really. Four or five groups called for my
\nattention at a time, for ninety minutes straight. Flasks were thrust
\ninto my face.  Students competed for my attention, to the point where
\nI’d give a one sentence answer and move on.<\/p>\n

“Wrong colour,” I’d say. “That’s pink. You’ve gone past the endpoint.
\nStart over.”<\/p>\n

“That’s still yellow. The colour hasn’t changed. Add another drop.
\nNo, not ten drops! One, one! Okay, start over again.”
 
“You want more base? Go get more base. It’s in a beaker in the front.”<\/p>\n

“No! Don’t let the acid out of the burette that quickly! Burette yako
\ninakojoa! Isiwe kama inakojoa. Drop by drop! Drop by drop!”<\/p>\n

Read the bottom of the meniscus. Don’t bang the pipette tip against
\nthe side of the flask. Pole pole, slowly, slowly. I repeated the same
\nadvice for nearly five hours on Thursday, and for another two hours on
\nFriday morning.  I know I’m exhausted when I start snapping at my
\nstudents, and I don’t think my students have ever seen me in as bad a
\nmood as I’ve been in the lab lately.  For that matter, I rarely see
\nmyself in that bad of a mood.<\/p>\n

I’m always too optimistic about how easy teaching these practicals
\nwill be. What I saw as an hour long experiment took two hours. An
\nentire bucketful of acid nearly ran out, to the point where I had to
\nmake more acid the next morning. An example of the sloppy shortcuts I
\nreferred to earlier: since the half hour before the practical wasn’t
\nnearly enough time to actually measure out the acid and standardize a new solution, I just dumped some water and concentrated acid in a
\nbucket. Then I measured the new titre, and changed the data in the
\nquestion so that my students’ calculations would work out. Yeah, I’m
\n
going straight to scientists’ hell, but at least my students will know
\nhow to titrate.<\/p>\n

And how could I chase my students out of the lab, or make them stop
\npracticing, when I used to be that student who left the lab late? Who
\nrepeated the experiment over and over, with the data never coming out
\nright? “Titrate again,” I told the students. “Even four times. Five
\ntimes. Keep titrating until you get it down. Today you’re practicing;
\non another day, we’ll try to do everything quickly as if it’s an
\n
exam.”<\/p>\n

Two and a half hours after the last session started, I finally chased
\nthe last two students out of the lab. A few hours later, I hopped on a
\ncar to town for a weekend long break. I’ve been spending the last few
\n
days cooking good food and catching up on my e-mails at a friend’s
\nhouse. It’s a badly needed rest.<\/p>\n

But by next week, I’ll probably be back in the lab. Because for the
\nfirst time in my three years of teaching here, nearly all of my the
\nstudents are getting it. Not the top five. Not the few sitting in the front. Almost all of them. And in a school system that always seems to
\nbe against them, where they can study for four years and barely scrape
\ntogether thirty points on an exam, I’m happy to see them becoming
\nconfident about something.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

29 August 2010
\n
Karatu district, Tanzania
\n
Letter #14<\/p>\n

Ukimwi (AIDS)
\n
(Note: Names have been changed)<\/p>\n

When I go to town, I usually stay with my friend Rebecca. I arrived
\nin town last weekend to find that Rebecca had gone to Uganda. “When
\nwill she be back?” I asked one of her employees.<\/p>\n

Next weekend, was the answer. But Amanda is around, and she can give
\nyou the keys. So I went to Rebecca’s housekeeper to ask for the keys
\nto the house.<\/p>\n

Amanda wasn’t home. I followed one of her relatives along a narrow
\ndirt path between houses, and found her sitting with friends outside a
\nneighbor’s house.<\/p>\n

“Habari za Endamarariek?” she greeted me. “How are things in your village?”<\/p>\n

They’re good, I told her, but busy. “How is your health?” I asked.
\nThe last time I’d seen her, she’d been throwing up in a car on the way
\nto the hospital.<\/p>\n

“It’s a bit better,” she said briefly. “Come on, I’ll open the door
\nto the house for you.”<\/p>\n

