Wednesday October 11, 2006

Today the kids were a little wound up. I brought a Frisbee with me and they loved it!! It only lasted a few minutes before it landed on the roof of the church next door. They liked the hokey pokey but it gets chaotic very quickly. Norbert and Philbert are twins they are so bad but very funny.  Joesaphinna is so beautiful with her big brown eyes. Things here are so surreal. The view of Mt. Meru out of the tiny window in my African school room, I can hardly believe I am here. I love all of the children so much and I’ve only known them for two days. After lunch we went to the market in Tengeru. The village has created the market for the women. The women of the village have become the primary source of income for most of the families around. The father s are either sick, dead, or in the bars somewhere. So the women are stuck with no way to make money. The market is only for women vendors.

 

Thursday October 12, 2007

The kids were out of control this morning. They were fighting, and then crying because they were fighting. One of the kids, Norbert, cut his foot and was bleeding everywhere. I had to clean and bandage it. That was a little scary considering that none of these kids have had their HIV tests. We read them Dr. Seuss and they liked it for a while but they have such short attention spans. After lunch we went to St. Lucia Nursing Home. It’s a place for orphans living with HIV/AIDS. They also have rooms for adults that have been shunned from their families because of the disease. Four of the girls are volunteering there. This was a very difficult trip. There are around 15 kids there. They are split into two rooms with three to a bed. The adults are all in one room with two beds, with one woman on the floor. She has been there, on the floor, for two years. She is extremely delusional and just lays there completely helpless. There is no government funding for the home so the conditions are very poor. A local doctor came and gave us a lecture on the reasons for the HIV/AIDS crisis in the area. The majority of the people contract it heterosexually. Some mother to child and a minimal amount through drugs and other things. The men of the families will leave for months at a time to work in the tanzanite mines. With the wages they earn while they are away from home they go into the cities to pay for sex. The women who are prostituting themselves have no other choice, they are starving. They also get paid more if they don’t use protection. So then the men go home to their wives and families and pass on the disease. The men will usually get sick and die before their wives. As a result the women are left alone and diseased. This is just one of the situations; there is also the infected Masai community. The Masai warrior tribes are known for their ceremonial circumcisions. This is performed on the men and women in groups of about thirty. They use the same dirty knives on every one, spreading HIV as they go. The female circumcision (female genitalia mutilation) is now illegal but is still practiced secretly. It is very hard to change the ways of these ancient tribes. They have been doing things the same way for so long. There are people in the tribes who are fighting for more rights for the women. Today was sad and gave me a lot to think about. One of the women at St. Lucia spoke with us about what it’s like living with HIV/AIDS in Africa. She contracted it from her husband before he died. Her entire family has shunned her and she has been alone for the last ten years. She said that her only friends now are the ones like her. It was so hard to hear her story and not burst onto tears. I think we all cried at one point today. I think whoever coined the phrase “emotional rollercoaster” must have been somewhere in Africa. It’s difficult to grasp that in a place filled with so much beauty, that there can be so much ugliness.

Sunday October 22, 2006

I can’t believe it’s our third week already. The time has gone so fast. I miss home but there are things here that are left undone. I wish I had more time with my kids, I feel that I haven’t done much with them. I have ideas that would work in my school but not enough time to do them. I will try to share them this week or pass them on to the other volunteers. Erica and I met with a woman named Donna today who lives in Arusha. She came here as a volunteer a few years ago. During her placement she met a man, fell in love, and moved to the village. They own a safari company which some of the proceeds go to a Masaai school they sponsor. We met with her to ask her questions about starting up a scholarship program back home. We want to sponsor Erica’s school (Meru Peak) and start a non-profit. She gave us a lot of information and was very welcoming. She’s surrounded by men and boys all the time, I think she enjoyed the afternoon with us. She will be our advisor here if we have any questions while we try to get this organization started. It is my last week at the school and I want to try to get things done. We have Tuesday and Wednesday off for the end of Ramadan. This makes for a very short week; I will miss them so much. As crazy as they are they will be forever in my heart.

 

Wednesday October 25, 2006

No school again today, so Erica and I went to the orphanage with some of the other volunteers. There are 25 children at this orphanage. They are all orphans that have lost their parents due to AIDS. The youngest one is four weeks and the oldest is six or seven. It’s a lot of work to run this place, without the volunteers I don’t know how it could be done. Some of the little ones still have fathers but they are unable to care for them. The families have the option to take them back when they turn seven. Although at most of the orphanages in the area after the kids turn 14 they can’t stay anymore. If they have no families to go to then they will end up on the streets. One day while we were in the city we walked past a kid lying in the street. As I walked by I could see that he was crying with his hand held out begging for change. I’ll never forget the look on his face and it ripped my heart out to just keep walking. You can’t just give them money; all that does is add to the problem. You can’t walk around in a city like this and just throw money at them. If you want to help you have to give something sustainable to the community. If you give one of them money today, tomorrow there will be two. Anyways back at the orphanage when the 14 little ones wake up they all need a bath and a change of clothes. So the four volunteers have to do all of that while the two mamas get their porridge ready. When we fed them they all got rice and beans, even the four month old babies. They’re so hungry that they eat it, but their little bodies can’t digest it so it comes back up. After that they get a small cup of porridge. It’s so hard to give some of these babies this food that they shouldn’t be eating. At Erica’s school they give them porridge at the end of the day and its heart breaking to know that it’s the only meal that they will get all day. At my school we don’t feed them and you can see their hair turning yellow from malnutrition. After they eat at the orphanage they play outside and then they go down for a nap. It was exhausting and I was only there one day for four hours. After lunch we organized a community clean up. All of the volunteers split up throughout the area and picked up trash. The children around the village started to help as we went along. It was good to see them getting involved. Other people in the community chipped in as well. It was a small step but as Zik said “Rome was not built in a day.

