“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” ― Ghandi

Saturday, July 14, 2012

No goodbyes, just "until we meet again"

I started this entry on our last day of volunteering in Moshi, but only just now have been able to write the last sentence.


June 22, 2012, Friday

Our last week has been an upheaval of emotions. Both of us have been sick and we missed three days of teaching at KOC. We hated to not go to the orphanage and we missed seeing the children, but at the same time, knowing that we leave on safari on Sunday, we knew that we needed to take care of our health, get as much rest as possible, and avoid contact with sick kids! However, even being sick, we still needed to travel into Moshi each day, for lunch (it is not provided at the house since most volunteers are at their placements and not here for lunch) and also so that Rebecca could go to the medical clinic. One of those days, the dala dalas were not running because they were on strike. As far as I understand, there are no unions here like we have in the US, but still the drivers went on strike.  We heard no news afterwards as to whether they were successful in their attempt to negotiate fare increases, but today the cost of a dala dala ride was still 300 TSH. From what we understand, the government sets the fares that drivers can charge. With no dala dalas available, we took a taxi into town, which was fine since Rebecca was not feeling well anyway.

Anyway, back to the upheaval of emotions. It was with sadness, and regret, and some amount of guilt, that we stayed at the house for three days and did not see the children. Especially since we knew that our time here is so short, with only a matter of days remaining to this part of our journey. But in some ways, perhaps it made our final goodbyes to the children somewhat easier, as it was almost like we “eased” our way out of our time there.

As I write this, it is now Friday evening, and we have said our "goodbyes" to the children at Kilimanjaro Orphanage Center, and also to the children at the Salama Center that we met through Luka. When we arrived at KOC this morning (late because the dala dalas to Pasua never stopped at our usual waiting spot and we eventually resorted to a taxi), we encountered a classroom full of visitors who had presented the kids with tons of candy and balloons, and the kids were so preoccupied with them, the candy and the balloons that they took no notice of us at all. Usually when we arrive in the mornings, they jump up out of their chairs, stand, and scream in unison: “Good Morning Teacher!  How are you Teacher?” Today……..nothing. I felt such sadness in my heart that we could be “replaced” so easily. The rest of the morning sped by quickly, with a steady stream of guests arriving to tour the orphanage (this is a common practice, one I assume is designed to encourage financial support from “wealthy” mzungus). So we had almost no time to spend with the children that was not being interrupted by guests wanting to take pictures and draw numbers and letters with the kids. Eventually, we asked Lucy, the Director, to gather the children for a group photograph, and we began the tough job of saying goodbye to children who speak almost no English and who certainly have no comprehension that we are not coming back on Monday, or Tuesday, or for a very long time, if ever.

Will they miss us? Will they wonder why we do not return? Will they wonder if they did something that caused us to leave them, just as their parents left them? These questions, which have no answers, tug at my heart. Will the next round of volunteers to show up treat them with the same care, kindness, and love as we did? How will the new volunteers know what lessons we covered, or that Shabani can do addition and knows all of the numbers without counting them out, or that Maurena is much smarter than she appears, once you get beyond her shyness? How long will it take them to discover that Bisuni loves to stand at the head of the classroom and lead the whole class in a loud and clear voice while they sing “head shoulders knees and toes……” Or that Yassini is very, very smart and can do addition and multiplication without his makeshift abacus? How long will it take to realize that Elisha is a boy (with the short hair and gender-neutral clothes it can be hard to tell), or that Bright loves to be held on the swings while she hums a sweet song?


I knew it would be hard to leave, but I did not know that I would leave so much of my heart, so much of myself, with these children. I am studying social work back at home, and want to work with children. Is that what brought me here? These children, and the angels who care for them, have touched me in profound ways. The children have so little, but they taught me so much: generosity, acceptance, kindness, forgiveness, love, and how to smile even in the face of adversity. I will remember the children, and this time in Tanzania, always, and always with love and gratitude for the opportunity I was given to join them on this journey.

And so we did not say goodbye to our new friends in Tanzania; instead, we said, "Until we meet again".

