Moving Day!

Moving day at the apartment

February 16, 2013

Yesterday Susan and I packed our suitcases and joined our friend Shannon in paradise. Our new house is located in an area called Isamilo, just a 3 minute walk around the corner from the APYN office where I have worked during the week up till now. Starting this week I will be in the office on Monday mornings, and then rotate been visiting the 10 yogurt kitchens in the APYN network, Monday afternoon - Friday. Still, it will be convenient to live so close to the office when it comes to running errands, attending meetings and the like.

We rent the house from a incredibly strong and kind local woman named Momma Mary. She is a clinical officer (one step below a doctor) at the Seko-ture Hospital and speaks very good English. She actually owns three compounds in the area, one of which she lives in herself. All three compounds contain houses that Momma Mary has had built over the last 25 years, and are plush with plants, flowers and fruit trees. Actually, this past Wednesday Momma Mary had Megan, Shannon, Susan and myself over for dinner to get to know us and to say goodbye to Megan. She made so much delicious food and even offered to teach us how to cook authentic samosas, chapatti and rice pilaff whenever we wanted! In return, we are going to have her over for dinner to try eggplant parmesan, banana bread and sangria- not so much because it is "Canadian" cuisine, but because it is delicious and uncommon here! 

Momma Mary has hired a boy named Freddy to live here full-time to be the guard and gardener.  He is very sweet and is always waiting for us if we get home late.  On Sunday's Freddy takes the day off to go home and go to church and a different guard comes and takes his place for the day. Aside from that Freddy is literally here 24/7 and we will often cook extra food and bring it out to him or ask him to go and pick-up small things (like soda or eggs) so he can actually spend some time outside of the compound!

Our home is a four-bedroom, two-bathroom house built sometime around 1996. Currently we are using the fourth bedroom as a storage/laundry room. The rent is 1,000,000 tsh/month (or $650 CAD/month), so with the three of us living here my rent only increased from $200/month at the apartment to $215/month. However, when Susan and Shannon head back to Canada in April I will be responsible for paying the full $650/month until I leave in May. I really don't mind though because the peace, the security, the comfort and the beautiful outdoor space here is priceless... plus my SFD grant will more than cover the cost of my living expenses for four months.

So here it is, our humble abode....

My new bedroom. 

It is the smallest of the 3 bedrooms but I struck a bargain with Susan in order to get the book shelf. When the girls move out in April I will take over the master bedroom and en-suite.

Storage/Laundry Room. 

It's nice to have a drying line inside so when it rains 

our clothes don't need to be re-washed.

The house has not one but two above ground toilets and showers. The other is located in the master bedroom.

Living Room and Office Space

Our new living room is much nicer than the one in the apartment, mostly because, well, 

it's actually comfortable enough to sit in.

Shannon (my new roomie) is hard at work!

Our kitchen, fully equipped with a big fridge/freezer and a gas stove that I don't need to get underneath and light with a match every time I want to cook something. We store our food in a pantry that is to the left but out of view in this photo. 

Our dining room and hutch full of dishes- mostly wine glasses.

 Oh yes, we have a BBQ out back- awesome for grilling chicken and fish!

Our front gate and Freddy's guard post on the right.

View of the house from inside the front gate

 My new office!

Papaya tree (1 of 3)

Orange and Lemon Trees 

 Pili Pili Bush (hot pepper bush)

 I found a perfect little yoga nook at the front of our compound. :)

View of the house from my yoga nook.

This house is really something special and I am grateful to be living here for the next 3 months!

Food, Glorious Food!

Hamjambo familia na marafiki!

As many of you know, I am what could be described as a “foodie” at heart. I can (and do) spend hours seeking out new recipes online, I find grocery shopping therapeutic, I genuinely enjoy preparing food, and I LOVE eating. I am also quite an avid host. I like to set my dining room table more than 24 hours in advance of any dinner party that I throw simply because I enjoy the process and the aesthetic so greatly. Perhaps I’ve said too much… Moving on then.

Speaking as a self-declared foodie, when I arrived at my apartment I was slightly disheartened to observe the state and contents of my kitchen…

 All of our dishes and utensils

Most of our pots and pans

Our silverware was rusted, our cooking utensils melted, none of our plates or glasses matched, our only knife was so dull it could hardly chop a pepper, and not a single wine glass could be found (priorities)!  The state of my kitchen, combined with the uncomfortable hassle of having to bargain in the market for produce left my little chef's heart feeling anxious and defeated.

