[Further] Adventure Time

After a nearly 16 hour return journey, we are finally home from our 10 day long safari/Zanzibar extravaganza. While the break was nice (and safari and Zanzibar were both great adventures), I am very grateful to be back and start working again.

Safari started in Lake Manyara, the highlight of which was our 20+ minute observation/interaction with an elephant (who I named “Patricki”). He was standing about a foot away from our truck the whole time, and it was extraordinary. We watched him with baited breath as he went about his eating business (while we were literally about to jump on top of him we were so close), and then after awhile he decided to screw with us (which apparently elephants are wont to do) and lurched forward aggressively at the car. Everyone managed to stay pretty calm (except me…I squealed and swore), and after that he just laughed to his elephant self and sauntered back to his eating patch.

Then we went to the Serengeti, an enormous, expansive deserted space where nearly every native African animal can be found. We saw a million lions (literally, a million). We hung out with a pride of 14 of them for a while, and then stalked one of females as she attempted to kill a zebra for the rest of the pride. After an hour of slowly and inconspicuously moving in so that she could be about 300 meters away from the zebra, she attacked. Unfortunately, the zebra was quick and got away. Us spectators of this event were so invested, there was a huge groan in the car as the zebra sprinted into the abyss and the lion retreated sullenly back to her pride. We also saw two cheetahs, a leopard, and a dead thompson gazelle in a tree that a different leopard had stored to eat later (it was creepy as all hell, but very cool). It was amazing to be privy to that sort of completely primitive animal behavior. We camped directly in the park, and were greeted in the morning by a huge elephant chowing down on a tree right outside our bathroom.

The last day was the Ngorongoro crater. We had been there last year as well, but we saw a host of different things this time. First of all, we were witnesses to 7 hyenas trying to take down a huge ass buffalo. This was a lofty goal, primarily because the buffalo had a posse of about a hundred other buffalo friends that were trying to chase away the hyenas. But, damn, they were persistent, and finally ended up taking out a huge chunk of the buffalo’s cheek, which presumably would be their food for the next few days. We also saw a mother lion with two TWO WEEK OLD cubs walking down the road. The cubs were the most adorable goobers I’d ever seen– paws three times as big as they should be, tiny puppy like bodies, and a “roar” reminiscent to a kitten meow.

After our awesome animal excursions we went back to Moshi for a quick night of sleep (an unrestful nap, really) and we set off at 3:30 IN THE MORNING for long trip to Dar es Salaam, where we caught a ferry over to Zanzibar. We spent five days and four nights at a resort smack-dab on the beach. Most of the vacation consisted of sun bathing (I got a RIPE sunburn all over my body on the first day and had to wear a towel-cape for the rest of the time so I wouldn’t catch on actual fire), eating, drinking, dancing, and reading. I finished my book by day two (The Paris Wife…thanks to Jess Jacobs I am now an Ernest Hemingway/Jazz age American-writers- in-Paris lover), so I stole various books from people for the rest of the time. I celebrated my birthday the second day we were there- it was a great, great day. Most of it consisted of chilling and reading, but we had a beautiful happy hour watching the sunset, and then had dinner and cake at the hotel restaurant. All the employees at the hotel came out with the most exuberant birthday song I had ever witnessed, which was absolutely a wonderful experience. I’m super super grateful to all of my hostel people for giving me a birthday celebration for the books.

I leave Moshi in a little over two weeks, and I couldn’t be more in denial about it. There is so much still to do before then, primarily with EEF, but we plan on working diligently to get as much done as possible before we go. Luckily we have the capacity to work remotely (with the website/business plan etc.) but it would be nice to have things relatively complete before departure. We’ll see how it goes. ‘Til next time!

Things and things

Oy, where to begin. First off, it’s july already…WHAT? Ridiculous. Time is moving so incredibly fast. I could absolutely stay for another 2 months, but unfortunately I gotta go back to real life. Definitely not ideal.

EEF things have been moving along smoothly for the most part. We took all of the kids in the program on safari last Saturday and boy was it an experience. There ended up being about 40+ people in a small van for nearly 14 hours–insanity. But it was so much fun. Initially the kids were a little overwhelmed by the whole experience. None of them are used to being paid attention to a great extent and given special opportunities, so I think going on safari was just a lot to take in. They definitely enjoyed seeing the animals though– whenever we would see something on one side of the car, there would be a mass movement to the windows. I found myself just watching their reactions more than watching the actual animals. The kids warmed up towards the end of the day– a million juice boxes and enormous box lunches later, our bus turned from a safari to party bus. We all danced and sang and screamed for the last hour of the trip home. Kids who I had heard seen say more than two words were singing and stealing the show, and everyone was having a great time. It was an evening I will never forget.

