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Published: January 3rd 2010
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Happy New Year!
Volunteering
We are one week into volunteering here. The first week brought both rewards and challenges. This is what we ended up doing in our first week:
We learned that most everyone at LOHADA had the week off that we were here. Consequently, the children who were staying at LOHADA because they had no place to go would have been pretty much cooped up in the facility grounds (which are quite modest: a building with some bunkbeds and a common/play room, a dirt courtyard with a swingset, a little outhouse, an outdoor sink with several basins for washing (people and clothes) and a few small adjunct buildings that contain an office and a place to prepare food). The woman who started LOHADA, Mama Wambura, was very excited to have us there for the week in order to prepare activities for the children.
We went every day and did different activities with them. We sang songs, played games (they love games like "Ring Around the Rosy," "Red Light, Green Light," etc.), and did art projects (Paola taught them to make friendship bracelets and I taught them to make paper airplanes, which they all decorated with
Balloon Fun
Grace, your charity jar donation went to balloons and fruit. Thanks again! the Tanzania flag). Also, with the extra money we raised, we have been bringing them treats every day, which they would not otherwise get, such as fruit, cookies, fruit juice boxes, and balloons.
The kids are great. They come from harsh backgrounds (they are either orphans, children who would be on the street, children of prostitutes, or children of drug-addicts who would not care for them), but are full of smiles and energy. The older ones speak English well (Swahili is a first language for all of them) and they learn new games and songs quickly.
Unfortunately, not everything is super positive. There is no schedule whatsoever for the children, so one day they may be given lunch at noon, and the next at 3:30. The older ones (older meaning 10-12 years old) also have to work super hard, doing such things as porting around heavy 5-gallon buckets full of water (they put their other hand on each other's shoulders to prevent the shoulder from leaving the socket due to the weight for their small bodies), hand-washing clothes (we learned already that this is no easy task!), and other jobs that may take them away from any fun
time for hours. Also, the actual play area is a small dirt area with an open garbage pit nearby, where the smaller children go pull out all kinds of things to stick in their mouths (we have taken things out of their mouths like a nail and a jagged soda can). One girl running around somehow gashed open her foot badly (Paola carefully treated it with gloves on--fortunately, LOHADA had received first aid donations in the past). We also have some very real doubts about the future of many of the children. They have the same dreams as any other child and are equally bright and hopeful, but we can see many structural impediments to their future advancement.
Overall, we have to remind ourselves that these children would be in a worse place than they are now if it were not for LOHADA. Still, we see many things that we would like to improve, but are not here long enough to try and really leave our mark. So we have to content ourselves with making each day as positive as possible and are going to leave our thoughts and recommendations with Mama Wambura and for future volunteers. We also
understand that we are in a different place where things are done differently (and with a different amount of available resources), so we realize that there are different barriers and what is already being done is a great step in the lives of these children.
By the way, the volunteer fees that we raised with all of your generous help were spent on repairing the school building and buying some school supplies for the upcoming school year. Thank you again!
Other News
In other news, we have been having some neat experiences. We wanted to go out and celebrate New Year's Eve. Our host father told us, however, that it was not safe to be out after dark. We ended up booking a room at a place that has budget accomodation, a bar, and a dancefloor. It also turned out to be one of the main discoteques for Arusha (which, by the way, is a town/city of 300,000 people). So there was a huge party, with performances and a big countdown. Here, the party actually starts at midnight, so that's when the DJ "kicked it" and everyone hit the dance floor. We went to bed at 1:00
(we were volunteering the next day), but actually fell asleep at 5:00 when they finally turned off the music. Lots of fun!
On New Year's Day, our host family invited us for "lunch." We went at 4:00 to a local place that was a huge open air structure with many plastic chairs and tables. We ate delicious grilled meat and had sodas in glass bottles. Then we just sat at our table, while a DJ played grooving African and club music. The place was full of families and groups of friends. The kids everywhere were remarkably well-behaved. They would sometimes pull up a chair at another table and just sit around and everyone kept on eye on everyone else's kids. After a little bit, the "watoto" (children) at the place went to a stage up front and began to dance. Boy oh boy, were they good! They had some of the most impressive dance moves we've ever seen and they just danced away for hours. At one point Joe asked our host brother, "So, do we just sort of hang out here?" He replied, "We come here and eat food and then just relax." It was a great experience,
just sipping sodas and relaxing, watching kids whip out great dance moves.
On Saturday, we took a one-day safari to Ngorongoro Crater. In the words of our driver/guide, we had a "really lucky day." Although we had been told we would be lucky to see one lion and promised we would not see a male lion, we saw
nineteen lions!!! We were lucky enough to encounter an entire pride of fifteen lions lounging by the side of the dirt road, including a male lion! It was awesome. We also saw four black rhinos in the distance, an animal that our guide had only seen a limited number of times in his fifteen years of guiding. Besides that we saw nine elephants (four with huge tusks!), around a dozen hyenas (including one chomping on a leg of a wildebeast), and then tons of other animals including hippos, ostriches, zebras, wildebeasts, antelope, african buffalo, jackals, and birds with all sorts of colors.
That is our update! We hope that your 2010 is off to a wonderful start!
Joe and Paola
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augusto Zink
non-member comment
wawawasi or watoto niumbani...
the meat you ate is called nima choma..misma parrillada.. Happy to know you are visiting those places where we also had fun and admiration for such as Ngorotgoro. Buena Paola and Joe... G-d bless you Augusto