"Don't be dismayed by good-byes.  A farewell is necessary before you can meet again.  And meeting again after moments or a lifetime is certain for those who are friends." ~ Richard Bach

Saturday, July 7, 2012

To teach, or be free

On our first day visiting the orphanage with Deb, Lucy, the Director, asked us if we wanted to “teach” or “be free”. As I explained in a previous blog, since we did not understand the question and we are not teachers, we chose the “be free” option. That lasted until the next day, when we learned that the “be free” option meant doing chores, which is not really what we signed up for. So, we became teachers to ten 3-6 year olds.
Despite two storerooms full of books and other donations from around the world, we had virtually no supplies. Bear in mind, this is not a school, but an orphanage where one of the activities was to provide a pre-school education to children who had no access to a public or private education. One room was filled with donated books of all kinds, from preschool books to Harry Potter novels and out-of-date encyclopedias. This room was locked and the only person with a key was Lucy, who, throughout our stay, was frequently not at the orphanage. The main storeroom consisted of boxes and boxes of (mostly unpacked) donations of crayons, colored pencils, workbooks and blank notebooks, coloring books, chalk, modeling clay, paints….all kinds of goodies. Nothing was sorted and I doubt anyone even knew what was in the boxes. One day I tried to make some sense out of all of it, but since I had no shelf space or smaller storage boxes to sort things into, I quickly abandoned the idea of trying to make order out of chaos. Instead, I chose some items I thought we could use and took them out of storage. The only person with a key to this room, besides Lucy, was an Italian man who seemed to be a business intern, who spent all of his time in the office on his laptop, and who guarded the key as if it protected gold bars.
Needless to say, we lacked supplies. Getting my hands on a box of new pencils that still had erasers on the ends (the kids loved to chew the erasers off the pencils, and then did not want to use a ‘broken’ pencil) was a huge success, until I went to look for the one and only pencil sharpener, only to learn that it was locked in Lucy’s private room, and she was gone for the day. They never threw anything out……piles of used workbooks stood in stacks all over the place, with names of children long gone written on the front, and the pages torn and tattered, with every line filled. We used pieces of broken chalk that were so small we could barely hold it in our fingers, while boxes of brand new chalk sat in the storeroom. Finally, I absconded with a small box of chalk and hid it on a top shelf of the classroom. Finding an eraser for the chalkboard never happened, and even keeping a dirty old rag around to wipe the board off was a daily challenge. It made me wonder who needed that old dirty rag every day after we left, and for what.
Our afternoons became a time for creating lesson plans for the kids. One day, Rebecca hand drew 10 connect-the-dot pages filled with diagrams for the kids to make their numbers. On another day, she wrote out sheets with math problems, we stopped at a photocopy shop in Moshi, and had enough copies made for each kid to get one. We found stacks of new, unused workbooks in the storeroom one day, and took them home to label them with their name, month, and subject (Math or English). We did not discard the old ones, since it was clear nothing got thrown out, but we did put them aside and used the new ones. We started taking them home at night to write lessons in them, but were scolded by Lucy for not leaving them at the orphanage at night.
One day, in our third week, some other volunteers were in the book storeroom, with all the books spread out all over the floor, trying to arrange them in some fashion. I found a couple of early-reader books that I thought would make nice storybooks for our kids, and I hid them on the top shelf of the bookcase in our classroom. The next day they were gone; I have no idea to where, but the kids never did get to hear the Dr. Seuss story, or the Wheels on the Bus. Alphabet and number flash cards disappeared the same way. It was as if they had all this stuff, but had to save it for a rainy day. I had heard about this when volunteers bring donations to an orphanage or school, but here, since they had so much stuff, I thought it would be easier to make use of some of it. This turned out not to be the case. Desperate for erasers one day (all the pencils had no erasers and the kids NEEDED their erasers) I found a packet of erasers in the storeroom. I took out two of the erasers and pocketed the rest for another day. Within a half hour, one of the two erasers went missing, surely into the pocket of one of the kids. My inquiries as to the whereabouts of the MIA eraser went unanswered.
In all fairness, these kids have NO toys. They played with sticks, blades of grass, the metal caps to soda bottles or plastic water bottles we would occasionally leave behind, the gravel that filled their courtyard, the rare lollipop stick, or empty candy wrappers. Reminiscent of my childhood, when my brother and I made dirt roads in the spot on the side of our house where no grass could grow, they needed no toys to entertain themselves (we did have little matchbox cars to drive on the dirt roads we made). Everything and anything was a toy in the making for these kids. I found it rewarding to see that kids could still be kids without the adornments of expensive toys, gadgets, video games and cell phones. I felt like I was witnessing some purity of childhood or something, a time when imagination ruled and kids did not need to be entertained by “stuff”. It was certainly a “back to basics” experience. The day we gave them modeling clay to fashion the alphabet out of, they all tried to eat it. I cringed many times when I saw the stuff they put in their mouths, filthy things from the ground, in a place with no sanitation, no soap, indeed, little water. Is it any wonder they (and eventually we) were always sick?

