When I was here two years ago I did volunteer work at Matumaini, which is an orphanage in Ru. The idea of it is if kids have extended family but the families aren’t able to care from them. Matumaini takes in the kids in and works with the family till they can. Hopefully keeping kids and families when possible. The kids don’t have parents mostly who have passed away from AIDS. This is Knock, Kim’s Charity, baby here. She has done SOOOO much its crazy. They are getting ready to build a new compound with a school, barracks for the kids, its nuts! It’s been great being here because with my background in building and real estate I’ve been able to contribute to the planning thankfully.
So anyway we got there today and I got to see ALL the kids! It was great! They have grown but all look the same. Wish they had grown more but the poor nutrition many of them have had earlier in their life keeps them small. While we were there some other volunteers from CCS (The program Kim and I came with the first time) were there. We got to talking and next thing I know I agreed to go to Zanzibar tomorrow. We are going to take the Bus to Dar Es Salem which is 8 hours, stay over night then the ferry to Zanzibar which is off the coast. Should be fun! I always thinks this is the great part of life. Random and fun. You meet people you never expect and next thing you know you’re off exploring.
April 10th 2009 Bus to Dar Es Salem
I meet Gram, Scott, Aubrey and Ericka at the Bus stop. I had only meet Aubrey and Ericka so wasn’t sure what to expect but everyone is great. The bus is hot, no AC and random movies in Swahili. Countryside is awesome. Very green.
We are getting into Dar late and staying at a “hotel” for the night then going to take the ferry. Grams girlfriend is East Indian and her uncle lives in Dar. Random but great. He booked us a place to stay called the safari inn. We walk down and ally that looks like your going to get jumped into a building that is what you would expect. Block building that from the 1960’s that will serve its purpose for the nigh
t.
Gram’s GF uncle meets us and takes us out to an Indian dinner, was great. We get back put on bug spray since we didn’t have nets that night and crash. Have to be up at 5:45am
April 11th Adventure to Zanzibar
So Aubrey, Scott and Ericka get there ferry tickets the night before while Gram and I kept his Uncle company. Bad idea. The 7:30 ferry is sold out cause its Easter Weekend. Which is weird cause Zanzibar is almost 100% Muslim.
Through a crazy bunch of events that are to unreal to even tell we end up on the 11:30 ferry. The supposedly one and a half hour ferry, which is really three hours, finally gets us to Zanzibar and we take a cab about an hour to the north point of the Island to Nungwi Beach where we met the rest of the gang at Amann Beach Bungalows. Can’t beat $24 for 2 nights with AC. AWESOME!
This place is beautiful. The beach’s are rival even those is the south pacific. We have a great dinner on the beach, swing on swings and hammocks, hang by a bon fire and then walk along the beach. Great night.
The next day chilled on the beach. I meet these awesome Canadians who were relaxing after a bike race in South Africa. I got to talk to them and the guy Drew has been all over the place. We got to talk a lot about Nepal and hiking there. He said you can do it CHEAP and stay in these teahouses so I’m thinking about going to Nepal after India now. Time will tell. He was really interesting.
Scott had heard about this place you can swim with sea turtles so we walk down the beach and found it. Was so cool. You got to feed them seaweed, see the babies they bread and release back into the wild. You can swim with them for a fee; we decided playing with them was good for us. There were so cool to see and hold them unclose.
Its now Sunday and we head to Stone town which is the main city in Zanzibar. I had done stone town before so we grabbed a map and off we went. We went to a Hindu temple where last time I got to play with a baby monkey. This time was a little more tame. We wondered, made our way to the spice and open-air market. If you can imagine the most beautiful colors mixed with the rotten smell of raw meat spoiling that’s the open market.
We worked our way through the curved maze like streets of Stone town and go buy our night ticket ferry. So the over night ferry is CHEAP and saves you from getting a hotel but you leave stone town at 10 pm and get in to Dar Es Salem at 6 am for an early bus back to Moshi. Well we spurged and spent $4 extra for “VIP”, best thing ever. The boat is insane. We are upstairs and sleep on couches or used mattress’s that are as old as me. The downstairs is packed! Women in full Muslim attire sleep on the floor or sitting up. Men are fighting and hitting women to get a bed. It was intense.
