Steen: General Reflections (from Week 1)

o All in all, this trip has been really incredible so far. To be sure, there have been new sights too numerous to count, but what has really surprised me is how much is actually very familiar. Perhaps it is because we are in the time of globalization and easy travel and information exchange, but I have found more things to be familiar here than unfamiliar. One thing that I have not really discussed is precisely how poor some people are here. The places we have stayed in are relatively modern with running water, electricity, and the occasional Internet access. The ICAP offices and vehicles are all relatively new with no frills, but all the necessary basic components. That said, when we drive along the roads, we undoubtedly see the spectrum of poverty. While some of the houses are made of bricks, others are simply made of sawed wood, and others appear to be made of sticks (big twigs) woven together with mud stuff between the sticks to make walls. Many buildings appear run down or abandoned. Some appear to be only remains of buildings, lacking a roof, windows, or walls. While many women in the city wear vibrantly colored kangas and visanga, which are most beautiful, there are many people with old dirty clothing, some of it clearly imported donations from the United States (i.e. – I saw a boy with a BankOne t-shirt; there is no BankOne in Tanzania, in fact, it doesn’t even exist in the U.S. anymore after it merged with JPMorgan Chase!). There are toddlers who crawl around without pants on. Women cooking for inpatients in Mugana cook in a facility with no chimney, inhaling the smoke from their firewood stoves as they cook all day. There is the occasional new government building or the like being constructed here in Bukoba, but by and large, there is a feeling that things are run down or trapped in the 1960s and 1970s America. Still, despite a lack of facilities, there is certainly no lack of hospitality. Cheerful greetings are made whenever we enter a room – and they laugh at our attempts to speak KiSwahili – all in good fun. People give what they can and I just have a strong sense that people care for each other deeply here, a feeling and a love that is not easily substituted. This love and humanity does not discount the lack of resources, it does not make up for lack of supplies or infrastructure, it does not cure HIV or the problems associated with the disease, but it certainly does bring a certain joy and quality to life here which I admire.