So, back to teaching… we had no teaching materials and no books, but we coped with what we had. The children could say their alphabet, but when it came to naming a letter out of order, they could not do it. This was true for their numbers, as well. Rote memorization was what they knew, so we worked hard at getting them to actually learn the letters and numbers. It was a challenging process for two non-teachers. Another example of rote memorization was when the children performed the “head, shoulders, knees and toes” song, wherein you point to each part of the body as you sing the song. If I took the words out of order and asked them first to show me their toes, they would point to the head. Practicing addition was another challenge: Lucy had them drawing circles to count and add. She would draw, for example: 00000 + 0000 = which was supposed to represent 5 + 4. They could count that there were nine circles, but the concept that they were adding four to the existing 5 never did sink in for most of the kids, even the ones who seemed to “get it”. Not being teachers, we had no idea how to go about teaching the concepts behind math. One day we did an internet search to look up basic math lessons, and found suggestions to use objects of daily living to have them count and then add them together. We had nothing like that, except maybe pieces of gravel. No coins, or buttons, or poker chips, not even enough bottle caps. Besides, they just would have played with them anyway.
However, with all the challenges and the language barriers that existed between us, we loved our time spent with these precious children. They always had a smile for us, and always greeted us with a loud and clear “Good Morning, Teacher, How are you today, Teacher?” chanted in unison. They wanted to hold hands with us, or sit in our laps, and would usually “fight” with each other over who got the honors first. They loved Rebecca, and could not get enough of being with her. Bisuni developed a game with Rebecca wherein when Rebecca would ask her, in Swahili, what her (Bisuni’s) name was, she would answer Rebecca. Then when Rebecca asked her what her own name was, Bisuni would answer Bisuni, and point to Rebecca. This child is three years old, and could not speak English, but they had this game they played together and Bisuni knew she was being funny!
One of my favorites (it is very hard NOT to develop a favorite) was the little girl named Bright. She is four years old, and is HIV positive. Just prior to the end of our four weeks, she started on a course of anti-retrovirals (ARVs) to treat the HIV. She had waited FOUR months to start treatment. This despite the fact that a retired US physician oversees the medical care of the children at KOC. It is a lengthy and costly process to obtain the medications needed to treat this awful disease, one that Bright was born with. The first day after her first treatment, she was not in class, and I later found her sleeping on the floor. However, after the second day, she was back, full of energy and with a bounce and liveliness to her that I had not previously seen. Despite not feeling well, this beautiful little girl always had a smile for me.
            Bright’s little body was covered in scars and what looked like mosquito bites. She loved sitting on my lap on the swing, and as we moved in unison she would hum a song, and occasionally add the words. I have no idea what the song was about, but it was mesmerizing, and I can still hear her little voice singing in my head. I do not know her story, why she is an orphan living at KOC, if she has any family at all who could care for her, or if her treatments will continue.
In a way, I do not want to know the back-story for any of these children, as it would most certainly break my heart. I have heard enough stories of other children at the many orphanages to know that their young lives have been riddled with heartbreak, loss, and difficulties beyond our grasp. That is enough for me, and is what calls me back to Tanzania. The past is behind them, but their hope lies in the future.

“Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all.”    ~ Emily Dickinson.

A day in the life.......

These next blog entries will be written from the comfort of home in the US, not from far away in a land called Tanzania. As you know if you have been following this blog, internet access and power outages restricted our ability to post anything on a regular basis. Also, time just got in the way: evenings around the volunteer house were spent talking with fellow volunteers, who came from all corners of the world, or recapping for Deb our day’s events, or creating lesson plans for the kids we were teaching at the Kilimanjaro Orphanage Center (KOC), or just trying to get a much-needed shower. So, in the next days and weeks, I (maybe Rebecca, also) will try to recapture those moments, and perhaps we can paint a picture of a land far from home that soon came to feel like a second home. The quote from a fellow volunteer, posted below that I borrowed from the Foot2Afrika website, speaks volumes for me as to why Tanzania, and the people of that country, touched our hearts in ways I am not sure I will ever be able to put into words. However, try I must, so here goes……

