Mbeya Girls' Empowerment Conference

Hello all! Just a quick post before I depart to the States tomorrow. Last week we held our Mbeya Region Girl's Empowerment Conference. Overall the conference was a lot of fun and the girls had a great time! About 14 volunteers ran the event and brought anywhere from 3- 6 students from the ages of about 12-16. The girls and all of the volunteers stayed in dorm and held our classes at MIST (Mbeya Institute of Science and Technology). The conference covered everything from HIV/AIDS, to relationships, nutrition, condom demonstrations and making of pads. The highlight of the conference for me however was when one of my older students hit younger students for tattling on her for being loud and stealing their blanket. I decided that she should go home because leaving the conference would be punishment enough, not to mention embarrassing. Some of the Tanzanian counterparts held a meeting with the students from my school and the students from the other school to find out what really happened. Once they had established what exactly went down they did not support my decision to send her home. I thought it was pretty funny that they found my punishment too harsh when they themselves are willing to hit students with a stick or make them kneel holding rocks over their heads in the hot sun. I actually found their disapproval insulting, condescending, hypocritical and very frustrating. Who are they to punish one of my students? And who are they to judge how I punish my student? Anyway, after I told the student she had to leave she begged me to stay and asked me if I could "beat" her instead of sending her home. I was pretty surprised by this request and told her that I would not ever beat her and that leaving is a much harsher punishment than beating. I also told her it was not in my culture or morally right to beat a student and that expulsion was a just punishment for her actions.
        Other than that blessed event, the conference was a lot of fun, but also very humbling. All of our lessons were taught in Kiswahili because some of the girls do not know any English. Let me just say that being able to buy food at the market and have short conversations in Kiswahili gave me a false sense of how much Kiswahili I actually know. Granted the health volunteers have been in country longer and are used to giving lectures on the material, but I never realized how many words I did not know. Thankfully I will probably only be called upon once more to give a lesson completely in Swahili, but I will not be quick to forget how much work my language skills actually need.
       Another highlight of the event was our "disco" on the last night. Unfortunately the power went out, but it didn't stop one of the volunteers from being the mobile DJ station and walking around the dance floor blaring music from his computer, one of the other volunteers from starting a huge conga line or us from dancing by candle light!
       So hopefully everyone has been enjoying the posts. Tomorrow will officially mark 9 months in country. Crazy how fast the time goes here... Oh! Also, a big warm Karibu (welcome) to the new class of ED PCTs who arrived a little over a week ago. Hope they are handling things well. On their fourth day in country they were dropped into their home stays (our class moved in after 2 weeks in country)... probably the most terrifying, but ultimately rewarding experiences during training.
       I hope everyone is well at home! America here I come! All my love from TZ.