Week One: Organizational Structure at Pippi House Foundation

Weekly Reflection 1: Organizational Culture

Sunday June 24, 2018

I have just completed my first full week at Pippi House in Arusha, Tanzania, and there are many nuanced things that I have noticed about the organizational culture of the organization. There are many norms that the women and children seem to follow. First and foremost, the way that that everyone dresses is an important norm that everyone follows. No one is allowed to show their shoulders or knees, no matter how hot it is outside. This rule holds true for all citizens of Arusha (and maybe even all of Tanzania). It is a cultural difference from the United States, and I was aware of this before I came to this country. There are interesting leadership dynamics at my organization. I was told that there are 77 people living at Pippi House, but I have never seen more than 25-30 people at a time in my day-to-day experience there. I think many of the women or kids leave to go to school, and others are gone visiting family or working during the day. I don’t know what criteria is used to determine which women leave and which women stay for the days. There is a cooking schedule- each woman is assigned to a day of the week and for that day she must cook all the meals. There is somewhere between 10 and 15 children that stay in Pippi House all day, and after spending a full week with them, I’m still not sure which child belongs to which woman. I spent some time talking to a twelve year old girl whose parents don’t live in Pippi House at all. The family dynamics are still unclear to me at this point, but all of the kids know all of the women, and they are like one big family. Any of the women can reprimand any of the children, and they work together to care for the babies. My site supervisor Aristides is the man in charge of Pippi House, and there is also a younger man who is the “producer.” Aristides is not always present, but I can tell that the women and children in Pippi House love and respect him. When he says something, they listen or they laugh. He takes care of the administrative side of things. Pippi House has opened a recording studio, and they can make musical recordings or music videos for customers to try and raise some income for the cost of rent. Aristides and the producer are the only men that come to Pippi House which makes for some interesting gender dynamics. In Tanzania, there is an expectation that women get married and have children at a young age. The women in Pippi House are exceptions to this rule—a lot of them have children, but they are not married. Although I do not know each of their individual stories of how they ended up at Pippi House yet, many of them have been through abuse, trafficking, rape, poverty, or homelessness. They haven’t lived up to what their culture expects of them as women, and Pippi House is a safe space for them to live, dream, and learn together as a community. There are certain things that the women need to learn that require more attention to others—things like pediatric health, sexual health, human physiology, and HIV/AIDS education. I know they have had lessons on HIV/AIDS contraction and testing, but I don’t know how much else they have been taught on the other matters. I hope that during my time at this organization I can start a few initiatives or teach seminars regarding some of the other matters if its ok with Aristides. These topics are rather taboo and inappropriate to talk about in a casual setting in this culture, but I hope that since Pippi House is a safe space and these women have already been through sexual misconduct, that I can speak to them about the safe and healthy ways of handling such things. My role as a volunteer in this organization is still a little bit unclear in terms of the overall organization. I know there have been other volunteers in the past, and some of them are only around for a few days or one week. I think after this next week the women will start to trust me and open up to me more once they realize I will be here for a relatively long time.