Slow Churning Success

This week has been very successful! We had two focus groups with Muslim leaders, ventured further into town, and established some lasting connections with people in the community. Although I've only been here a short time, I feel very comfortable and adjusted. I have even stopped waking up to the random rooster crows throughout the night. I went further into town this week, and was very enchanted by the town market. The vendors lay their food and other wares on blankets on the street, and the flies are usually constantly swarming overhead. In comparison to the strictly sterilized supermarkets in the United States, this is quite a culture shock. However, it is also an authentic taste of Tanzanian culture. Although there are some tourists in Moshi (mostly those wishing to climb Kilimanjaro), it is not a "tourist town", which allows for a true experience of the culture. The language barrier has also become less of an issue as I have been quickly learning some words and phrases. Many of the people here are very excited to show off their English language skills, so I help them with English and they help me with Swahili.

Luckily, the IT guy finally stopped by the house, so we all have working, (if really slow), internet. Our biggest struggle this week has been downloading the qualitative software. We planned to download it before we left the U.S., but unforeseen technical difficulties prevented us from doing this. Because the internet connection here is so slow, we may not be able to download the software here. We considered ordering a disc version, but it may arrive after we leave because of shipping time. We have been brainstorming creative ideas for acquiring the software, but so far have been unsuccessful. We are considering doing more in-depth interviews in our remaining time and may focus on coding after we begin returning to the U.S. We have already made plans to divide the coding in order to streamline the process.

As I mentioned before, we held two focus groups with the Muslim leaders on Saturday. They had some very interesting ideas about the causes of mental disorders. In the focus group that I oversaw, the leaders all agreed that there are 2 main causes of mental illness: 1) biological causes (inherited genes) and 2) man-made causes (either drugs cause the symptoms or the person commits bad deeds and is punished by God). All of the leaders took our email addresses and are eager to keep in contact. One even volunteered to be the spokesperson for the group and to work directly with us. Other than that, we have been interviewing all week long and are ahead of schedule in terms of number of interviews.

This coming week will be very eventful. We plan to finish our interviews at KCMC by the end of the week. We will also be visiting the regional hospital to finish interviewing different health care workers. We are also working on planning a trip to a secluded village in the country. The chaplains have suggested that we go to a village in order to get a different perspective on mental disorders. These people are less "touched" by society, so they will probably have some
really interesting perspectives. We plan to bring video equipment as we have been told that taking pictures would not be offensive. I hope it will work out because I'm really excited about it!!