But then something inspiring happened… three days after I arrived I was invited to the home of my friends Megan and Shannon for dinner. It was Mexican night and Megan (with the assistance of her lovely sue chef and roommate) had made, from scratch: tortilla chips; tortillas; guacamole; salsa; chimichurri sauce; a whole BBQ chicken; a sausage, mushroom and cheese dip; mango crisp; and some of the most delicious margaritas I have ever tasted! I was so impressed and inspired that from that night on I completely changed my attitude toward cooking in Mwanza- I no longer see it as a burden but as a challenge, and one that I gladly accept!

Aside from having gone out and bought a new chopping knife, 10 Tupperware containers, a juice container with 4 plastic cups, and a set of 6 wine glasses (again, priorities), I am making due with the tools I have available to me at the apartment. For the sake of full disclosure I did almost buy a 140 piece kitchen set for 75,000tsh last Saturday (about $60.00 CAD), but thankfully reason prevailed. I probably would have gone through with it but this Saturday Susan and I are moving into Megan and Shannon’s place, which is fully equipped with all the cookware I will ever need here!

Here are some of the items that I have cooked so far, and tend to eat on a regular basis…

 Wali na maharagi (rice and kidney beans) from the food court downstairs, topped with cooked vegetables

Eggplant parmesan

Avocado Salad

Salad with homemade balsamic vinaigrette

Vegetarian Curry

Chapati (Indian bread) baked with bruschetta and mozzarella; cucumbers in vinegar, which my roommate Susan introduced me to; and coke light (all pop comes in glass bottles or mini cans)

 "Chipsy-Mayai" (fries with eggs) which I do not make myself 

but buy from a street vendor next to the apartment at least twice a week. And I even use the fancy "American Brand" ketchup. 

Still, cooking in Mwanza continues to present its own set of unique and unexpected challenges each day.  Sometimes these challenges are fist-clenchingly frustrating- like the time I went to four stores over the course of three days to buy ingredients for eggplant parmesan, only to have our gas tank run out just as I was beginning to fry my first piece of carefully selected, washed, chopped and breaded eggplant. It is a fact that cheese is almost non-existent here. I found Mozzarella at the expensive supermarket down the road from me (but they only had low fat- so weird) and I swear I saw feta there once. But aside from that there is literally no cheese for sale anywhere. Even restaurants rarely have items with cheese on them, except for pizza places. Others use a cheese substitute called "paneer" in their dishes, but (as I wrote to my friend Laura last week) they aren't fooling anyone. My point being that I was really looking forward to eating my hard sought after creation, and may have thrown a minor (albeit internal) hissy fit when, at 8pm at night, the stove suddenly would not light.

Other times these challenges provide hilarious and priceless memories – like the time my roommate Susan and I decided to “walk on the wild side” and buy a bottle of Perfect’s Pineapple Wine from our local mini-mart. It was 7,000tsh ($5.00 CAD) and 11% alcohol, and we were certain that we had just stumbled upon a diamond in the rough, our new drink of choice in Mwanza. We took it home only to realize that we don’t actually possess a corkscrew, and resorted to testing out a ridiculous variety of makeshift gadgets and tactics recommended by Google. Approximately 45 minutes later we ended up ripping half the cork straight out of the bottle and pushing the other half in with a black Crayola marker. We poured a glass, cheers’d to our resolve, and I went in for my first sweet sip of my new favorite beverage… it was awful, like, not even physically drinkable in my opinion. I think the fruit had continued to ferment in the bottle because it tasted something more akin to scotch than any variety of wine I’ve ever tried. Fortunately, in an even more hilarious twist of events, my roommate Emily loved it and proceeded to finish most of the bottle herself within 36 hours!

Perfect's Pineapple Wine 

(with the cork still floating inside the bottle)

I have now become a fairly confident and skillful bargainer in the market. Last week I picked up all of this goodness for less than $5000tsh (just less than $3.50 CAD)! 

The fruits and vegetables available locally are so fresh and ripe- just look at the size of these avocados!

(Photo courtesy of my friend Megan’s blog)

But what I love the most about the challenge of cooking in Mwanza is the pride that I feel after all the work is done: after scouring the market for the best fruits and vegetables available; bargaining for a good “mzungu” price; lugging it all home; washing everything in my kitchen sink, which is impossible to ever actually keep “clean”; chopping it all up with my dull knife on my crooked cutting board; cooking it atop my gas stove that I fearfully light myself with a match; making make-shift versions of recipes old and new for lack of proper ingredients…. and sitting down to eat with friends. For all the effort it takes to cook a meal here has caused me to recognize the luxury and complete non-necessity of the hundreds of dollars worth of cooking gadgets, utensils and appliances I have sitting in my kitchen in Canada. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not as though I am about to go home and throw out all these items I have been collecting for years. (Fact: the first time I asked for a Kitchen Aid stand-mixer for my birthday I was 17, and once I got it, I kept it safe in the box for two years before I finally moved into a house that I was certain it would be safe in.) I love and enjoy all of my kitchenware- it's just, now I recognize that I don’t need it.

