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!!

Learning as we go...

So after being here for about 3 and a half weeks, things are really starting to come together. We are ahead of schedule on our interviews, but each day we are running into new challenges. Electricity seems to go out for a few hours each day. Which, of course knocks out our internet, lights, and sometimes water. But its kind of funny how we've begun reacting to things. We don't really notice the big hiccups, we just go about our day with cold showers, no lights, and cold dinner. It doesn't even phase us, except when we go to get on the internet- and then we realize we have no connection. :(
A few other challenges we've been running into, is our difficulty with Swahili. Most people can understand what we're saying in English, but every once in a while, things are hard to get across. Our translators are great, and I find myself asking people to teach me new words and phrases. Yesterday I was waiting(whats new?) somewhere for 45 minutes, and I had a great im-promptu Swahili lesson from an elderly reverend, and then another encounter with a taxi driver who taught me some things as well. People are so friendly, and willing to listen to your broken Swahili attempts. Not without a little chuckle however :)
We are looking forward to finishing our biggest hurdle: the patient and family member interviews today, and then we will be almost done with our religious leaders and health care workers by the end of next week. We are hopefully doing a documentary film, but this is a huge undertaking, and will be very time-consuming. We have all experienced an incredible educational experience here, and the work we are doing will definitely impact the lives of those here. Making a documentary can even further insure that our work will not be forgotten, and can hopefully educate others in this area. We are grateful for all of those helping us out here, and looking forward to the weeks to come.
Asante. (thank you)

Cultural Differences in Bananas and Chance Encounters in the Street

Our whole group is finally here. We've been very busy at work conducting interviews and we are ahead of schedule in terms of the number of overall interviews that we hope to accomplish. We are all intrigued by the cultural differences here. For instance, there are 4 kinds of bananas in Moshi. The groups' favorite are the big yellow bananas (which look just like American bananas, but they need to be cooked before you eat them). It is common to see Mamas carrying huge platters of bananas on their heads through the streets of Moshi. The genuine friendliness of all the people is also very surprising. Everyone says hello and most people are more than willing to help us with directions or with the language. The girls and I often talk about how open the people here are in comparison to the people in the United States. We've decided that the people in the U.S. aren't unfriendly, but that that culture is more individual-based. In contrast, the culture of Moshi is much more community-based, which could account for their sunny attitudes toward strangers.

The main struggle this week has been lack of internet access. The internet in our house has been working on and off (mostly off), so we have had to adjust in terms of sharing transcripts with one another and communicating with our families. In order to overcome this, we have taken trips to the internet café and contacted numerous people in hopes of fixing our internet. Another struggle

was one that Whitney and I encountered. We had ventured into town to buy supplies when we were approached by two young men who were trying to sell us scarves. This is a typical occurrence in Moshi, so we politely declined and kept walking. However, the two men proceeded to follow us throughout town for the next two hours. They pestered us to buy their wares and would not take no for an answer. They even waited outside our café while we ate. Luckily they eventually lost interest and left us alone. From this experience, we learned the importance of traveling in groups and were reminded that we should always be aware of our surroundings.

Jumping Back Into Tanzanian Culture

Well, for me (Georgia), it's been a wonderful experience to jump back into the Tanzanian culture and style of life. Generally, this lifestyle includes a very laid-back pace for work, and after we are done with our interviews, we get to experience that here…but I have actually been surprised with how fast and efficient we have been able to work during the past week and a half since the first team members' arrival (Georgia and research coordinator Jen Nolan, followed 3 days later by Leslie, and finally this past Wednesday, by Whitney). Our on-the-ground study coordinators have been wonderful, in fact, the first day we went in to greet Dr. Ringo, he already had 2 patients lined up for qualitative interviews! We had to be the ones to push back the meetings long enough for us to get our bearings.

All interviews started officially this past Tuesday, and we have been running full speed ever since. In fact, Tuesday was our longest day—we had 2 patient interviews, and two family member interviews, and we were interviewing from 8:30 in the morning until nearly 5:30 in the evening, with only a 20 minute break for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Since then, we have split up into two interviewing groups, with one of our wonderful medical student translators in each group, and have tackled the same number of people within a day but in half the time (thank god!). It has also been a blessing to work with these translators because they are such fountains of knowledge when it comes to cultural norms, the correct way to ask delicate questions, etc. On top of all of that, they are just wonderful people—Andrew and Phillip have been more than willing to lead us around town, even when it means sitting down inside of a small cloth shop for upwards of a half hour after interviews are over just so that they can help us girls bargain down the price of the fabrics and tell us what various Swahili sayings written on the fabric mean. Wonderful stuff!