July 8th

My first day at the CARE offices went rather well. Everyone I've met so far has been really nice. I'm still stumbling over Swahili greetings, but everyone just finds this amusing. The word for welcome is 'Karibu,' but Tanzanians use it a lot more often than an English speaker would use 'welcome.' They tend to use it anytime you enter a room or they want you to come closer or when they want to offer you something. Hawa says it a lot to me, I think because it's one of the few words I understand. The proper response to a “Karibu!” is “asante” (thank you). There are other parts of the greeting sequence I'm still trying to figure out. There's no real equivalent to 'hello' which is what I really want to say to people. Oh well.

I met my supervisor, Edson, this morning and he took me around the office complex. Most of the buildings are small, with 3-4 offices in each building. It looks like CARE Tanz started small and then expanded slowly over the years. I think the best part was when he introduced me to the head of the Women and Girl's Empowerment program. Like everyone else, she was very pleased to meet me, but she confessed that she and Edson fought over who was going to get me as an intern. This made me laugh. Edson also spent part of the morning trying to find me a desk to work on, but wound up having to order one when no one had a spare.

I spent most of the day reading various reports and handbooks that Edson piled in front of me on CARE in general and the Governance division specifically. The governance program wants to promote “greater participation, transparency and accountability to planning.” This is a big task, but first everyone at CARE has to be on the same page. My internship will cover mostly internal work: ensuring that when CARE staff say they are “promoting good governance” they all mean the same thing. Edson made me a list of things that he wants me to help with while I'm here:

1. Edit existing draft governance materials
2. Assist in designing, developing and editing new governance materials
3. Assist in developing the governance information dissemination plan
4. Participate and assist in conducting governance capacity building events
5. Participate and assist in developing CARE Tanzania's governance programming strategy

I think that's a good amount of work to get done in two months :)