Hannibal research col-Lecter

Our time here in Singida has been just flying by, in a relative fashion. We haven’t been severely ill since arriving, which is probably the main reason we’ve enjoyed our time here so much. Also, Betsy’s research is moving right along and it looks like phase two will be concluded this coming Wednesday already, kicking butt and taking names! During the course of collecting data, Betsy and I have come across different parts of Singida, which have just slightly amazed us; part bizarre and part completely awesome!
One of our first finds within “unique” Singida was the Curio-Cabinet Jesus. Down the road from our hotel, which has large concrete animals outside scattered about, there is a Catholic Nunnery. This particular compound is one of the nicer looking areas of Singida so we decided to investigate and to our delight they have a live-size concrete Jesus, contained within a glass enclosure (see pictures below)! One of the nuns saw us looking through the gate and offered to let us in to see the amazing concrete Jesus, they’re so proud of it. We’re also white so getting into enclosed and gated areas is somewhat easy around here.
Speaking of gates, here in Singida they employ a slightly more sinister way to protect their buildings than in Haydom, they implant broken bottles at the top of the walls as a kind of razor wire technique. I think it’s amazing the ingenuity of using the one resource they have which will cut people, glass. Since they don’t have access to many materials here, it’s definitely a good way to keep people out (see picture below).
We’ve also found the first city waste disposal system since we’ve been in Tanzania here. Singida, for a Tanzanian town, is relatively clean and litter free. Having been to many different towns prior to coming to Singida and finding them to be just covered in trash we have been wondering why there isn’t taka-taka (Swahili for trash) everywhere! Well, we finally found the reason, they actually have places you can deposit your trash and again, another reason we really like Singida. Apparently, they had widespread outbreak of cholera a few years ago, since then they place large trash receptacles around town (see picture below). It looks really ugly, at least in the places where they placed these things but it’s quite amazing that they do this and keeps the rest of the town relatively clean. I’m glad our hotel isn’t near one of these, they smell like death and people are always climbing around in them, yuck!
As some of you know, we have done some of the data collection at a local youth community center, which is funded by Outreach Africa and run by the local Catholic diocese. Every day they feed a large number (around 150) of the students who attend the Majengo Ward schools; these are the same schools we are doing data collection from. Our mission here was to interview the “street” kids who frequent the center for food. Of the seven street children, two of them their parents had passed away and the others were abandoned in near-by villages and have been scraping-by for the past few years. All of them were in pretty rough condition; all have severe vitamin A deficiency, pellagra, worms, one has jaundice and another has HIV. None of them have shoes so they’re constantly cutting their feet on the ground and one had a large gash on his head. After a little investigation he admitted that other kids tried fighting him because he lived on the street and one hit him in the head with a large rock! Anyway, sorry for being such a downer, they’re situation is just so sad though. After the interviews we went out and bought all of them sodas, which was literally the best thing in the world to them!
Speaking of vitamin A deficiency, an issue Betsy definitely won’t have, our hotel, the Stanley, serves liver and fava beans for breakfast. Betsy has, much to my, and probably many of your, amazement, is that she has a large plate of this every morning. I recently brought up the idea of forming a research assistant union (thank you Ryan Davis for the idea) which she quickly squashed. I’ve become increasingly scared of her lately; she seems to have picked up the taste of liver and can’t shake the addiction. Many mornings I find her standing over me saying, “It’s time for breakfast”. If only she had a nice bottle of Chianti in the morning to accompany her meal, I could call her Hannibal…
-Ryan