Iced Coffee and Neema Orphanage.

I have finally caught up on my blog posts! Hooray! This is a pretty exciting day for me. I haven’t taken a nap today (Mama Becca was proud J) AND I caught up on my posts! So the weekend really wasn’t eventful. My roommates and I used it to rest and prepare for this week. We did, however, run to Unique Batik and to the Coffee Shop. We got our pants and then got coffee at the Coffee Shop next door. Kira and I got choccochinos and Becca got an iced latte. Initially we were a little worried about the ice, but it ended up being totally fine. Becca asked the man at the counter if the ice was okay and it was made out of Kilimanjaro bottled water so it was sawa sawa. We went to the garden section of the coffee shop, which was just a lush area with beautiful plants and quaint tables. Sunday we relaxed, ate and spent time napping and preparing to go to our placements again on Monday. I drew a lot of children from all around the world so we could teach countries and nationalities J The pictures ended up really cute and it was fun to teach the kids on Monday. Despite the fact that I had six criers this day, it was a pretty good day overall and I felt like the children learned some good things. We also had a lawyer come and talk to us about women and children’s rights in Tanzania on Monday evening. Her talk mainly focused on gender as a facet of relationships and the rights women and children have in society. It was interesting to hear that women have a lot of legal rights, but aren’t actually being given these rights in society.

            Today (Tuesday) was an interesting day because we went to placement and then we visited Neema Orphanage. Placement went really well today! We were able to teach a lot of new things and to keep the kids engaged the entire day. We also got to visit Angella’s house today. She is one of my favorite students – she is very cute, bright and spunky. She reminds me of the way I was when I was little! She lives very close to the school with her grandmother and her grandfather. They both were very welcoming and nice when we went to see her home. She has a a very small house with a couple of rooms. We sat outside near the entrance to her house and met her grandma and grandpa. She was very shy and quiet while we were there, which was both cute and amusing to see because she is very outgoing in the classroom. Afterward she held my hand as we walked back to school and we finished the day with songs and mathematics. Joan taught mathematics as I sat in the back and monitored the back few rows of children. We also went and saw a lot of pigs that were living in stilted wooden crates. The stilts were there because of the water level. If it flooded (which it often does) the pigs would not get wet or swept away and the pigs’ excrement would be swept away with the water. The pigs were very dirty and it smelled awful, (or offal awful as Joan said), so we were eager to leave the pig area.

            After lunch today we went to visit Neema Orphanage. This orphanage is quite far away – about a half hour drive from the Home Base. On the way there we stopped at the grocery store and we each got something for the children and the nuns at the orphanage. When we finally got there we had to go through giant gates that were being guarded. Once inside we saw that there were very large and nice buildings in this area, and that it was well groomed. When we first got there we signed the visitor book and the main nun came and spoke to John in Swahili and told him that she was too tired to give us an introduction. We smiled and continued on our way. Here there are three sets of orphans that are divided by age group.  The first group consists of 7 one to two year olds and they live in the lower building. There were only three of them in the building today due to illness and sleeping. There was also a young girl that was both physically and mentally handicapped. Becca, Kira and I came to this part of the orphanage last – the babies were being fed and they had already seen most of the people from our volunteer group already. The babies were very complacent, similar to the other kids in the orphanage. They all seemed very quiet and content.

The second group consisted of 1-2 year olds. There were about 9 kids in this age group. We spent time with this group first. We played outside on the yellow swing set and merry-go-round where the kids were sitting.  The eldest group (the 2-3 year olds) was inside their house and we sat on the floor and played with them for a little bit. There was one boy reading the books with Swahili words that I am still obsessed with. He had beautiful eyes and curly hair. He loved to make funny faces for the camera too! Before we left we went back to the Home Base we went back and played with the 1-2 year olds. They were having baths and Manuela and Joan were drying them and clothing them. They rub Vaseline on their skin when they first get out, I’m guessing to protect and prevent dry baby skin J. After getting clothed the babies sit on the potty. This is great because the pink and blue plastic potties are placed in a line against the wall. They all just sat on the little potties looking perfectly content.                                   
            Once we got back to the Home Base (after quite a drive) we all ate dinner and then prepared for our day in Arusha!!