Outreach work and course completion!

My stay in Ireland has been so pleasant. I am very grateful to CDPC for awarding me this fellowship and making my training such a success.

I have been participating  in the CDPC's secondary school outreach programme. I really enjoyed this part of my work. I gave presentations to schools that were involved with the Development Issues - a course for Transition Year. This course is part of Ireland’s commitment to embedding development education in secondary schools. I gave workshops on HIV and AIDS to 9 different schools. I also liked the way that the secondary level students were exposed to research at university level. Some of these students came to conferences and the CDPC lecture series - I think this breaks down the barriers between second level and university! Also I had the opportunity to meet 6 groups of students that will be presenting projects at the BT Young Scientist exhibition in January 2010. These projects ranged from the study of the malaria genome, flower production in Africa, the comparison of life expectancy in Zambia and comparing it to that in Ireland, the production of a probiotic bar for people living with HIV and AIDS. Another project was examining the eradication of TB in Ireland. I wish these students well in the competition.

I really enjoyed this experience and hope that someday we will have the same competition in Tanzania. It was fascinating to see young Irish students thinking so much about the development issues facing Africa. It’s a credit to the Irish government that it encourages such interest among young people. The CDPC is doing excellent work in highlighting issues of poverty and the diseases of poverty, as part of its school outreach programme.

I successfully completed a post-graduate course in statistical analysis at Trinity College Dublin; the course covered basic and advanced concepts in quantitative methods including: variables, mean, mode, median, standard deviation, normal distribution, probability, sampling, skewness, kurtosis, sampling, hypothesis testing and t-tests. Furthermore, I conducted focused work on qualitative methodologies, including ethnographic study design and styles of qualitative interviewing.

In my tutorial on advanced social theory I conducted detailed readings in development and anthropology, including focused work on the history of neoliberal ideology in different global settings, problems faced in centralized planning of development initiatives, Africa’s place in contemporary critiques of globalization and cultural identities within a global hierarchy of value.

I participated in various workshops ranging from History and Challenges of TB, Phylogenetics & Justice: HIV Infection at the Intersection of Science and Law, HIV Forensics: from the Lab to the Courtroom, Investigating HIV Transmission: a Molecular Approach, Postconstructivist/feminist Debates on "Materiality" and the Ethnography of an HIV clinic in Guguletu (Cape Town); all of them were hosted by CDPC. Another workshop was on HIV/AIDS, Livelihood and Hunger and it was hosted by the Irish Aid.

As a capstone to my training and fellowship I participated as a featured lecturer in an all-day Development Studies workshop focused on problems of gender and development conducted with post-graduate students at NUI Maynooth. I gave a presentation to the Masters students on Women Empowerment in Tanzania. I highlighted on gender inequalities in Tanzania, initiatives done by the government and challenges faced in empowering women.