June 2: Machame

Adrienne, Ume, and I went to Machame this morning.  Our main purpose for the trip was to deliver books and learning toys to the Machame primary school.  We were picked up at KCMC and driven 35 minutes to the school/church.  When we arrived, we were greeted by teachers Hilda and Moses.  Before going into the church, we said hello to all the students.  Moses gathered the school choir, and they sang two songs for us: one in Kiswahili, one in Kiingereza (English).  I filmed the whole thing and wish I could post it here, but it won't load.  Teacher Moses was playing the drums while the other students sang and danced in sync.  The main singer was Winnie, and she was really good.  

With the Machame School Choir!

After the choir performance, we went into the church.  It was a lutheran church.  I felt a little bit intimidated at first because Adrienne and I were the only white girls in the entire place.  I could feel multiple eyes staring me down, probably wondering what I was doing there.  I tried to ignore the staring faces and take everything in.  The music was much louder than what I'm used to hearing at church in the states, and everyone was singing loudly and getting really into the songs.  Unfortunately, I have no idea what mass was about, but it was cool to see everyone else enjoying it.  At one point, everyone started turning to each other and shaking each other's hands (but they would only turn to the person directly next to them).  Ume and I turned to each other and just kept saying "peace be with you" (like we do in catholic church back at home), but that was definitely not correct.  Finally, we were called up to the front and asked to introduce ourselves.  All I said was "Jina langu ni Rachel" which means "My name is Rachel."  Adrienne and Ume introduced themselves as well, and then Ume did the rest of the talking.  Ume explained that we came from America and are students at Cornell University in New York.  We were here working in a collaborative study with the KCMC medical students, and our purpose for coming to Machame was to deliver books to the students.  Teacher Moses translated everything she said.  It was rewarding to see everyones faces light up and you could see everyone was grateful that we were helping out in their community.  I was no longer intimidated, because all the blank stares turned into smiling faces.

Front and center at church 

They gave us a basket of bananas!! And I love the bananas!!!

After the church service ended, we took a tour around the school's campus.  Machame is a boarding school, and it had a fairly big campus.  It had pre-school through 7th grade.  It was sad to see the conditions that the children were learning in (unfinished stairwells and classrooms, broken desks and chairs, unsanitary bathrooms, etc.) but it was also cool to see that they were actually getting an education!!  We walked in a couple of the classrooms, and saw that a range of topics were taught from counting to health to mathematics and more.  One thing that was really sad was to see that children here still receive physical punishment.  Ume watched one girl get hit by the teacher with a cane.  Sooooooo not okay.  I would have started crying if I saw that.  I teared up when she told me what happened, and she herself had to walk away.  She was so angry at the teacher.  So sad.  After that happened, we all kind of just wanted to get out of there and get dropped back off at KCMC.  However, they had prepared us lunch.  We decided we would stay for lunch and then we told them we needed to go.

With some of the students

That one incident was very heartbreaking, but it was a good experience overall and it was cool to see a more rural part of the Kilimanjaro region. 

With the roomie, Adrienne, at Machame!

Highlight of today: Watching the school choir perform at the Machame school and seeing how appreciative everyone was that we brought books and toys over from the US!

