Because dad commented on my status, I am including all my blogs from the past week condensed into this one post. Sorry I haven't been updating this! Our internet passwords expired at KCMC, and the computer labs aren't open everyday, so I don't bother walking there after work. I am at an internet cafe in town right now, but even these aren't very reliable. I have a lot of pictures to share, but I'm not putting any pics in this post because they take too long to load!! Sorry!! The next time you see pics will be the occasional picture posted to facebook... otherwise, you'll probably have to wait until I'm home!
June 26:
I was feeling better today, but still had a
stomachache. Adrienne was still feeling
pretty bad, so she didn’t go to work today.
Today is my day off, so even if I wasn’t feeling better, it wouldn’t
have been a problem for me. Grace,
Rebecca, and I had previously agreed to go into town to buy some earrings and
have lunch. Ume got off work early, so
she met up with us. On the dala-dala
ride this morning, we ran into Brighton who was our tour guide for our
Kilimanjaro hike. He had just gotten back
from climbing all the way to the top!!
He showed us some pictures, which were pretty cool. In town, we did a little bit of shopping and
then wanted to go have lunch at this deli which we heard was good (not African
food though). We ended up not being able
to find it, so we just had lunch at IndoItaliano instead. My first meal in over 24 hours!! I was only
able to eat ¼ of a salad though. After
lunch, we walked around a little bit more and then just decided to go
home. Back at home, I decided to lay
down in bed and get some more rest.
Adrienne was also in bed-she had been all day. For dinner, I told mama that I couldn’t eat
much food and that I wanted something light.
She asked if bread was okay, and I said it was! So for dinner I had some bread, and… a hot
dog (which mama calls sausage).
Hopefully I feel 100% better tomorrow because I have work!
June 27/28:
Yesterday, only Heiness, Perpetua, and Elisia showed
up. I learned that Elisia is actually a
very, very smart girl. She was really
good at all the educational activities in the morning, and the only one who
could complete the daily activities with ease.
I feel like she could definitely go on to a vocational school. In the afternoon, mama Denisia set up an
obstacle-course challenge for the kids.
At the start, they had to play “lava” and walk on a path without
touching the ground. Next, they needed
to throw a ball to knock over bottles (this resembled bowling). Then, they had to jump rope one time, and
lastly, they had to throw balls into a box.
Again, Elisia was the only one who could do this properly… and the other
two lost interest very quickly. After
playing for a while, we had lunch—ugali, greens, and this really good
sauce. I wasn’t that hungry, but I
forced myself to finish as much food as possible. After lunch, we helped clean up and then we
left. Today, only Heiness and Perpetua
showed up in the morning. Halfway
through the lesson, Dennis came. His dad
carried him inside (and Dennis is a big boy) and sat him down in his chair and
made sure he was settled in fine. It was
so cute, and made me so happy and so sad at the same time. You could tell how much his dad loved him,
and his dad gave him a kiss on the head before leaving. His brother and sister came to drop him off too. It was really good to see that, because here
in Tanzania there is such a stigma against people with disabilities, and those
people are often neglected and the disability is ignored—so it was awesome to
see how much Dennis’s dad cared about him and loved him.
For our reflection this week, we had to write down our
highlight of the week. Here is mine
(which I wrote in reference to yesterday):
The
highlight of each of my days this week has been watching the children sing and
dance to this one Kiswahili church song.
Every morning, the children go through the same routine. After sweeping the dirt path and brushing
their teeth, they sit down in the classroom for their morning lesson. Each child takes turns saying what their name
is, what the weather is outside, what day of the week it is, and what mood they
are in. This is followed by the very
difficult task of placing foam letters in their proper places on a piece of
paper, which has the letters outlined for them.
For example, Alhamisi, the Kiswahili word for “Thursday,” would be
outlined on a sheet of paper. The
children are instructed to take each foam letter and put it in its appropriate
place on the paper. Elisia, one of the
children with down syndrome, is very good at this activity; but unfortunately,
the other children need a lot of assistance.
Other than Elisia, the children tend to place the foam letters upside
down, sideways, or in the wrong placement altogether. Although they are making a lot of mistakes,
they are visibly giving forth their best effort and you can see the frustration
on their faces when the caregiver tells them they have made a mistake.
After
the foam-letter activity, the children sing and dance to a church song. After watching them struggle to complete the
foam-letter activity, it brightens my day to watch them happily sing and
dance. Today, just like every other day,
Mama Denisia (the main caregiver) disappeared from the classroom to retrieve
“instruments” for each of us. She
returned and handed out a drum, maracas, saltshakers, and tambourines. Only three children—Elisia, Heiness, and
Perpetua—were there today; the others were sick or stayed at home for other
reasons.
