bananas

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Hamjambo!

I left off my last blog as i was about to go to Upendo orphanage. Let's just say that that particular orphanage was very, very sad. They house about 25 babies, but i wasn't allowed in because only staff who have been there a year or more are allowed, to prevent illness. All of the other children ranged from 1-6 or 7- and all of them were sick. They split the toddlers into 2 sections, boys and girls, and keep them separate for most of the time- except for playtime. I would say the majority of them had minor to sever physical deformities and some had mental problems. The staff tries their hardest to spend time with each of them- but they are understaffed and simply don't have enough hands. That being said, the kids absolutely clung to us when Kate and I visited, and cryed every time we didn't pick them up or when we walked past them.

Another volunteer, Hannah, works there for her placement and it made me realize how fortunate the children at my placement are. Hannah came with her mom and sister for the first 3 weeks, and her sister came to Neema, and has since decided to adopt an 11 month old girl named Nancy from there. We went yesterday to visit Neema again, and we all got to meet Nancy. The adoption will cost $500, but her sister needs to live here for 6 months to foster the child first. Yesterday we spent time in the baby room- there are about 20 babies, ranging from newborn (just a few days old) to 12 months. All of them had a pretty bad chest cold that they didn't have the first time we went. It's been unseasonably cold here, Mama Lilian has said that it's the coldest it's been in 10 years- and the people here aren't used to it and are getting sicker.

A lot of the volunteers are leaving tonight or tomorrow- so a bunch of us are going to The Glacier tonight for a goodbye party. It's kind of like a singing lounge with some coffee/tea and live African bands on Friday and Saturday nights. It should be really fun! We all went out to dinner last night, all 16 of us. It took us two, yes TWO hours to get our food once we ordered. I've acclimated to the slow pace of Tanzania- if one says 15 minutes, you can count on at least 45 minutes or an hour. "polepole" is the motto here, slowly slowly. I'm definitely going to miss how welcoming everyone here is. Not a day goes by where I don't hear the word "karibu" at least 3 times. karibu=welcome. I constantly hear "karibu nyumani dada" everywhere I go, it means "welcome home sister". the Karanga community is so appreciative of the ccs volunteers and it takes a lot to get on a Tanzanian's bad side.

Tomorrow i'm going to Arusha with 3 other volunteers. Courtney- one of them did CCS Russia in Yaroslavyl (i spelled that wrong) last year. I told her that you did also so we talked about that for a while. Arusha is a much larger city than Moshi about an hour away. We'll leave in the morning and take the bus (you all wouldn't believe how jam-packed these buses are.) We'll go to a few markets, buy a few gizmos and head back to ccs for dinner.

I haven't really talked about my placement that much- and i have to go in 3 minutes, but I really do love it and I am going to miss it tons once I leave on it on wednesday. The teacher is fluent in english and the children are adorable- the love learning and goofing off- they go hand in hand. We practiced reading and writing this week, next week we start back with math. I'll talk more about it in the next blog.

This thursday i'm going with Kate back to the O'Brien school for the Masai and spending the day there. The head teacher there invited us back a million times when we left that first time. It was a wonderful experience, i'll take lots of pictures. Gotta run!

Love,
K

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