that's a wrap

Hallelujah, or alhamdullilah, as they say in Arabic and Swahili, the research of my summer intership is done. Sera, my research colleague/mentor/boss left Pemba yesterday, so she can't force me to do any work anymore. At least not until she gets home and she can email me again.

I celebrated last night by having a "date" with Justin: we stayed home and hung out with each other after Juma went to bed, and I didn't do any work. Yeah, that's about as good as it gets for us here in Pemba. Almost every Friday night since we've been here I've spent doing school or research work.

There's not much else to do. Can't go visiting because the mosquitoes are out. There' s no TV at our place. There is a movie theater in town, but it shows nothing but Hindi musicals and American B-movies. We don't have a babysitter anyway. I wasn't even smart enough to bring any books along that are just for fun, diversionary purposes. (When I explained the dire siutation to Sera she lent me A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson, which is hilarious and appropriately diversionary.)

My weeks of research seems at this point to have been pretty successful. I formally interviewed 36 women, and informally interviewed many others. I organized focus group discussions with an additional 15 people, and did lots of traveling around the island, observations in hospitals and pharmacies, and even was interviewed on a talkshow for Zanzibar TV.

That was totally random. Here's the story: I went to a wedding a couple of weeks ago, and at one of the women's parties I was noticed by a woman who produces for TV Zanzibar (Tee Vee Zed). She apparently asked around about me, and being the only mzungu in town who dresses like a local (I'll explain later), and the only one who has a white kid named Juma, she found out about me pretty easily.

So a couple days after the wedding I'm walking home from the hospital through the market, and a woman stops me. "Are you the one who does research about pregnant women? About pica?" (Actually, the information got confused with Sera's work, which is on pica in pregnancy [cravings for non-food items like uncooked rice, soil, starch, chalk, etc]). "I want to interview you on TV." And she gave me she spiel about how it will help educate women and make the research easier, etc. I told her it was Sera she wanted, not Sarah, so they set up a date for an TV interview, and I was invited along. The interview happened yesterday, as a little finishing touch to our research.

We spoke entirely in Swahili, which was a little dauting, and also a little confidence-building, since I managed well enough. I'm going to try to get a video of the broadcast, but they have to send the unedited tape to Unguja to edit, etc. Hopefully the broadcast will help a few people become a little more educated on anemia and pica, and how they can treat anemia. (It is as of yet unsettled whether or not pica is helpful or harmful during pregnancy. It might actually protect the fetus.)

This is actually the second time I'll have appeared on TVZ, the first time when I played in the opening game of the Pemba basketball tournament and met the president's wife. Yes, Zanzibar is that small that such things make it on TV.
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Juma and Justin are also fine. Juma's Swahili is picking up, and he's even putting phrases together is new ways. Not necessarily correctly, but it means he's "getting it." He has maybe the Swahili vocab of a two-year old kid. Stop that! Hey you! Come here. Milk. Water. I want two cookies. Take this. Stuff like that. He's also acting like a Swahili kid, and is willingly taking on more responsibilities, as he sees befitting a four-year old. For example, today I told him he needed water, so he volunteered to get it at the shop. I gave him 1000 shillings (less than a dollar), and went to the closest shop (attached to the house, but around the corner nonetheless) to buy it. He returned triumphantly with the water and some change, though the shop guy had taken an extra 100 shillings for the water. Oh well. Juma was happy.