Sunday, May 22, 2011

[Mount Kilimanjaro. Home Visits. Kikwete]


So….this post is from Thursday. I’m sorry guys. I keep falling behind on my blog posts! Once I am not as busy (after this week) I will be sure to keep up on my posts.
This morning I woke up late, but I was ready for the drive. We left for placement and while we were dropping Manuela off at Step Up what did we see? Oh Mount Kilimanjaro, of course! I seriously could not believe how beautiful it was! It was so exciting to finally see the mountain completely unobscured. My kids really enjoyed it to. Once we got outside they all pointed and said, “Kilimanjaro! Mwalimu, Kilimanjaro!”
            Instead of having class today mwalimu Joan, Mr. Masawe, Octavio and I took about half of the class and did home visits. During home visits you go to the homes of the children you teach and get to meet their caretakers and see their living conditions. This experience really added to my understanding of the reality of the way people live here. We walked through the community and went to a lot of homes. Most of the children live with their babu and bibi or their single mama. The majority of their living spaces consist of a mud and stick room that contains a bed, a line that they hang some things on, and a lot of random things in the corner. Usually the mom and the children sleep on the same bed, and Octavio told us that they pay money for these homes as well. We saw two really nice homes that had concrete floors and nice things inside of them (couches, wooden chairs, different rooms and one even had a television!). Even with the “nicer” homes, the women will pay a lot of money to live there and a lot of them were gone because they work to try to feed their kids. Joan and I had a great experience during these home visits – the people here feel that a visitor brings them luck or are a good omen. When you go to their homes you say “Hodi” before entering, so that they can invite you into their homes by saying “Karibu!” Once inside all of the people hurried to get us chairs and were incredibly welcoming. They spoke to us about their lives and about where we were from. They all expressed happiness that we were teaching the children and were incredibly loving and warm. One of the places we visited was not the girl’s home, but it was her grandmother’s place of business. Here they use the words “restaurant” and “hotel” interchangeably, so when Octavio told us that the grandmother owns a hotel I was confused, but I soon understood. The restaurant is a small room with two small tables and two benches. The grandmother sat in the corner and made chapattis and we learned that she sells them along with tea to the people in the mornings before they work. She sat us down and served us hot chai chai (African) tea and chapattis. They were unbelievably good. While we sat we talked to them and had a wonderful time. I plan to go back to her restaurant and take her flour as a gift.
Another boy’s grandmother cried when she saw us and talked to us about how wonderful she thought it was that we came to teach the children. She decided after a few minutes to give us the “gift of Africa” and emerged from the back room with two large patterned cloths that have the face of president Kikwete on them. She and her daughter then tied them on us Massai style. It was really fun to spend time with her and I felt very honored in every home I went into. It was quite an eye-opening experience to see the people’s homes and even the levels of poverty between the students. Some homes were bigger, had more rooms and even had concrete. Others were a mere mud and stick room with a bed and other living essentials crammed into it. I became much more aware of the background of my kids and I was able to assess them based off of their families. I hope this helps me to gain a better view of how to work with the children and be a better volunteer. I really hope to gain a very full experience while I’m here. I never want to just have “visited” Africa or be too tourist-y. I want to see and to learn everything I can while I am here and to really love everyone I can! I am so so in love with my kids…I can’t imagine leaving them in 10 weeks. Time is flying by! I hope to come back here, though. J I know I will. It already has a huge part of my heart.
At the end of the day we went back to the school and I played with Glory, my favorite munchkin. After placement we strolled into town and Moses went over our internship goals with us. He instructed me to create a questionnaire pertaining to the orphanage/orphan life here and the different communities in Moshi, and to also examine adoption laws and other regulations regarding orphanages. We also went out to Glacier with Mussa - which was a blast, as usual :). Anywho…I am going to quickly skip to Friday so I can get to my next post!
Friday I missed placement (super sad face). I woke up with a horrible headache and sinus pain, so I slept in and got up around 9. I got ready for safari and after everyone got back we set off with the Pristine guys to our safari!

The beautiful mountain! I will be climbing this! :) 





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