All the guys including me are sick. Scott is throwing up as the boat slams back and forth. Gram joins him throwing up. I have to go downstairs. Now here’s the thing. You may have heard never shake a persons hand with your left because it’s disrespectful because they or you use your left hand to clean yourself after the bathroom. Well in Eastern Africa it is very true. They don’t use toilet paper. When you go to the bathroom there are little cups of water to clean your hand and there are not toilets but holes in the floor. This is to set the stage for my experience.
I am getting sick on the bathroom on the boat for hours in a little room. Picture the above conditions as the boat violently rocks back and forth, I have to keep your face from slamming into a filth covered wall of a three by three room. It’s was horrible but hey anything after this seems better. Always a silver lining.
We get into Dar Es Salem and the bus station at 7am. We ride a retrofitted bus to fit extra people so you can’t sit straight. We make it back home at 5 pm. The trip was amazing. Plus experiencing things like this with awesome people is what this is all about but I couldn’t be happier to be home in Moshi after a kick ass weekend.
Time to shower.
Meeting Elizabth
April 16th 2009
Today we went over to see Mamaa Grace at CCS. Little did I know what was going to happen this day. So we arrive and there is a small girl, looks no older the 10 or 12 sitting outside. We say Mambo ( hello) and walk past into Mamaa’s office.
We get to talking and find out this small in stature girl is named Elizabeth. She had come to CCS to find work. She was not 10 but 18 turning 19 in June. Extreme malnutriation has caused this. She is an orphane whos doesn’t know her mother. Her father is dead and has been shuffled around. She’s living with extended family 2 hours out of town. She has been sneaking into school in Moshi but they now were insisting she paid. School is not free here past elementary.
She came to see Mamaa Grace for a job, not a hand out. She was looking to work from Midnight till 5 am cleaning for money for school. Mamaa said when she came she was crying and wanted to be a journalist. Her story was heart breaking, a 18 year old girl with no real family who looked 10 coming to ask for a job so she can go to school.
I spoke with Mamaa Grace and Kim about how much school costs. It was a few hundred dollars and if she did well she could go to government school after which was also only a few hundred if she did well this year. So I decided to make an agreement with Elizabeth. I would sponsor her this year and if she did well and got into government school next year I would sponsor her for the next 3 years to put her through school.
Its crazy how a few hundred dollars can change someone’s life.
The following week we meet Elizabeth at school with the books she’ll need and to pay her dues. She runs up to us with the BIGGEST smile and hugs Kim and I. I cant even express how amazing it felt to see her so happy. Kim, who is fluent is Swahili, takes care of the paper work. Elizabeth is close to fluent in English. Surprised us. We talk and she tells me about how its 4 hours a day of travel just to get to school. After we register her she shows us around the school with such pride. After a bit we depart and chat with Mamaa Grace. She says how you just wanna cry when you see how happy she is to be able to go to school and hopefully have a future. It may seem like giving money is wrong but this girl only wanted a job and now she has a chance to make herself something. Her sponsorship is conditional on strong markets. I have nothing but fate that she will make them.
Fingers crossed!
Weekend at the hot springs with the Kids
April 19th 2009
Kim and Knock take the kids on outings. Just cause its an Orphanage doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be able to have the same experiences other kids have if they can. They budget for this trip and it’s a BLAST!. Kim arranges a small buss to take 19 kids and a few adults to the hot springs which is about an hour out of town. Its basically a hot spring with lush vegetation in the middle of the dessert.
We spent the day before making PB and J sandwiches for the kids and hard boiling 4 dozen eggs while dancing around the house. Was mucho fun!
We pick the kids up Sunday morning and make out way to the hot springs. We arrive and there are baboons all in the tree’s. Its awesome. The water is crystal clear. Most of the kids cant swim but they promised they would try.
What an awesome day! We taught a few kids how to swim and tried to keep them from drowning us the rest of the time. We acted like ferry’s shuttling them back and forth. Edward and Musa came with us. The kids love it when guys are around. We spent all day there. It was SOOOO much fun :o)
Makin Maandazi April 22nd 2009
Today we were hanging with Mamaa Chapu who does a lot at Matumaini. She is like Kims 2nd mom here. She rocks! Anyway Maandazi is like a donut but different. Well we learned how to make it and it taste YUM! You use a beer bottle to roll it out then cut it up into small pieces. From there you heat oil over an open flame and the fry it. The pics below are of a pretty standard kitchen. They are separate from the houses. You cook by stoking the fire. You smell like smoke when you cook here but its fun! And yes that’s a goat in the kitchen.
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