Hit Below the Branch

“Tanzania Bila Ukimwi Inawezekana. Kapime.”

I can’t help but giggle at the stereotypical-raised-fist politician photo of President Kikwete beneath this bold headline, proclaiming, “Tanzania without AIDS is possible. Test.” After pingpongballing between the District Medical Officer and District AIDS Coordinator in the typical bureaucracy of responsibility shifting, I managed to secure for our team unlimited free testing reagents, several testers and counselors, and 200 such National Testing Campaign posters, onto which we have scrawled the details of our HIV Testing Day on Saturday: “Pima Ukimwi Bure! (Free HIV Testing): August 18th 2007, Arusha Stadium, 10:30 am – 3:30 pm” (http://www.arushatimes.co.tz/local_news_2.htm)

After forty-eight classroom workshops, one Student Leader Conference, and endless hours of non-stop project talk – strategically among ourselves and commercially to everyone we meet (i.e. we have secured a free DJ all day after dancing onstage at last week’s Nanenane festival) - our team speeds into this pre-Event week on a wave of enthusiasm, pulling each other up as we have our moments of exhaustion, dividing and conquering the responsibilities and putting in admirable extra efforts for not only the Event to succeed, but for the entire team to be a part of this success. We each know from experience, but are learning daily here in Arusha, that sharing the load not only makes the work more enjoyable for all, but more effective and far-reaching than one could imagine.

Take for example the treasured friendship cultivated with Edward Selasini of The Arusha Times back in June, which has now blossomed into a programme partnership. Selasini, also linking us to AJAAT, spent 4 hours with our students at their Conference last Saturday mentoring young writers on AIDS coverage. In addition to publishing more student articles this Saturday and on a regular basis, Selasini assists us now without even asking, securing BBC Radio, The Guardian, Star TV, and pointing us to TVT (National television), all of who are now excited to cover the event.

My dear Dr. Tekle and Baptista, treasured Tanzanian uncles, suggest lists of potential local sponsors, and we pursue them fearlessly. For our students and volunteers, Pepsi will provide drinks, the local Lions Club a free lunch. The Rotary Club will fund the sound equipment, and Vodacom throws us 200 free t-shirts. Discounts are offered on tent rentals and shirt printing, and I am pleasantly surprised by the amount that can be accomplished when you trust your teammates to get the job done, and do not try to do everything solo. We were of course rejected and ignored by many sponsors, but we are undoubtedly better off for having faced the challenge. We have built our constituency alongside and in support of CHAWAKUA, the local NGO who trained us and who we are working with to carry on the programme upon our departure.

Nearly collapsed here at the hostel in my crumpled white button up shirt (that, like all my clothes, I haven’t properly washed in months) and backwards Vodacom baseball cap, I feel like a child basking in the warmth of yuletide anticipation; I am exhausted yet excited, I have much to do yet feel so fulfilled. Despite the long days of ‘work’ and individual challenges, of which there have been many to overcome, even our difficulties feel beautifully choreographed into a greater expression of growth and gain.

Borrowing extensively from camp counselor experience and reflections on my parents’ child-rearing techniques, I tend to cut to the chase with my volunteers. I realize in this role that it may lighten the load to share the work, but if communication ever breaks down, so will the team. So if someone expresses to me a concern about or annoyance with someone else, the necessary confrontation is held. With such a short time frame and such lofty goals I see no time for secrets, for dishonesty, or for pretending. Instead of tiptoeing around potential issues, I have tried to create an atmosphere and expectation that issues will be addressed as they arise and not left to simmer, lest they silently poison the work we have come together to do.

We can’t, after all, be hypocrites about our work, something that my continuously sharpened vision sees more of as the Event approaches and the Programme finishes up. If I am going to be encouraging discussion of and attention to one’s sexual health, if I am to field endless questions that reflect an unanswered curiosity, if I am to demand that maintaining health is not only a necessary personal commitment, but a statement of responsible citizenship, then who am I to endlessly put off doctor’s appointments in NYC, “too busy” to have check-up for things that ‘don’t necessarily pain me at the moment anyway. Why should I expect anyone to heed my health warnings if I am to continue childishly feigning an impossible invincibility?