We walked to the house, and the two dogs followed us inside. Amanda
\nsat down on a chair and began to play with them. She was
\nuncharacteristically quiet. In all the time I’ve known her, I’ve never
\nseen her just sit down.  She’s always busy: cleaning the house,
\nfeeding the dogs, washing clothes. And despite all that work she’s
\nalways cheerful, always in a good mood. But now she just sat, solemn
\nand sad.<\/p>\n

“Are you feeling better?” I asked her again. “You were really sick that day.”<\/p>\n

“It’s true, I was,” she said. “They put me on a drip with medicine.”<\/p>\n

“What was it?” I asked. “Malaria?”<\/p>\n

“Yes,” she said briefly. Then, “Rebecca didn’t tell you?”<\/p>\n

I haven’t seen Rebecca in over two weeks, I told her. It’s been busy
\nat school.<\/p>\n

“I was still feeling sick, so I went to the hospital again to have my
\nblood tested. Nina ugonjwa wa kisasa.”<\/p>\n

Ugonjwa wa kisasa. The modern disease. It took a minute for that to click.<\/p>\n

Then it did. What disease do people talk around, instead of saying
\nits name? What disease is in the news all the time, in every African
\ncountry? Ugonjwa wa kisasa is AIDS.<\/p>\n

“Pole sana,” I told her. “I’m very sorry. Did you get medicine?”<\/p>\n

Yes, she said, she had. But she still sat there, gazing into space,
\nand it was clear she wanted to talk more.<\/p>\n

Here I was, exhausted from a week of teaching practicals, sick of the
\nproblems of village life, and desperate for a break from Tanzania in
\ngeneral. A part of me really didn’t want to have this conversation. I
\ndon’t know if I can do this, I thought. I don’t know if I can help.
\nPeople never ask me for advice, not about emotions, not about life. My
\nstudents ask me how to balance equations and study for exams and hold
\na flask during titration.  My friends ask me how to prepare a
\nTanzanian laboratory and deal with large classes and when do I expect
\nto pass through their town or village in my travels. Somehow I manage
\nto keep my own mental equilibrium and sanity, but that doesn’t mean I
\nknow how I do it, it doesn’t mean I can pass that equilibrium onto
\nothers. Yet here’s this middle-aged Tanzanian woman, clearly wanting
\nto talk. She can’t talk to her relatives for fear of the stigma
\nagainst people with AIDS. She can’t talk to Rebecca because Rebecca is
\nout of town and doesn’t speak Swahili anyway. And then I come to town,
\na neutral and non-judgmental party, speaking fluent Swahili and understanding Tanzanian culture. I guess that makes me the perfect
\nperson to talk to.<\/p>\n

So here goes.<\/p>\n

I tell her that the medicine can help her live for a long time, but
\nthat she needs to take care of herself as well. I tell her to eat
\nwell: lots of fruits and vegetables, not just starches. I tell her the
\nmedicine may bother her stomach or make her feel nauseous, but she
\nneeds to keep taking it.<\/p>\n

Is there a cure for AIDS in America? she asks. Don’t they have a cure?<\/p>\n

No, there’s no cure, not even in America. There are just medicines to
\nkeep the virus from getting too strong, like they have here. Think of
\nit as an unwanted guest in your body, I say. It will always be there, but you can keep it from doing too much damage too fast.<\/p>\n

So the end is always death? she asks.<\/p>\n

Mwisho wa maisha ni kifo. The end of life is always death. For you,
\nfor me, for everyone. And we can never know when that day is coming. I
\nhad a friend, young like me, in perfectly good health, who died
\n
suddenly in an accident. He’d been teaching in Tanzania for almost two
\nyears and was supposed to be going home soon. You can be young and
\nstrong and die unexpectedly, or you can have AIDS and take care of
\nyourself and live for many years. Don’t spend all your time thinking
\nabout death. Enjoy the days as they come. Enjoy spending time with
\nyour children. Enjoy sitting in the sunlight. Just enjoy life and
\n
don’t spend all your time thinking about the end.<\/p>\n

We agree that spending long periods of time sitting alone is a bad
\nplan, and spending time with others can help. She tells me that she
\nlikes to come sit and play with Rebecca’s dogs, and that playing with
\n
them makes her feel better.<\/p>\n

