Taking a bath

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We've been here in Kigoma for nearly a month and we love it. The breeze off of Lake Tanganyika spares us in a way that the soupy heat in Dar es Salaam does not. DSM in December is infamous for the thickness and the unforgiving heat. Also, the rampant destruction of the trees and the wildlife in all parts of that city, leaves all your walking and moving around the area exposed to the strong heat of day.

Kigoma is lovely!

We will leave here next Monday to stop in Tabora for one week to conduct our project with some club members there, help launch a new club, take loads of tours and hang out with our friend James who is that Regional Director there. It's a pretty full week planned. I will try to update you all on it.

For now, we are in Kigoma. We've been staying at our friend's house in a housing development constructed by the Norwegians when they came years ago or so to do aid work. Something happened with the governments' relationships and Norway pulled out in 1998 leaving many programs they started without funding and moving out of the development.

Sanganigwa Orphanage is one of the projects began by Norway but then picked up by the Italian branch of JGI. We did our project with four of their kids. I've put up a sample of a few of those photos. They will be for sale eventually to help raise money for their future schooling. Francesca and Cosimo, our current Italian roommates, are working at Sanganigwa. This is Francesca's fourth and Cosimo's first time here with them. Cosimo is a performing artist and acrobat among many many other things and is working with Francesca, who is a professional clown and performer in Italy, to implement a welding project with some of the older kids. The idea is to hold the class to teach them how to create art with metal first and then, with the skills they learn, some may be able to continue in the trade and earn a living. They are a determined pair and in the face of what seems to me like a million set backs, they are pushing ahead and after nearly six weeks, have purchased the machine, the required generator (an unexpected expense), built the platform of the little house required to house the equipment - including laying foundation with the sole help of the older kids of the home, and so much more. Their work is really impressive.

Cosimo speaks Italian and French and a little English and some Swahili. We've been managing communication through the polyglot Francesca - fluent in English, Italian, French, Spanish and Swahili, but when she is not around, we work on developing our own language: a mix of French, Portuguese, Italian, English and Swahili. We call it: Desperanto! We're working on the grammatical rules now, but usually only get onto those late in the evening, so I don't remember them.

Erik and I do a lot of walking and traipsing around the little town here. We walk about 5 miles a day or so. With the water service coming and going - mostly going - in order to take a proper bath, we have taken a cab to the lake and joining many Kigoma's fishermen and gotten ourselves clean there. Though it is cooler here than DSM, it's still a sweaty sweaty day and boy do we need to bathe!! The first time we went to that beach, the water was still like a bath tub and the process was simple. This time, the weather was choppy and the waves reminded us of the ocean. In the face of three foot waves and fist sized stones being hurtled at us, we did it. Here are some photos of that adventure!

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Photos

Bahati's (Swahili for luck) photo
Bahati is 20 years old and has finished a course on auto mechanics, paid for by the group that supports the center. He took 301 pictures in 30 hours. I wish I could show you them all....

Bahati's view from above the orphanage of Lake Tanganyika
One of my other faves!

Brandina's friend
Brandina was a bit of a tough guy at first, but the she softened and had fun with the project!

Johnas' photo of kids at the orphanage
Johnas took this picture of children getting their ugali - polenta.

Peter's pick
Peter took this picture of young kids learning to fish and commented on how sad he was that they weren't in school learning.

Hadija's sister
Hadija lives in Kigoma with her family. She is 12 years old and precocious!! She is not at Sanganigwa, but participated with a different group in the proj. I liked this one.

Cosimo's Adonis Photo of Erik
So.. you guys want photos of us? Okay! Here is one after our lake bath.

E's photo of me
E+I realized - after a few of you asked for fotos of us - that we have been taking most of them and arent appearing in many. E even less that me. So, here is one of me before washing up in the lake.

Trying to shampoo
Bucket showers work most of the time for the crew, but E+I are getting shaggy and need more water to shampoo our dreading locks, so here we are, braving the undertow and 4 foot waves to pass along the shampoo bottle...

Cosimo
This is our roomie contemplating the conditional subjunctive in Desperanto while resting before heading in a busted taxi back to town.

Comments

[Jeff]

what is the world for jealous without the bad controlling aspects?
I wish I could come down there and spend some time with you lovely smelly shaggy folks. I'm off to Haiti again next week and I've got to say the pic of the kids getting the polenta and a couple of other ones could be haiti without a problem. More photos, more stories. NOWNOWNOW. please.