The genuine acceptance that I would be absolutely fine without most of the contents of the material contents of my kitchen is something for which I have to thank, in part, my forever friend, Sarah Bolen. This past New Years Eve Sarah’s jacket- the most expensive item of clothing she had ever bought for herself- was taken from the bar we were celebrating at in Toronto. The next morning at brunch I expressed my sympathy and frustration for her loss, and Sarah replied (without a hint of condescension, might I add) that it was “okay, and in fact, a good exercise in detachment from material possessions”. I was stunned but mostly impressed by her reaction to the situation- it was a sentiment that only a true yogi would express in that moment, and it was totally genuine. I haven’t even told Sarah this but I have recounted that story and her reaction to multiple people over the past two and a half months because I found it so exceptional. But only now, having lived in this city and this apartment, where nothing is convenient and everything tries your patience and your sanity, only now do I fully appreciate what Sarah was getting at. And it's not as though this “revelation” is life changing or even necessarily permanent, but it is a level of self-awareness that I am going to try to preserve, and work to cultivate for the rest of my trip and when I return home in May. 

Until next time, friends. 

Bon appétit! 

When It Rains It.... Hails?

Check out these photos and video of the insane hail storm that took place outside my apartment in Mwanza this past weekend! That's right, I said hail storm...

Ice is floating in the water

Ice pellets littered the streets and from afar it almost looked like snow! 

Note the sewer grate (which is located at the bottom of a steep hill) just bursting open with water!

There used to be a sidewalk here...

Only a local driver would dare to take on this beast of a puddle!

A Bit About My Research...

Greetings from Mwanza! 

I figured it was only appropriate that I spend at least one blog post bringing everyone up to speed on the awesome organizations that I am working with in Canada and Tanzania, and just what exactly my PhD research is all about! I will try my best not to bore anyone and to keep the jargon to a minimum...

My doctoral research examines, with the aim of enhancing, the gender impact of microfinance development programs in Mwanza, Tanzania. Many different models exist under the umbrella of “microfinance”, the most prominent being microcredit, microinsurance and microenterprise programming. Microcredit generally involves loaning poor individuals or groups of individuals small amounts of money or capital. Microinsurance is a financial arrangement to protect low-income people against specific perils in exchange for regular premium payments proportionate to the likelihood and cost of the risk involved. Microenterprise refers to the provision of loans, technical assistance and training to help poor individuals start or strengthen small business ventures. The African Probiotic Yogurt Network (APYN)- the organization I am working with in Mwanza- facilitates a community health microenterprise program throughout East Africa in Tanzania, Kenya and Rwanda. Its mission is, “to improve community health, especially for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWA), while at the same time reducing poverty and advancing development through the economic empowerment of women and youth” (http://apyn.webs.com/). To accomplish this, the APYN supports the establishment of community kitchens run by local women and youth (referred to hereafter as “kitchen members”) who produce immune-boosting probiotic yogurt and distribute it for free to registered PLWA in their community, as well as sell to the public to generate an income.

Numerous studies examining the health impact of the probiotic yogurt and the marketing of the yogurt as a consumer product in East Africa have each been conducted since 2008 and garnered significantly positive results. I have spent an extensive amount of time over the past year reviewing existing records and research on the APYN, speaking to the organization’s Executive Director and international partners about the program, and even visiting three of the probiotic kitchens during a brief trip to Tanzania in November. In keeping with its documented achievements as a community health program, from the outside the APYN also appears to have yielded remarkably positive impacts on community gender relations and women participants’ social and economic status. However, as of yet no study has been conducted to analyze the gender impacts of the program at the individual, household or community level. For the APYN- an organization whose mission statement explicitly includes “the economic empowerment of women”- the absence of research on this topic is marked, and provides a valuable entry point for examining the relationship between microfinance, women’s empowerment and poverty reduction. If, upon closer analysis, the APYN is in fact found to have positively impacted the social and economic status of women in its host communities, I want to know why, and if this model can be applied in a sustainable way to develop and improve other microfinance programs in Mwanza. In other words, the data generated from this case study will be used to ground my analysis of the types of conditions required in order to deliver effective microfinance programming in this region.

I am spending the next four months in Mwanza in order to research the gender impact that the APYN has had in its host communities. I am focusing specifically on the experiences and perceptions of the kitchen members, APYN staff, partners and local leaders regarding the impact that the program has had for the women involved in it, as well as their families and communities. My primary means of investigation will be to conduct interviews with kitchen members regarding the impact of the program in their lives and in their communities more broadly. The information provided from these interviews will be further supplemented with data collected through participant observation in the community; a written questionnaire filled out by all 59 kitchen members over the age of 18; and interviews with APYN staff, partners and local leaders.

