Break from Teaching!

Well, in the continuing saga, my electricity is back now, but I'm not at home. This week I'm staying at a lovely Catholic conference center in town where six other volunteers and I are at a conference for PEPFAR, which is the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Tanzania is one of the 15 target countries for the program and Peace Corps carries out some of the programs. Most of those are done by the health volunteers, but the rest of us are encouraged to do some secondary projects in HIV/AIDS relief. It is an area where there is a lot of grant money available, so if something comes up I may go in that direction. There are a lot of options though and I'm still pretty new at site so I haven't made up my mind on what kind of project I'll do. Time will tell.

The conference itself has been a blast. I hadn't seen most of these volunteers in several months and one I just met. It's been real cool to get together and go out on the town each night, including a great time last night for my birthday (25, now, which according to my cousin Erika means I'm "half dead"). Following the conference I'll have about 10 days off from school, so it will be nice to rest and collect myself. I won't travel too far, but may make some small trips or have a visitor or two. We'll see.

I got a text message today from Laura, a volunteer out in Tanga (on the east coast near the Kenyan border) who is a good friend of mine. Apparently her students just killed a 12-foot python that had just eaten a goat. Unfortunately I have no exciting wildlife stories to report. Being at a site so close to a big city, in many ways I'm just "Peace Corps Lite," except I have more security problems. Like I've written previously, it's different enough being where I am, but you get out in a village and it's another thing entirely. It's really amazing how much the PC can differ between volunteers in the same country. I'm sure I'll get out there to Laura's site sometime and get a little more insight into the differences. Until next time.