Within days of our arrival in Moshi, our days took on a familiar routine. The trip from the volunteer house was a 45-60 minute walk to the town of Moshi. The house was located in a village northwest of downtown Moshi, called Soweto. Awaken at 6:30, attempt to take a shower (this was soon abandoned on most days, as we found other times during the day when having water for a shower was a better bet), then a communal breakfast prepared by the great chefs of Foot2Afrika (Msafiri, Lymo, and Sarafina). Breakfast consisted of freshly made fruit juices, fresh fruit (mango, papaya, passion fruit, pineapple, watermelon, banana), toast, hard boiled eggs, a thin pancake that resembles our crepe, an occasional omelet, a delicious bean dish made with tomatoes and green peppers, some fried dough things that were not my favorite….I forget what else. The options changed daily. Oh…..and instant coffee with powdered milk. In the land of freshly growing Arabica coffee beans, not one cup of freshly brewed coffee. For freshly brewed coffee, we had to go into downtown Moshi and go to one of the “western” coffee houses. Coffee, and the electric brewer to make it in, are luxuries that few Tanzanians can afford.
After breakfast, at about 8:15 AM, we would head out for the trek to Moshi. In the beginning, we walked the long dirt roads and paths to Moshi. Imagine our first day, thinking it would be impossible to retrace our route without Deb, but by the third day or so, we had it down. Turn left at the gate with the scalloped edges, turn right at the burning trash heap, turn left where the woman sits on a wooden stool, leaning over a wood fire roasting corn on the cob. There are few road signs telling you the name of the road/dirt path. However, soon we were pros. Arrive in town hopefully by 9 AM, stop at the Kilimanjaro Coffee Lounge for bottled water and to use the rest room, walk to the dala dala stand and wait for one heading to Pasua. In the beginning, it was nerve wracking worrying if we were in fact getting on the correct dala dala. They do have the names of the beginning and ending stop on the front of the vehicle, but still, the fear of getting on the wrong one and heading to some unknown place was a tad disconcerting. Soon though, we even had that figured out. Then, pack into the dala dala. There were occasions when we would pass one up because it was too crowded, but dala dalas to Pasua did not come by as often as others did, so usually we accepted.
Two stops later, the dala dala stopped at Mbyuni market. This market is a sprawling expanse of outdoor stalls and mats placed on the ground, where everything from produce to furniture can be purchased. This is where the dala dala picked up women with their baskets and bags of produce, fish, and an occasional live chicken. Sometimes this stop lasted 20 minutes while bodies and bags were rearranged to make room for waiting passengers. It is not as if this was the only dala dala leaving the market and heading to Pasua; a dala dala is not full until at least one body is hanging out the open door and people are standing hunched over the seated passengers. Many times baskets of produce would be hanging out an open side window, or perched precariously on the roof. Everyone held each other’s bags, and even kids. There was no such thing as personal space: if a row of seats was meant to seat four, it was not full until seven people occupied it, and you were sitting on one hip with two people crammed alongside you. There was a protocol for arranging knees with the person seated in front of you. At first the dala dala ride felt a bit overwhelming, not only because of the crowded conditions but also because of the smells, from people, fish, you name it. Soon it became just another part of the adventure, as every dala dala ride was unique. I actually miss them.
The dala dala to Pasua dropped us at the “Bingo” stop, and from there we walked 10-15 minutes through the poorest village I had ever seen. People sold goods from makeshift stalls made from tree branches and cardboard boxes, or maybe torn canvas or sheets of plastic. I once saw a woman in one such stall that was sewing on a treadle sewing machine, in a space not much larger than four feet square. The stall was made from scrap slats of wood, with a tin roof, and no solid walls anywhere. Chickens and goats wandered freely around, feeding off the scrap piles of garbage that dominated the pathway to the orphanage. Children played in the dirt, making toys out of sticks, bottle caps, anything they could find on the ground. They always greeted us with “mambo” or “jambo” or even a “good morning” here and there. Often times they shouted “mzungu” which means foreigner or white person. Many of them asked for “peepee” which is Swahili for “candy”, or for money, and then once they learned we had cameras, they wanted their pictures taken. What a thrill it was for them to see their smiling faces looking back at them from the digital display on the back of the camera! They were always smiling! Everywhere we went in Tanzania, the people were smiling, friendly, and courteous. Displays of affection and emotion, especially anger, are not expressed in the Tanzanian culture. But the motto “hakuna matata” (no worries) really describes their approach to life…..expressions of rudeness, impatience, or frustration were never witnessed by me during the five weeks we spent in Tanzania (except by mzungus!).