Leaning back in a metal chair on the slick cement floor of Sekei Secondary, one of our higher language barriered schools, Alphayo has just chalked up his thoughts on the ‘cycle of stigma’ that we ask students to develop. As with the HIV/AIDS factual curriculum, most students can talk easily and fully about the dangers of stigma, but I wonder, my mind trailing from work in Ghana, how can students communicate and demonstrate their ideas in the community?

Alphayo sighs and comments under his breath, “Ukitaka kukata mti lazima ukate shinani.”

“Tena? (again?)” I ask, curious.

He repeats, attempting to explain the Kiswahili proverb in English terms. “ If you want to cut down a tree,” he motions, “and you cut the branches, it will just grow back. “ Eyes characteristically wide, he makes a large, low sweep with his arm, “You have to cut from the roots.”

Brilliant. I scribble his words fiercely into my battered notebook, folded notes and schedules stuffed in random pages, his wisdom now nestled into my orderly chaos. His words cling tightly to my brain and I wonder if we are cutting at branches or roots throughout last Saturday’s Conference, and through our KUVA Programme as a whole.

Again at Sekei, at our final session, our suave Shabani offers his guidance as he explains, “We Africans, a majority of us, our fathers and mothers don’t want to talk to children about sexual health. They fear that it will lead the child starting to make sexual intercourse.”

I want to interrupt and assure him that We Americans are just as guilty, but I let him complete his thoughts:

“Last Saturday you have done not just a small thing, you did something different. You decided to let us do dramas, singing…we have to make people understand easily – just a speech is not good – these dramas and songs will simplify things easily” Heads nod and voices buzz in agreement, and I am overwhelmed with relief that perhaps, even if we’re not at the root, we’re hitting below the branch.

“Now we can use this knowledge you gave us and educate our parents, to sit down and talk, not only parents, but our community,” he finishes, and we shift immediately into the students’ roles and responsibilities they would like to assume on Saturday. Alphayo’s eyes shine wider, full moon luminosity, when we tell him his slogan has been printed across the back of our KUVA shirts.

Thinking increasingly about East Village life as Tanzania time winds down, I laugh when I realize how much time I have spent branch cutting in the past year. Surely I am proud of my accomplishments and work, academic and professional, but not proud of the ‘too busy’ attitude I often employed in order to accomplish some of it. Who did I think I was fooling, keeping busy chopping away at short term solutions, looking busy by doingdoingdoing instead of reflecting, thinking, planning.

Branch whacking, rushing to solve a problem, means insufficient time to explore the issue’s real root. The KUVA Programme we have created, the HIV testing Day we will host, they may not be the roots, but they are designed to point people in the right direction, below the branch. Perhaps if we can overcome the stigmatization of HIV Testing, we can also begin to overcome the stigmatization of HIV positive people, a task for which the provision of medical services and the correction of social misconceptions are mutually necessary. HIV testing entwines these aspects in a measurable manner, and both goals require togetherness, an approach that, as Shabani insists, will “make people understand easily” (in which I feel an implication of honesty, comfort, security). Regarding the AIDS crisis, with such a short time frame and with such lofty goals, I see no time for secrets, for dishonesty, or for pretending.


Though we will leave the grounds on Saturday with a number of youth tested, it is not exact numbers but general community approval that has become my measuring stick of success on this short-term project. Here in this place and timeframe I am unable to compile meaningful monitoring and evaluation statistics that are the products of only thoughtful long-term investments. I ask the students if we made the right choice by using Alphayo’s words as our slogan, as they laughed (in surprise, amusement or appreciation? I hope all three) at our choice to conduct the entire day – including t-shirts – in Kiswahili. Ernestina looks up and smiles, “Yes.”

“Kwanini? (why?)”

“The people will know that we are doing good work.”

Far from my self that seeks an “A+” across papers and words of praise from professors, I have found work whose system of evaluation is far more fulfilling than a letter or a compliment. My indicators are not precise, as human opinions never quite are, but I am satisfied. Two days till short-run-showtime, and if at the least we are giving our Arusha peers an opportunity to share their expertise – through word, drama, song, art, sport – I believe we will have taken an admirable swing at the base of the tree.