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.
Tanzania: Take Two 