I have now been 5 weeks in Tanzania, where I do a practical training in a small social welfare office of one social worker. There are two other students from the University of Jyväskylä here with me, and we live in same house. The days in this training have been very varied, because some days the social worker only attends some meetings, some days we visit children’s homes or health centres, and some days we visit families or help visitors at the Social Welfare office. The social worker of the area is responsible of three municipalities, but she doesn’t seem to be stressed at all. That’s really different from the working culture of Finland. The vibe of the country and something the locals tell us over and over again is “polepole”, which means slowly. This also applies to the perception of time and the frustratingly inefficient way of doing things. So many things that have been done electronically in Europe for years are still done here by hand on paper. For example, opening a bank account for a client starts with helping her, (a person who can not read or write) to write a letter to the bank manager. Absurd, isn’t it?
In addition to our training, we have had time to hike, spend time with our neighbourhood’s kids and travel a bit. This area is full of world-famous national parks, and we live in the area of East Africa’s Great Rift Valley. We hope that towards the end of the training we will be able to go on a wildlife safari. For 5 days Easter break we took a bus to the capital city of Kenya, Nairobi, and were able to see another African country and the “Capital of Africa”, as the locals in Nairobi told us. In Nairobi we saw the second biggest slum in Africa, and here we can see poverty and human rights violations every day. The first week here was difficult, as everything felt so foreign and strange. But over time, I’ve started to get used to things. I cannot accept the customs and traditions of different tribes, but I understand that it is important to help them. The more people here could go to school, the faster the progress on female genital mutilation (for example) could go in a better direction. As the social worker told us, the progress is slow, but she believes it will happen.
The picture is from my window looking out on our street.
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