Happiness

Yesterday I took a big step... had my first solo trip into town. It was really nice to do some exploring on my own and I had a relaxed afternoon in the wonderful veggie Indian restaurant writing letters and talking to people. I've noticed that when I'm out and about by myself people talk to me a lot more, I think a big group of muzungos is a bit intimidating to the locals.

In the evening, Cody took me out to dinner with his wonderful Tanzanian family. Up until last week, Cody was the volunteer coordinator for Hisani, and he has been here the longest (by far). His friend Caf's family has adopted him for his stay in Tanzania. Caf lives with his sister Happiness, her five children and another family. Last night Happiness, Caf, Cody and I went to the Tilapia Hotel for a half-Thai and half-Indian meal. The meal was wonderful and the company even better. After the meal, Caf and Happiness insisted we stay the night at theirs and I had the best night's sleep since I've been here in a double bed with a real mattress and HUGE mozzie net. They've invited me round for supper tomorrow night which I'm really looking forward to.

I taught my wonderful nursery class this morning and afterwards headed straight down to the Hisani office in town. Fred told us about the Hisani programmes both currently and in the past. Although I have been involved only with the orphanage so far, Hisani works with both women and children. The programmes for women are mainly focussed on empowerment and trying to end discrimination. At the moment, Hisani runs a food and clothing drop off for women in jail and an HIV counseling programme for women and their husbands. They had a microcredit programme that ran successfully for two years until it ran out of funding and this is something that the other volunteers and I would like to restart if we can find funding. Rachel and I came away from the meeting with the task of putting together a sex and HIV education programme for the orphanage which I am really looking forward to getting stuck into tomorrow!