Safari njema! My Adventures in Tanzania: Rally Against Violence Towards Women

I can't believe this is the start of our last week in Tanzania! We leave Saturday evening Tanzania time and will return on Sunday afternoon in Minneapolis. I have a bittersweet feeling about leaving. On one hand, I am ready to go home because I miss my friends and family, but on the other hand, I know this has been the trip of a lifetime and something that I know has changed me. We are trying to fit in a bunch of small activities before we leave on Saturday.

Our trip on Friday to Moshi to visit the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center went well. We found our old teacher Dr. Judith in the pediatric ward. She showed us the three wards that pediatrics has in the private hospital. Most of the wards were not full because of the physicians' strike. The hospital was unable to admit many patients and is also unable to refer complicated cases to higher level hospitals because those are also on strike. It is daunting to think about all of the people that may die because of the physicians' strike.One of the girls from the University of Minnesota who was in Tanzania for spring semester said there had been a strike earlier in the spring, and approximately 500 people died across the country because of the strike. Dr. Judith said she believed the strike wouldn't last past this week, so hopefully they can come to an agreement for the patients.

Yesterday, we went with our public health teacher Mackrine to a rally that she organized. Mackrine founded her own NGO called HIMS that works very closely with the Masai. Yesterday we journeyed to a remote Masai village near the border of Tanzania and Kenya to protest violence towards women, especially pregnant women. Mackrine has worked almost exclusively with the Masai villages to promote health and wellness. The rally was started because a pregnant woman had been killed three weeks ago by her husband. The husband was put in jail and left their three year old daughter an orphan.

We began the rally by walking in a parade through the village, past the men washing their faces in the community water and those selling goods at the market. The school children sang as they walked and we clapped to the rhythm. It was almost surreal to be in the middle of a peaceful march through a Masai village in the middle of Africa, but we had a lot of fun. I believe the rally was a success, but we couldn't understand all of it because it was in either Swahili or Masai. But judging from the reactions we got, I would say people really understood the message. I hope we were able to cause some awareness and maybe change in the village from our afternoon spent there. I know there are customs that have been in place for thousands of years, but I firmly believe we made a difference on Monday and hopefully stopped violence from entering another family.