We keep talking, but she still looks worried and depressed. This is
\nnew to me. I’ve never, ever seen a Tanzanian look depressed.  I know
\npeople who have lived incredibly hard lives, their parents died when
\n
they were young, their crops failed, their children are sick, they
\ndon’t have money for school fees. Yet even the people with the most
\ndepressing life stories always manage to appear happy on the outside.<\/p>\n

I’m worried about my children, Amanda tells me. My husband left me
\nmany years ago, and he’s not going to come back and help them. He
\nhasn’t even visited them in years. That’s just how it works in Africa.
\nThe children are the mother’s, and my husband and his relatives will
\ndo nothing to help them.<\/p>\n

Start planning early, I tell her. Do you have any relatives who will
\nbe willing to take care of them? Can you start putting aside money to
\npay for their education? You know, there are organizations out there that help that children of people with AIDS, and I’m sure Rebecca will
\nhelp you to find them.<\/p>\n

She’s a good person, I add, and she’ll do what she can to help you.<\/p>\n

I said what I could, and I hope it helped, and I tried to swallow my
\nown problems and be cheerful whenever I saw Amanda that weekend. I
\nwent back to my village a few days later, but I saw Amanda again the
\nnext time I was in town. Rebecca was still in Uganda, and Amanda
\nreally did look sick. She sent her relatives to the gate of Rebecca’s
\nhouse around eight at night, to tell me she was sick and to come to
\nher house. I felt way out of my depth and wished that Rebecca were
\nhome from Uganda. But she wasn’t, so I followed Amanda’s relatives
\nalong narrow dirt paths in the dark, and found her lying in bed with
\nher eyes closed. She had ulcers, or another stomach problem brought on
\nby the anti-retroviral drugs, and she’d gone to the hospital to ask
\nabout medicine. She handed me a piece of paper with the name of a
\nmedicine written down on it.<\/p>\n

Magnesium, I read. But I don’t understand what the problem is. Is it
\nthat the pharmacies are closed for the night? Is it money to buy the
\nmedicine?<\/p>\n

Money, she whispers. I gave her five thousand shillings. In the
\nmorning she showed up at the house, looking slightly better but still
\nvery sick. She fed the dogs and turned off the outside lights and
\ngrabbed the pot for cooking more food for the animals, all while
\ntelling me she was too still sick to go to church. And then she told
\nme she would do her best to return the money to me.<\/p>\n

Really, I told her, don’t worry about it. And I added to myself, you
\nhave enough to worry about already. —<\/p>\n

According to UNICEF, Tanzania has a 6.2 percent HIV rate. About
\n1,400,000 people are estimated to be living with HIV. I’ve lived in
\nthis country for three years, and Amanda is the only person I’ve ever
\nmet who told me she has HIV. But I doubt that HIV is uncommon in my
\ntown. I’ve only recently realized this, but Karatu is a transit town,
\non a recently paved road, with lots of truckers and other travelers
\n
passing through. Some of these travelers have a lot of money. If
\nthat’s not a recipe for the spread of HIV, I don’t know what is.<\/p>\n

A lot is being done to prevent that spread. HIV prevention is in the
\nschool curriculum, government clinics offer free testing, and there
\nare lots of NGOs teaching people about HIV. But many factors are also
\nworking against prevention, from economic problems that lead to
\nprostitution, to a traditional culture that leads women to be passive
\nand lack confidence, to the fact that it’s often normal and accepted
\nto have many lovers. HIV is in the villages, of course, but it’s often
\na larger problem in towns, where there are so many travelers passing
\nthrough, and people without farms and crops are a bit more desperate
\nto acquire money.<\/p>\n

Like many young Tanzanians, my students want to move to town the
\nfirst chance they have. I just hope they’ll be careful.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

About two years ago Kristen Grauer-Gray ’07 journeyed to Tanzania to work as a Peace Corps volunteer. A few days ago she wrote to a large number of friends to inform them that she’s counting the days until her return. … finish reading From Reed to Tanzania and back again<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alumni"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chemistry_news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chemistry_news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chemistry_news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chemistry_news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chemistry_news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3873"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chemistry_news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4333,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chemistry_news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3873\/revisions\/4333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chemistry_news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chemistry_news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chemistry_news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}