Everyone
was given an instrument except for Heiness, who prefers to use her hands. Today, Perepetua was handed the drum and she
immediately began banging it with the stick—keeping a perfect beat. Heiness followed with her clapping, and the
rest of us followed with our instruments.
Mama Denisia began singing and Elisia rose from her chair, stomping her
feet and dancing. Mama Denisia has a
beautiful voice, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she was the lead singer in her
church. Elisia, without a trace of
shyness, was dancing in the center of the classroom and soon joined mama with
the vocals. Heiness moved to be next to
Elisia, and her clapping grew louder and became more enthusiastic as her head
bobbed back and forth. I—saltshaker in
hand—was sitting at a desk next to Perpetua, who kept turning her head to look
at me and grin. All three children were genuinely
happy and their smiles were incredibly contagious. Mama Denisia led the children (and us—we had
instruments too!) through two different songs, which lasted just under 10
minutes. At the end of the second song,
everyone clapped and cheered, celebrating a performance well done!
Rebecca,
Grace, and I all said that watching them sing and dance made us very emotional
because we felt so bad for them and their disabilities, but at the same time it
was so great to see them happy and enjoying themselves so much! Though they may not be able to line foam
letters perfectly straight or right-side up on a sheet of paper, they were able
to maintain a close-to-perfect rhythm and provide pretty good instrumentals for
this church song. It was a great
performance today as it similarly was each of the other days, and it was so
nice to see them delighted with themselves.
After reflection,
we went to IndoItaliano for dinner and then we went to this place called
Zumbaland. It was Mselle’s birthdays
(one of the KCMC students) and he wanted us to meet them there to celebrate his
birthday. As always, he was on Tanzanian
time and ended up being over an hour late, so we explored until he got there. Katrina described the place
perfectly—“Michael Jackson’s playground”.
There was a carnival/playground set up outside… and a bar inside. It was
actually a pretty cool place; but I don’t think it is an ideal location for a
playground. After wishing Mselle a happy
birthday, we decided to go to Glacier.
Glacier was a lot of fun and was filled with white people, just like
last time. We left around 11:30 to go
home, and the plan is to go to Boma with mama tomorrow.
June 29:
We were supposed to
go to Boma with mama today, but her mama is sick so she had to go and see her
mama. Her mama is 90 years old!! Which
is crazy, because the life expectancy here is only 56 and 90 is even impressive
for someone in developed countries. So,
Adrienne and I went back to bed, and around 10am I went to the school to
workout. I decided to go on a run by
myself, and I managed to fall… again. I
kept getting lost, so I ended up running in a big circle 5 times. I ran past the same 2 guards every single
time, and finally I decided to turn around and just go back. When I was 10 feet away from them, I tripped
and my phone and wallet went flying. The
2 guys ran up to me yelling “Pole sana, pole sana!” which means “Very sorry,
very sorry!” (But really they were making fun of me). It was actually pretty embarrassing. After running, I went home to shower and
Adrienne, Matt, Mike, and I went into town.
Today, we had our first authentic dala-dala experience. We usually get on at KCMC (which is the first
stop), but today we decided to get on by our houses. It was sooooo crowded. We had to stand up, and I was pretty much
hanging out of the dala-dala. When we
first got on, we counted that there were 27 people in the back… and they still
continued to stop for more passengers! *policy
issue!!* (There are only 14 real seats on the dala-dala). We ended up getting
off the dala-dala a couple stops early because we couldn’t take it
anymore. The first thing we did was meet
up with Laura, Abby, Rebecca, and Becca for lunch. We went to this place called Deli Chez which
has everything. There were over 250 items on the menu, and
they had a chinese menu, Japanese menu, “fast-food” menu, and “scrumptious”
menu. I ordered a Hawaiian salad (which
was described as salad with pineapple and chicken) and sizzling prawns. The Hawaiian salad ended up being chicken salad
spread on top of pineapples… so that was interesting. I always forget that salad here is not the
same thing as lettuce, like in the states.
The prawns were really good though!
They were served with seasoned vegetables and this really yummy
rice. We all also ordered
milkshakes—which were delicious! We’ve
been trying to find milkshakes at every restaurant, and we finally found them
today! After lunch, we shopped around
for a bit, went to Nakumatt (essentially a Wegman’s in Africa), and went to an
internet café for a little. I got the
best juice ever there. It was passion
fruit/pineapple, and it was realllllly good.
When I got home, mama served chips maiya 2.0 and we’re just relaxing for
the rest of the night.
