Hakuna Matata

---

It's hard to believe that my time in Moshi is almost over. I've spent a lot of time getting to know the children in the disabilities classroom at Shaurimoyo and the children at Tuleeni orphange. The frist day at both placements was completely overwhelming.

On my first day at Tuleeni orphanage the lady who runs the place handed me chalk and said "Here, you teach now!"....And this was within the first 10 minutes of actually stepping foot in the door. So yea, I guess you could say that I was caught slightly off guard. But the reason she wanted me to teach is because she puts a huge emphesis on educating the children. I went to visit their school one day and was blown away. Whenever their teachers asked questions it was the children from the orphanages that ALWAYS raised their hands first. The other kids just sat there. Makes you think about the vaule of education. The kids are so smart tho. Some of them were even able to balance chemical equations...I'm not gonna lie, even though I have a science degree I still felt slightly intimidated! haha But all in all they are amazing kids. They don't have much and they don't ask for much. They are just happy that I come back to visit whenever I get a chance.

After Tuleeni I moved onto Shaurimoyo school. For the past 3 weeks I've been working in the disabilities classroom. I'm supposed to be an assistant to the teacher but sometimes he "graciously" allows me to take over. To help make my situation a little more clear I'll need to explain a few things. We have about 21 childen (on a good day) with a wide age gap, a wide array of disabilities, and various comprehension levels. All of this is packed into a small classroom with one teacher and one volunteer (yours truely).

Some of the children are diagnosed with CP, Downs, Learning disabilities, and trouble speaking. Perhaps I should define the term "diagnosed". The teacher in the class has decided that all of the children have at least one of the four disabilities I mentioned above. It has to be either CP, downs, or a speaking/learning disability. They haven't had any professional diagnosis'. It's all just a guess. I may not be an expert on disabilities but I can tell when someone doesn't have downs syndrome. All of this has made things challenging in the classroom. But after spending a lot of one on one time with the kids I've figured out their individual styles of learning. Or at least methods that could potentially work. Things are slow but steady and I think we're finally starting to make some progress. We work on our motor skills by writing our abc's, we learn basic math, we read stories, we learn colours, we play games, and we just hang out. It's been an amazing experience. Amazing in good ways, and amazing in the ways that it has challeneged me. I've realized that I actually like being thrown in the deep end and figuring out how to swim on my own. And I guess thats a good quality for a Tanzanian volunteer because thats whats going to happen to you if you come here and try it yourself. It may not always be easy, but its not supposed to be. Regardless, I love it and I'm already going to miss it even though I'm still here for a bit longer.

Side note - Here in Tanzania locals tend to have extended greetings. For instance, if one persons greats another person while passing them on the street they usually ask questions about how every person in their family is doing etc. In other words these greetings can last a long time. Well, I was walking home yesterday and I ran into a total stranger and said "Mambo" (a typical greeting) and ended up talking to this stranger for a solid 30 minutes. When does that happen back in North America? Another reason to love Africa.

---

Photos

Orphanage
Hanging out with some of the kids at the orphanage. This is the main playing space and the rooms behind us are their shared bedrooms.

View
This is basically the entire orphanage.

My class
Insdie the classroom with some of my students

Shaurimoyo
This the building for the diabilities classroom at our school.

Comments

[Julie Wahl]

:)
Tim Timmery! I just read your blogs for the first time wanted to say yay! It sounds like you are having a great time doing even greater things....keep it up big guy and say hi to Africa for me

[dietlind]

tanzania
what a great experience for you Tin\m. We are so proud of you. Dietlind