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We had in-service training at Njombe. This was my first time to that area and I will say it is beautiful. If you are ever in Njombe get the Provolone Cheese at the Duka la Maziwa- pretty good for Tanzanian made cheese. Doesn't exactly taste like Provolene but is better than their other cheeses and is good on pizza (better than the Njombe Mozzerella)! Stock up if you have a freezer, if you don't I think if you are in a cold enough climate it should keep. The Duka la Maziwa is a project between the Njombe district and some Italian NGOs. So if you ever visit that region and you are white, you will be greeted with a chorus of 'Ciao'. A good place to eat pizza that was close by to the Nazareth Youth Center was the A.R.M. Hotel. The Youth Center (where we stayed) was beautiful and nice hot water showers with good pressure..better than mine. They also had rosemary growing!

Besides that training was tiring and long but it was good to see people and to have information on Girls Empowerment, Gardening, and HIV/AIDS. The highlights of training for me were Girls Empowerment, teaching about HIV at a local elementary school, and learning about Permaculture. But the best part of course was seeing everyone from training! For fun we had a Murder Mystery dinner, picnic at a waterfall nearby, PCV brewed wine, and nightly game/movie nights (using the projector or cramming in someone's room).

We did an exercise about HIV/AIDS and it is interesting to see how religious Tanzanians are compared to Americans. They are certainly more religious and don't believe in condoms but they believe in abstinence or being faithful..though in reality most do not practice that in Tanzania..at least from what I have seen. I don't know if the belief in not using condoms stemmed from the fact that the Pope visited and declared condoms ineffective or because they actually believed that. And they also believed that HIV was created in a lab in America. But some of the more biologically educated Tanzanians did not believe such things, but the rest of the educated ones did. Certainly our viewpoints did not agree, I accept that they have different beliefs but that does not mean I agree with them. The funny thing is that they learn about HIV and prevention (birth control) in their equivalent of high school but they don't believe in it; though I guess it is like learning evolutionary theory in biology in the States and some religions in America not believing in that either. Now let us talk about the Pope and his decree that condoms are ineffective. Though I see his point in that abstinence and being faithful are the keys to prevention and not condoms, that is not the reality in Tanzania at least. In Tanzania you see poor girls you can't pay for school fees preyed on by older man who can give them money, you sometimes even see martial affairs being acceptable. So before the Pope makes such a decree I advise him to first see the state of affairs in a country, you can't change culture but you can prevent disease.