June 30:
Today, I decided to sleep in (which means waking up at 9am). I had nothing on the agenda for today, so I
hung out with mama for the majority of the morning/afternoon. Mama cooked
really good mandazi (the donut-like things minus the icing) in the morning, and
she served it to Adrienne and me with our tea.
In the afternoon, Adrienne and Ume had to go somewhere for work, so it
was just me with mama, Derike, and a house girl (I think)? Mama taught me how to cook pilau. It is actually a lot more complicated than I
thought, but I think I’ll be able to do it after a couple attempts! I played with Derike for a bunch in the
afternoon, and I also decided to make my own Kiswahili phrasebook. I don’t know why I didn’t think of making one
in the beginning, but I’m glad I thought of doing it now! I saw Mesha on his way home from church, and
I asked him to help me out with the phrasebook.
I had the pilau mama cooked for lunch, and then I napped and read the
rest of the afternoon. When Adrienne got
home, we finally celebrated mama’s birthday!
Birthday traditions are a little different here. Mesha acted as an MC and narrated everything
that was going on and as mama put it, was the “master of celebrations”. We started off by singing to mama. We sang in English, but the tune was a little
different—and they sing the song twice.
Then, mama cut the cake. Even the
way they cut the cake here is different!
They cut a normal slice, but then they cut it into a lot of smaller
pieces. Tradition here is that mama
feeds a small piece of cake to each of us, and then we each take turns feeding
cake to mama. Then, she cuts a full
slice (then into mini pieces) for everyone, and we eat cake together and listen
to music. After the celebration, we all
just hung out for a little while longer.
July 1:
Today, mama Denisia came to work to say goodbye to us. She is taking her holiday now and won’t be
returning to Longuo until August 1st! That’s kind of crazy—I don’t know what
they’re going to do without her! Because
she was gone, Flora and Eva asked Grace, Rebecca, and I to teach the morning
lesson. It went better than expected,
but it did not go as well as it did when mama Denisia was the one
teaching. Today, two new children were there—Monika
and Eriki. I’m not sure exactly what is
wrong with both of them. Monika kept
grabbing my hand and closing her eyes really tightly—it kind of looked as
though she were reading my palm/feeling my energy haha. Then, she would grab my hand and rest it on
her neck and not let me go. I’m not sure
what that was all about. Eriki is the
cutest little boy ever. He is 6 years
old, and was a lot of fun. He obviously
had his moments, but for the most part I think he is one of the better off
kids. We played soccer for a little bit,
and drew pictures and ran around. One of
Eriki’s problems is that he likes to pee outside. At least it’s not inside, but he refuses to
go to the bathroom when he needs to pee.
When I got home from work, I slept for a long time and then Jeanne (the
main professor for Global Health at Cornell and the head of the program)
stopped by our homestay. She came to say
hi to mama and see how everything was going, but she also stayed and talked to
Adrienne and me for a while, which was really nice. When Jeanne left, we ate dinner and played
with our rafiki.
July 2:
Today was very eventful, to say the least. Denis, Dotto, Eriki, Elisia, Perpetua, and
Heiness all came to Longuo today. The
morning started off with Eriki peeing in the dirt where we were all
sweeping. After sweeping, the children
all brushed their teeth and when they were done brushing their teeth, Dotto
started walking into the classroom. She
collapsed, fell very hard, and started seizing.
I’ve actually never seen someone have a seizure before, so that was
scary. Thank god for helmet, so she was
okay after about 20 minutes. During the
morning lesson/singing, Denis started squirming in his chair and becoming very
fidgety—we were unsure of why. Soon, we
discovered that he peed in his pants.
Mama Denisia and mama Eva took care of that, and changed his pants. After the morning lesson, I did some running
with Eriki and Heiness. Eriki stopped
running and peed in the dirt again!!!! Then,
I was see-sawing with Perepetua while Grace and Rebecca colored and played with
the other children. When Perpetua and I
were done see-sawing, I learned that Denis peed in his pants again, and also
threw up. Denis peed in his pants 2 more
times throughout the day, and pooped in his pants once. Poor Denis.
He was definitely sick today—his snot was green and mucous-like. He also kept putting his head on my shoulder
and getting snot all over my shirt, so I used a lottt of hand sanitizer
today. Grace, Rebecca, and I decided to
make them new signs for their lessons, and we are going to get them laminated
on Thursday when we are done with them all.
Mama Denisia and mama Eva really appreciated that and kept saying “Safi
sani!” which means “so great!” When we
left today, they gave us hugs and kisses and said they were very thankful for
us. It’s nice to know that they
appreciate what we are doing for them, and that we aren’t in the way!
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