Western Heads East (WHE) is the partner organization of the APYN housed at my university in London that facilitated my internship (http://www.westernheadseast.ca). WHE also generously helped to fund my research by provided me with a CIDA Students For Development Grant. Officially, I will be working as a graduate student intern for WHE, tasked with administering a questionnaire on the challenges and achievements of the APYN’s kitchens in Mwanza and supporting APYN staff administratively. This internship assignment was developed in coordination with WHE’s Project Director, Bob Gough, and is intentionally geared towards serving both the needs of the APYN and feeding into the achievement of my own research goals. To the benefit of WHE and the APYN, the findings of my internship assignment will be used to improve the program where possible, to garner ideological and financial support for the project from international donors and the Tanzanian government, and to develop a series of best practices and lessons learned to be utilized in the development and improvement of APYN kitchens. As it pertains to my own dissertation research, knowledge of the various challenges and achievements of each probiotic yogurt kitchen will be useful for comprehending the social and political landscape of Mwanzan society, which make-up the APYN program environment. This will be important information to have when theorizing about the results of the program, and its potential for replication elsewhere.

As a feminist researcher working to affect direct and positive social change in the lives of women and other marginalized groups, my dual role as a graduate student researcher and an intern for WHE is both important and complex. On the one hand, conducting research on behalf of the APYN will allow me to give something tangible back to this organization, which has so generously offered up space and time to allow me to work with them, and whose mandate I strongly believe in. On the other hand, I am also aware that this dual role has the potential to create moments of tension, ethical dilemmas and unequal power dynamics that I will need to remain cognizant of throughout the process of designing, conducting and analyzing my research. For instance, my status as an intern for WHE, which is currently the APYN’s largest funding body, might make it difficult to garner honest answers from respondents who may fear being “cut off” from the project for expressing criticisms. Conversely, I have my own anxiety about presenting any negative findings or constructive criticism to the APYN and its partners, especially since WHE has provided me with this fully funded internship. And it doesn’t help that I have oodles of admiration and respect for everyone that I am working with! While foresight and a critical awareness of these issues will not alone resolve them, it will urge me to be constantly reflexive about my interactions with different individuals involved in the APYN program.

While a vast amount of research has been conducted in the South Asian context, microfinance research and impact assessment has been quite limited in the East African context, including Tanzania. Despite the growing number of microfinance programs being facilitated in Tanzania since the mid-1990s, evidence of the impact of women’s participation in such programs is sparse, and very few studies have compared different program strategies in any detail.

Aside from just this general lack of research, there are important reasons to evaluate the impact microfinance for women in the country. To begin, women in Tanzania are denied economic opportunities such as credit due to deep-rooted cultural barriers and existing social norms. For instance, many women lack collateral because customary law often overrides statutory law and leaves them without property ownership. And financial capital is not the only missing factor. Tanzanian women also lack time due to their extensive and strenuous household obligations. And they further lack decision-making power as how to spend their time and any income they generate independently. Rural women in particular lack access to loans and employment, due to the concentration of jobs and financial institutions- including microfinance organizations- in urban centers, and due to strict conditions for loan applicability. There is a special need therefore, to study the accessibility and impact of microfinance for Tanzanian women living in both urban and rural areas. The hope is that at the end of my study, I will be able to analyze the gender impact the APYN for kitchen members living in both such regions, as the program rather uniquely has operations in each. The study will also reveal the challenges and constraints that they encounter in implementing the yogurt program. Such findings will help to inform the work of local organizations processing similar objectives, and hopefully be used by other researchers as both an indication of the baseline reality in the city, and to make comparisons with other districts in Tanzania.

In addition to the need to for further research, one of the most consistent trends identified in the relatively limited literature on microfinance in Tanzania is the importance of a multi-dimensional approach to poverty alleviation, which was not well served by the previously dominant development model, structural adjustment. Calls have been made for a synergy across social and economic development sectors, and these are beginning to permeate policy-level discussions about the potential impact of synergistic models that aim to build human and financial capital concurrently. These models operate at the individual, household, and community levels, where financial, nongovernmental and sometimes state-institutions are involved. They utilize a combination strategy that does not wait to address one adverse condition at a time, but instead seeks to address the interrelated dimensions of poverty through an integrated and collaborative framework. The APYN represents such a model, as it seeks to improve community health and nutrition through the economic empowerment of women. Certainly, no income generating development program will ever on its own be enough to alleviate poverty or empower women in East Africa, Tanzania, or anywhere for that matter, as both are incredibly complex and systemic issues. Yet I believe that the APYN’s innovative, multi-dimensional approach to development may constitute a compelling strategy in the Tanzanian context.