We are finishing up home visits this week. After they’re completed we will have done about 25 in total, and probably walked about 15 hours in the process. Some of the kids live in extraordinarily remote parts of the villages, in the middle of cornfields, and miles and miles away from the schools that they walk to every day. The home visits in general have been productive, but really difficult to stomach most of the time. Surprisingly, most caretakers have been very open about answering hard questions honestly. We have definitely had the occasional visit where stories don’t add up, but generally everyone has been forthcoming about their circumstances and grateful for our help. Across the board though it’s clear that paying for education isn’t a priority for most of the caretakers. In many cases, this is because there just isn’t enough money to pay, but we’ve also found in a few households that kids that have been abandoned by their parents or orphaned and subsequently taken in by an aunt or a grandmother have their education tossed to the bottom of the heap (usually because there are about 4-8 other biological kids that the caretakers care more to focus their assets on). This occurrence is particularly troubling. If it isn’t difficult enough for a child to have been abandoned by their parents, to have the added trauma of living in a place where you’re education and well-being are secondary to the other children you’re living with is really damaging. Yet another reason that EEF stepping in is so important– just having the knowledge that there are people in the world that care about them has the potential to totally change their perspective on life. I hope this is, in fact, the case.

This is a bit delayed, but I also reconnected with Anna, the girl from Juvy that I met last year and made it a mission while I was here to sponsor her. She looks beautiful and happy, although her English (which was near perfect last year) has suffered immensely because she hasn’t been speaking at all now that she’s home. I gave her some crap for it and told her that whenever she is in Moshi, she HAS to call me and we can sit and practice together. She agreed reluctantly hahaha. We discussed what her plans were for future educational endeavors– whether she wanted to go to secondary school, or go to vocational school. She said that she was apprehensive about having to start secondary school Form 1 at age 17, and she felt much more comfortable with going to vocational school and studying clothes making. At vocational school, you learn your trade as well as math, English, and business classes, so she will definitely get a proper education and not just learn a trade. There is an awesome boarding vocational school in Moshi that she said she would love to go to and we’re going to tour it in mid-July. It’s a little sketchy because her case technically still isn’t closed yet, so the headmaster may have an issue with her having to leave unexpectedly to go to court. But when we tour the school, the manager of Juvy and I are going to sit down with the headmaster, explain the situation, and hopefully figure something out. We shall see. We spent the afternoon together one day last week and talked about how she really wants to travel and see the world, and then hopefully open her own business. It awesome to see that she has specific dreams…it’s super rare to find 17 year old ex-convicts here who have specific life goals. She’s just a really special case.

We go on our big safari (Lake Manyara, Ngorongoro crater, and Serengeti) on Sunday, and then we leave for Zanzibar on next Thursday. When we come back we only have about two weeks left (I can’t even talk about it). We’re starting to teach remedial classes when we get back, mostly focusing on emotional/social learning and health/hygiene, which should be fun. We are also working really hard on the business plan and the website. Bina has been taking the brunt of the website work and I the business plan (which is terrifying because…um…I know so very little about business). But I have been doing lots of research and learning a lot and (hopefully) doing good work on it.

I’m now very distracted because I’m sitting at a table with 5 other people talking at loud volumes about movies and I want to interject in their conversation, so I will therefore end here.

Home Visits, Field Trips, and Lake Challa

This week was significant for a myriad of reasons, primarily because we began to do home visits with the kids that are part of the EEF program. On Monday, we were dropped of in the middle of Karanga village with two 10 year old girls that were tasked with showing us to their houses, and the houses of two of their fellow students. Unfortunately after 2 hours of walking around the corn and sunflower fields of Karanga, we only had a 50% success rate of the home visits– two of the families were nowhere to be found. But the other two visits proved to be very informative and quite distressing. 

Cecilia, the first student who’s home we visited, lives in a small stone hut in the middle of a corn field with her mother and younger brother, and her older brother is away at secondary school. Her father lives at an unknown location (presumedly kilometers away), and occasionally sends a few dollars to help support the family. The mother sells vegetables and barely makes enough money to cover the fees necessary to pay for school for her three kids. As we were asking her various questions about their livelihood, Cecilia’s mother began to cry. It was clear that discussing her hardships was very difficult for her, and not something that she is usually encouraged to do. The whole visit though, she was very grateful for our support (we begin each home visit by sort of prefacing our presence there…saying something along the lines of “We are here to help you…we are working to find sponsors for your child and support him/her through the education process, so please be open with us!”). She invited us inside to take photographs, and thanked us graciously when we left.