On the last stretch of our walk to the orphanage, we were always greeted by a group of children who lived in a house along the path. I do not know if they are related, but they were always together. You may have seen photos of them in our album. The “mama” was always outside, sweeping the dirt ground of loose dirt and making everything tidy. This too was something we saw everywhere. Many homes, especially those in the poorer villages, have space only for sleeping, and oftentimes even the cooking takes place outdoors. Consequently, the family spends much time outside, and the women are always sweeping the dirt to clear it of the loose dust that forms everywhere. Or, if on a sidewalk, they wash the sidewalk with rags and a pail of dirty water, bent over at the waist, taking great care and pride in making what little they have clean and orderly. At this one house along the way, chickens and roosters ran about the yard, squawking loudly at us as we passed. These children also begged for candy or money, but soon became content with having their pictures taken. The mama would watch us from the yard, smiling and waving at us, as we picked up and hugged the children, who were always so excited to see us. The children always took our hands, “fighting” over who got to hold whose hand, and walked us to the gate of the orphanage where we would bid them goodbye until it was time for us to make the return walk back to the dala dala stand.
Eventually we got tired of the long walk from Soweto into downtown Moshi, and we began catching a dala dala from a stop near the volunteer house. This saved us at least 30 minutes on the commute, and cost 300 TSH, or about 20 cents. We still had to go to downtown Moshi to catch a dala dala to Pasua, as there was no direct route between Soweto and Pasua. Still, this allowed us to use the last “western” restroom we would see until we left the orphanage and returned to Moshi in the afternoon. The dala dala from Soweto to Moshi dropped us off at the Moshi bus terminal, where we were greeted by the same piki piki drivers (motor bikes) and taxi drivers, all hoping to give these mzungus a ride. After a bit, they realized we were “locals” and stopped asking, but we never failed to draw attention. Never once did I feel unsafe though: they just wanted to either sell us something, or give us a ride, since all mzungus are “made of money” and are a possible source of a sale for the day, which could mean the difference between eating and not eating that day. As I said, the level of poverty and need is beyond the comprehension of most of us “foreigners”.
So that was the day’s journey for four weeks. We would spend about 3 ½ hours teaching at the orphanage and always left before the kids had lunch. We arranged our day this way for several reasons. First, after lunch the kids took a long nap until the older children returned from school, so there was really nothing for us to do other than chores, like cleaning the outdoor pit toilets, which frankly was a chore we did not want. Second, on our third day we were served lunch that I found to be inedible. It had little whole, dried fish in it that resembled sardines and it was so salty I gagged on it. Seeing the little fish heads was not very appetizing. Throwing food out in a country where people are starving went against every fiber of my body, so I secretly passed my plate to one of the boys sitting next to me. He inhaled the food, but looked around surreptitiously to make sure he was not going to get in trouble for getting an extra portion and not sharing it with the other children. I felt bad for putting him in such a position, but he obviously needed the extra food. Lastly, to take food from the children, when we could afford to buy lunch in town, was thoroughly not acceptable to either of us. Lunch was provided free to the volunteers, but it just felt ethically and morally wrong to take food from those who had so little. Every day, we bid our goodbyes to the kids before lunch and set off into Moshi where we ate lunch and were glad to have a western restroom to use (Rebecca never did get used to the squat toilets, but having lived in Japan for a year, it was not so foreign to me).
We never did connect to a permanent afternoon project. Most volunteers divided their time up as we did, but had a set assignment for the afternoon. For a variety of reasons, we did not take on a permanent assignment in the afternoons, and thus we had free time for shopping, or going out to Hope Village to see CeCee, or later to see Luka and the kids at the Salama Center. It made for a more relaxing experience for both of us, and gave us the opportunity to get a more varied outlook of the different orphanages. It was time well spent, and the four weeks flew by way too quickly.

Friday, July 6, 2012

Just This, words from a fellow volunteer:


Unable to put my experience into my own words just yet, I borrow these words from a fellow volunteer, which can be found at the Foot2Afrika website:


"Go to Africa because you can have the most beautiful dresses custom made. Go to Africa because you don’t need to live by a watch. Go to Africa because the food is amazing. Go to Africa because the daladala makes a morning commute exciting. Go to Africa because children who seemingly have nothing will give you everything. Go to Africa because you will be welcomed like family. Go to Africa because you can watch zebras run free. But if you go to Africa with some idea in your mind that you are going to save Africa, I think you will quickly realize that Africa will save you.
In the end, I know that what we gave was nothing compared to what we were given. And those gifts and lessons we were given will remain in my heart for the rest of my life."
Truer words could not be spoken.

Thursday, July 5, 2012

you too can change the world

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” 

~Margaret Mead