Choices, and the really hard decisions

Monday, June 4, 2012

Each day we are finished at our primary placement, the Kilimanjaro Orphanage Center, at about 12:30 - 1 PM. After that time, the young children we teach eat lunch and take a long nap. The place stays pretty quiet from then until the older children get out of school. So we have been looking for a second orphanage that we can go to for the afternoons. Over the weekend we visited a center for street children called Msamaria, and we  also met CeCe from Hope Village.

I think Rebecca wrote about CeCe and the children at Hope Village, but to refresh your memory, CeCe is the "mama" at Hope Village, which is home to 5 orphaned/abandoned children. She is 27 years old and dedicates her life to taking care of these children. She has a very nice house in a suburb of Moshi (Shanty Town) but it has no electricity. She has no money for food, school fees for the children, or to install electricity from the road to the house, or anything else. She teaches the women from Rudisha how to bead, sew, and make jewelry, so that they can sell the products to make money for their center (the Rudisha women's center is home to women who are HIV positive). So CeCe makes a very small amount of money each month, which goes towards supplies at Hope Village. There is NEVER enough money. 


CORRECTION: CeCee teaches the women at Rudisha business skills and marketing. These women are not HIV+ (I confused them with another group if women). They sew bags and kangas, and make jewelry. CeCee's role is to assist them in learning how to run their business and make a profit so they can become self-sustaining, and also to help them market their goods both locally and internationally. For this, CeCee is paid a small wage, which she uses to support Hope Village.)

In looking to volunteer at Hope Village, we have to look at how much it will cost for us to travel out there every afternoon. It is a very long walk, and time is short from when we leave Pasua to get Hope Village, and then be back at the volunteer house by dark (6:30). It almost certainly means taking the dala dala from Pasua to Moshi (600 TSH for both of us, about 55 cents), then a taxi from Moshi town to Hope Village and a second taxi from Hope Village to the volunteer house, at a total cost of about 10,000 TSH, or about $6.50 per day. That comes to about $35 a week for transportation to help out CeCe at Hope Village. So we talked with Deb at length over the weekend about how the money could best be spent. Does CeCe need us there to help her and the children in the afternoons, or could she use the 50,000 TSH per week we would spend on taxi fare? These are valid questions when the PURPOSE of volunteering is to help the children! Is having a (small) part of the money to run electric from the street to the house, or money for food or uniforms or rent more important than what we could offer the children in terms of teaching English, or helping with homework? The thing we have found is, there is no easy answer. So Deb advised that we ask CeCe what she needs more, and so today, we made a second trip to Hope Village.

CeCe is an amazing woman: you know just being in her presence that she is an angel sent to care for these children, and she takes all the challenges in stride. The home is named Hope Village because what she offers these children is...Hope, when they had none before. What they have with her is a home and a family, a mama and "brothers" (ka ka) and "sisters" (da da). And of course, hope. So we put the question to her, and after all our tears dried, she could not answer. The choice was too hard. She told us that she is lonely; being a single woman taking care of these 5 children. She has taken "stray" children under her wing since she was 16 years old, giving to the children in need half of whatever she had, be it food or money. She was always asking her parents to help out other children, when she herself came from a family of 5 children (she is the oldest). She said she feels a connection to us, and likes having our company at her home, but she knows how much they need money for: 1) rent, 2) electricity, 3) food, and 4) uniforms for the 5 children so they can stay in school (the school has threatened to not allow the children to come to school if they do not have the proper uniform). She knows  that our presence in the home and our time spent with the children would help them immeasurably (more on the failed educational system in another post). In the end, she could not choose, and left the choice to us. We left telling her that we would think about it, talk about it with Deb, and call her. I left there with a heavy heart, but one filled with love and admiration.

Upon returning to the house, we ran into Deb and we told her the story and our dilemma. Initially it was our plan to try to raise money when we return home to pay to have the electric run to the house. But if she needs money for rent, what good does electric do if you have no roof over your head? And you would think that if she had the electric run to the house that the landlord would credit her the amount (or at least part of it) for making improvements to the property, but that is not how things work in Tanzania. After all, TIA! (This Is Africa!). 

Now the choices have become even more complicated for us. Give her the money we would spend on taxi fare and let her use it as she needs? Teach the children English, and help them with their homework? And what about the money we hoped to raise for the electric? Should the rent come first? There are SO MANY competing needs, and no answers.

So tonight we head off to bed with choices and decisions floating in our heads. Our goal here is to help the children, but what exactly does that look like? There are no answers, only more questions, and they weigh heavy on our hearts.

Lala salama (Good Night).

Kathy & Rebecca