The second home visit was a little more eventful. Violette, a 10 year old student part of EEF, lives with 8 brothers/sisters/cousins in a three room cement-floored flat with her grandmother and grandfather. The flat is in a complex of sorts with four or five other flats, with chickens, goats, and stray dogs running amuck. Her grandmother makes anywhere from 1500/5000 tanzanian shillings per week (about 1 to 4.5 USD), and the grandfather does not work. They usually eat about two meals a day, the second of which being leftovers from the first meal. We asked Violette’s grandmother how much they have to pay for rent for the apartment, and she said 90,000 tsh per month. We looked at each other, perturbed, and then asked, “well, how do you pay that much if you only make 15,000?” She sighed, and explained that nearly every month, they cannot make their rent, so they have to appeal their case in a “village court”. Luckily, the court usually lets the case go, and the family pays whatever they can for the month. But that doesn’t leave a lot leftover for food, let alone school fees for 9 kids that the grandma and grandpa are responsible for taking care of. Unlike Cecilia’s mother, Violette’s grandmother was very up front and cool about her situation. She rarely broke her steady gaze at the wall in front of her, and while she expressed gratitude for our help, she was not necessarily warm. The kids, on the other hand, obviously just wanted attention. Throughout the whole meeting, five or six kids would be surrounding us at any given time, hanging on our legs and shoulders, just yearning for love and affection. 

The home visits were draining, both because of the journey they took us on and the distressing situations that they presented us with. This coming week we have 5 more home visits…I anticipate that they will continue to be eye-opening, and even more confirming that the kids in this program truly do need our assistance, and perhaps even more so than we thought. 

On friday, we took the whole lot of EEF kids (about 30) on a field trip to the Gabriella Rehabilitation Centre, a school/live in center for children with a host of disabilities. This was the first time we had been with all of the kids in one place, and boy are they awesome. They were so respectful, well-behaved, and engaged. All of them were very good with the Gabriella students, and barely gave us any trouble. I couldn’t help but gleam with pride– despite the fact that I don’t know these kids particularly well yet, I feel so humbled and excited that I know them at all, and that work that I am doing has the potential to help them for the rest of their lives. At Gabriella, we played football, raced, learned a strange “pin the tail on the donkey esque” game, and did some group dancing. It was a really lovely experience, and I think the kids thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Next Saturday we are going on another field trip– a one day safari with all of the kids! I assume that few of them thought that they would ever get the chance to experience a safari, so it should be a really wonderful day. We’re also going to distribute the underwear/undershirts/school supplies that Anna and I bought in New York on Saturday. I’m looking forward to it immensely. 

I am sitting here now, writing this with a rough, body-wide sunburn. A bunch of people from the hostel spent the weekend at Lake Challa, an idyllic lake at the Tanzanian/Kenyan border. We swam, kayaked, watched the sunrise, had intense political discussions (no worries, I didn’t offend anyone), and relaxed. It was absolutely gorgeous, and a great weekend of fresh air and luscious nature. 

That’s all for now. Hope everything is good on the home front. 

I don’t usually write blogs but…

Writing about my own experiences is typically a very excruciating task for me. And consequently when I have wanted or tried to do it in the past, I have given up immediately. But since I have had so many people generously donate to the cause I am working on, and (to put it bluntly), I need to finally suck it up and do one of these things for people to read (or not), I gotta do it.

Basically, the last two weeks that I’ve been here have flown by. It feels like no time has passed since I was last here, which is awesome. My wonderful friend Bina and I have been working hard on administrative projects associated with EEF (which is the foundation we are helping to develop). We have meet all of the kids (about 30 in total) who are in the EEF program, begun writing a business plan, done a lot of organizational tasks to create a foundation for the program (made individualized files for each of the kids to put relevant documents in etc), and created some specific guild lines for people interested in sponsoring the students. Tomorrow we are starting home visits to each of the students, which should absolutely prove to be a cluster-fucked adventure, as most things in Tanzania are.

One of my girls from the Juvenile Detention Center that I worked in last year is out of jail now, and one of the things I want to do while I’m here is get her set up to go to school next term, because she is extraordinarily academically inclined, perseverant, and truly deserving of education. I will hopefully be seeing her to discuss some specifics in the next few days.

I’m just now getting over a beautiful case of strep throat, (for the record, the 14TH TIME I have had it in my life, but this time was particularly special because it was in a third world country). I had to go to the clinic in town to get diagnosed and prescribed medication. I was at the clinic for four short hours (ha). Luckily (for me at least), one of my friends at the hostel that I am staying in also happened to be sick, so I had some company. Anyone who knows me well can attest that I have a bit of a hypochondria issue, so the very fact that I went to this clinic is a big deal, not to mention the fact that I did not have a full on freak out session while I was there. After sitting for a million years, I finally got my prescription, and was on my way. Id say all in all it was a victory.

So, that’s all I have to report for now. Maybe I’ll write again in another two weeks 🙂