Lazy Beans

In Tanzania Peace Corps we have three different sectors of which people volunteer in; Secondary Education with emphasis in math and sciences, Health Education with focus on HIV/AIDS, and environmental volunteers. I have told my fellow volunteers in other sectors that I don’t think that I would have been able to stay here for two years in their sectors because their jobs are ambiguous and their role is driven by their communities; which in many cases resulting in volunteers being targeted by people looking for easy money. I thank God for my students, if it weren’t for them I think my frustrations with the administration, corrupt community leaders, and the bureaucracies of the government school system it would have driven me out of this country; their role in my work here has driven me near the edge of insanity, but believing in education and the drive of my students have kept me grounded with composure.

Since arriving at Mzumbe I have been working with our HIV/AIDS club at our school in different capacities. I teach them lessons from our Peace Corps life skills manual, provide updated data and facts to my best ability, and distribute magazines that deal with the issues of HIV/AIDS that are provided by Peace Corps. This year I started a service learning project with my students motivated by their desire to be better informed and to be educators to their peers. They guided the project from observing the needs in our community and what our goals are for the club. They found local doctors at the Mzumbe University Hospital to facilitate a two day seminar to train HIV/AIDS peer educators. They worked with the doctors and provided goals and objectives to the facilitators while making a schedule for the two day training. The students wrote many parts of the grant that we received to pay for our facilitators and other necessities for the two day training. The students owned the project, it was theirs and that was my favorite part of managing this event.

The week before the training was to take place I got really sick and diagnosed with bronchitis pneumonia. I was in Dar es Salaam with the Peace Corps medical staff up until the Thursday prior to our Friday-Saturday Training. I had asked one of the facilitators to make some copies for the training because I was worried I was not going to get released to go back to site. I explained to our medical staff at Peace Corps that I needed to get back to my site for our training because people had to be paid and I was the one who the grant was under. I got released in time to get back Thursday night, in time for our training the next day. We had invited 10 students from three other neighborhood secondary schools, and had 35 students from Mzumbe participating so our training provide education to 65 Tanzanian students with the goal they would be peer educators in their respective schools and communities. During the training I monitored the activities and made sure topics kept moving with the schedule and food was prepared and delivered on time. I was pleased with the work the facilitators did and the students seamed to take a lot of good information from the training, which was transparent from our pre-test/post-test results.

During one of the sessions I heard the doctor talking of ‘lazy beans’ and was curies on what topic he was talking of. I was worried that maybe there was an outbreak of lazy beans that I needed to know about; if one eats these beans do they become lazy? By eating lazy beans can one acquire HIV? If we have lazy beans today could we have lazy tomatoes, corn, onions, or lazy bananas tomorrow? But as I listened in to the doctor these ‘lazy beans’ were a group of women who are sexually attracted to other women, a mere mispronunciation. I was relived; I don’t have to worry that my idle beans sitting in my pantry will become ‘lazy beans’ after all.

At the end of the second day the one of the doctor/facilitator dropped the inevitable bomb. I had a bad feeling from the start of working with this man that he was going to try and exploit the training and get more money then we had mutually agreed upon. After paying him for his facilitating fee he asked to be reimbursed for making copies, which was appropriate for him to do so. He asked for 100,000 TSH ($80 US) for the 260 copies he made! When I asked him for the receipt he said it was done for him on credit, most likely printed from his office at the hospital or his home printer. He already had a copy of the grant that we had written which clearly showed that we had a total of 15,000 TSH allocated for making all of our needed copies. I was beside myself at the audacity of this doctor to try and charge me the American (In his eyes we all have unlimited amount of money at our disposal) 10 times the local price. I felt insulted, I am volunteering my time in Tanzania for 2 years and here is a local doctor who drives a SUV who lies to my face and hoping I am unaware to his ploy. Him fully aware of our funding I asked him, where he thought I would come up with the money for this charge it being half the amount of money I get a month for my living allowance? I pulled out my wallet and showed him the only 5000 TSH I had and mockingly asked him, do you want me to eat this week? He TOOK THE MONEY and left!

He had full right to be reimbursed for any charges he occurred for making the copies but his lack of integrity infuriated me; being a Doctor a person well-off and valued member in the community I hoped him to be more honest. After discussing the circumstance with my neighbors and fellow teachers I came to learn he wasn’t as respected in the community as I thought and was known for operating in fraudulent schemes in the past. Another lesson to me that corruption has infiltrated Tanzanians and most sectors of commerce in Tanzania.