Africa: Orientation

Today we had orientation it was mostly talking about the people the country, rules, expectations for ourselves and for them. We talked a lot about health issues and diseases and our placements. Next we did what is called a community drop-off, Nana and I had to find the public water supply and find out how it works. So here is the deal the water supply is in 2 medium towers, they have to pay 30 cents a bucket, the water is pumped in at 11am and they usually run out about 11:45. The homes have no plumbing, no electricity, no phone, doors, windows, etc. They are shells with a dirt floor basically. The women mostly stare-at us and do not speak English...but this boy Daniel really, really helped and would look through our Swahili book and try to explain the system to us, he spoke some English. This sweet old man came up to us and said" what is the problem" so we explained and chatted.. his wife was a teacher that passed, but she used to work with mama simba, he worked in horticulture for Swiss company exporting roses, which happens to be a huge business here. What an amazing country, everything is so simple yet so hard and harsh. Africans do not like to lose face and they are very blunt, but respectful at the same time, this is a very hard place..here is how the community works, every 10 houses forms a community with a elder, then every 4 lots of 10 houses is a village, 4-6 villages in a region, then 4-6 regions forms a county, then on and on..I asked about not seeing any pregnant women and the thing is that they do not talk about it because it is bad luck and the women hide their bellies, then after when the baby is born then it is a huge celebration, it is raining now I bet they are happy there is a huge drought!

Africa: Teaching    

I taught class today for the first time, it went really well but I kind of ran out of things to do with 45 minutes to go. It was like my mind went blank...Planning is a definite and going through new things each day. I also believe it is important for the kids to color and draw; really they are only 3-6 years old. I wasn't doing what they are at 3 or 6...Break time is my favorite mostly we just walk around, jump rope (literally a rope) play soccer with 2 flat balls. Then it is time to eat porridge, for some kids this is the only meal they will get today..so they keep going back for seconds until it runs out, but there is never enough. At home we had dinner then casama a maassai warrior came to talk to us..So he is all about women's rights, in his tribe women's only purpose is breeding and the men usually have many wives. Each wife has their own house which they build themselves; it is so crazy they just have no rights. Casama is trying to change that , he started a maassai store that is ran by only women, this store offers loans to women and he is trying to help them get an education, In Tanzania girls are not sent to school most families can barely afford to send the boys..he wants no more female circumcision (which is illegal but is still done) They do it so that the women cannot enjoy sex, the men get circumcised in groups using the same knife and if they scream they are an outcast for life, in order to be a warrior they must learn how to fight, and run, and kill! They are amazing people yet set way back and under educated.

Africa: My first day at school    

Meru peak day care is amazing, with 2 small rooms and a office with supplies for the principle (Ungali) and Baba Juma. The kids are 3-7 and they are broken up into 2 groups, older and younger. They are so cute and snotty (every kid has a runny nose, no Kleenex is sight) and adorable yet mean, ha ha. They fight with each other, yell, scream and then the next minute they're hugging and holding hands. With me they love to hug, hold my hand, kiss, and touch my hair and skin.

Africa: Field trips!!    

Today we are taking the kids on their first ever field trip, we rented a bus and packed them a lunch and went to snake farm...This place was out far in the middle of nowhere..I swear to god the motion sickness is so hard to explain. The roads are just cut through the forest, there are ditches and slide offs, and creeks in the middle of the road and we are trying to climb a mountain in a bus with 50 screaming kids. But they love it and they ran and played and looked at snakes, and crocs, and birds, and they were just amazed. We took pictures and laughed.. We gave them bananas and jelly sandwiches for lunch and water. Baba Juma told me later that the parents of the kids were so grateful which really made me feel good. Considering they are the poorest of the poor and never would have been able to go. Every time i picture them in my head i just think how cut and amazing! So my day went from so great to so hard and sad, we went to St. Lucia. It is an AIDS/HIV orphanage and hospice. We met the kids and some of the people staying there, all of these people have HIV and they just had a death yesterday..We talked about the stigma attached with AIDS in Africa, about the help that is not there and how the problem is ignored. Especially in South Africa where 2 out of 5 people have HIV but they now just started to offer the medicine in the hospitals, but the government can spend 5 billion dollars on a space program, stupid! In Tanzania just about 1 out of 5 people have HIV/AIDS, but there is no difference here between the two. HIV is not full blown, but AIDS is, here they don't understand that it is just a death sentence. Their friends and families just outcast them if they find out anyone has it, they won't even touch them. There is just no sugar coating it, we met a lady who told us her story and it broke my heart, after that i was done. It just shocked me and I had nothing to say, all i saw in her was just pain and bewilderment. She will die soon and she knows it, but she can do nothing about it but just wait for death to come and take her.. Her husband was cheating on her! Here is some cultures if your husband dies you are inherited by your brother in law as his wife, and the cause of death for anyone is never AIDS, they say oh..he died of TB, or malaria, but never AIDS. This women's family in law just blamed her for his death, they kicked her out and she lost her job, and now has no home. Her daughter will only talk to her sometimes and lives very far away, but then she would smile and say akuna matata ( which means no worries in Swahili) I swear that is what makes me love these people! Africa has claws it grabs ahold of you, I will be back, I want to help, not just for them but for me as well!!