June 1: Market Fail

Today, a group of us wanted to go to the market.  Mama Mary (Grace, Ume, and Rebecca’s mama) said she would take us so we met at their house around 10:30am.  I was prepared to take a dala-dala to the market but nope, mama Mary wanted to walk.  Considering the dala-dala ride is 15 minutes, I was not looking forward to this 1+ hour-long walk.  What I thought would be a one-hour walk soon turned into a 3 to 4-hour tour around the town of Moshi, and we never made it to the market.  First, mama Mary wanted to stop at this garden-jungle-ish place to buy a plant.  That took about half an hour.  While we were waiting for mama Mary to pick out a plant, I think I took a picture of every single type of flower that was in the garden.  Next, we stopped at a church so mama Mary could pray.  The church was pretty big and really pretty inside.  There were many stained-glass windows that are typical of most churches, but there were also these colored shuttered windows that surrounded the top of the walls. It’s hard to describe so I wish I could have taken a picture, but cameras weren’t allowed.  After mama Mary had a chance to pray, we continued our walk.  There are no sidewalks and the entire walk felt like a hike.  It’s hard to look up and enjoy the scenery because there are so many rocks and branches and ditches—I play it on the safe side and stare at the ground when I walk.  However, I almost got hit by two cars (mom, don’t freak out when you read this).  The cars drive so close to the sides of the road though!  One car was literally centimeters away from me and going pretty fast.  I swear it came out of nowhere, but it was pretty scary.  Apparently a lot of people get hit by cars here.  Maybe that would explain why there are coffins everywhere (something I keep forgetting to mention).  On our walk to school, we pass by approximately 10 bars and 15 coffin kiosks.  I kid you not, it’s real weird.  We stopped by the YMCA club which was really nice.  All of us were saying that we want to go back there and go swimming on the weekends.  There was also a really funny sign next to the pool that read: “??”.  Mama Mary was hungry, so we ended up staying there for a while so she could eat.  I bought a cool soccer jersey from there before we left!  Finally, we were getting close to the market and some of us were running low on money so we stopped at an ATM.  That was a whole fiasco… Becca accidentally withdrew 400,000 shillings instead of 40,000 shillings and her and Matt somehow did their math wayyyyy wrong and thought she withdrew the equivalent to $56,000.  Needless to say, Becca panicked a little bit.  Really, 400,000 shillings is equivalent to roughly $250.  But Becca was uncomfortable having that much money on her person so she tried to convert some of it back.  We ended up waiting at the ATM place for 45 minutes.  So many street vendors were coming up to us and trying to get us to buy their paintings and jewelry, etc. At this point, we were all getting really tired too.  After the ATM problem was solved, we continued on our way.  We ended up stopping at two shops and spending 15 minutes in the first one and 30+ minutes in the second one.  When we were done in the second shop, some people were hungry so we sat down to take a food break.  At this point, mama Mary and everyone else was so tired, we decided it was no longer a good idea to go to the market.  As Adrienne said, you could look at today as a success or a complete failure.  It was definitely a failure in terms of our purpose to go to the market; however, we did get to see a lot of Moshi and we were able to go to a couple shops.  So I guess that’s a success!!  Also, all the walking gave us some exercise (we called a taxi to go home though).  When we got home, mama was gone and I left the key in my backpack on my bed so we were locked out.  Adrienne and I were fine with just playing with the kids outside, but Matt and Mike had left their stuff in our room and they wanted to go home.  I was determined to get the key from my backpack.  I opened the window to my bedroom and tried to reach my backpack through the window.  I was so close yet so far.  Next, Mike tried.  He was closer, but still not close enough.  I searched around the house for a stick and found a thin piece of wood that we could use to reach my backpack handle.  First, Mike tried and failed.  Next, I tried.  It was really difficult, but I was able to turn my backpack around and hook the strap onto the stick.  Thanks for the muscles Jeremy.  I got the backpack close enough that Mike could reach it.  Just as he had my backpack in his hand, Delke walked up to us and handed us the key that mama had left.  Really Delke??  Haha…I guess that’s what happens when you don’t know the Swahili word for “keys”.  Once we got into the house, Adrienne wanted to take a nap and I dropped my stuff off and went outside to play with the kids.  Delke, Rookia, Mwajuma, and Na wanted me to “take a movie of them”.  Unfortunately, the video won't load :( 

Favorite girl!  Found out her name is Na :) 

  I also entertained them with a game of angry birds and introduced them to temple run.  Rookia was a pretty quick learner with temple run, but they were all so amazed when I would play and would crowd around and watch me, haha.  I really didn’t want to play… but they kept asking me to!  I played with them for about an hour but then I started getting sleepy so I went inside and joined Adrienne with a nap.  I slept until dinner time, and mama served us chips na maiya again (fries and eggs).  That was my first real meal of the day, so I ate the entire thing.  Afterwards, I took a bucket shower and went to bed.  Tomorrow, Ume, Adrienne, and I volunteered to go to a 3-hour church service at Muchame church and deliver books and toys to Muchame school. 

In America news: Congratulations to my cousin Eileen and her husband Greg on getting married today!! I wish I could have been there!! 

May 31: Reflection Day

First, I’m going to tell you about the dream I had last night/very early this morning.  The reason I thought about this is because this one girl in my group is taking Melofloquin (a type of malaria prophylaxis) which can give you hallucinations.  She hasn’t had any hallucinations, but she has been having weird dreams.  Last night I had a weird dream, so I’m going to share it with you… It was slope day at Cornell.  The slope was covered in trees and at the bottom of the slope were a bunch of hot tubs and pools.  I was in one of the hot tubs with some of my friends, but mostly random people.  Someone called me on the phone (I’m not exactly sure who) and they asked me to leave the slope.  However, it was midday on slope day… why would I leave?  Randomly, all the trees on the slope started to blow up one-by-one.  Every time a tree blew up, a fire took its place.  Then, there was hail coming from the sky.  Or so we all thought.  But really, they were giant ice cubes being shot out of cannons…by the professors.  It was actually really scary and everyone started to panic and get out of the hot tubs and pools.  The only way to escape was to run up the slope, which was difficult because the professors would just aim those ice ball cannons at us.  I was running up the slope with my friend Alex Kelly who doesn’t even go to Cornell, and finally we got to the top.  We held onto railings (the slope doesn’t even have railings) and we somehow managed to avoid the ice cubes.  When we arrived at the top of the slope, Willard Straight was the only building in site.  We thought we would be safe in there, but really it was a place where the professors held everyone hostage.  So, I was held hostage in Willard Straight.  I thought I was going to die, and then realized it was all a dream and forced myself to wake up.  The end.  Then I looked to my left and Adrienne was also awake.  It was 7:30am.  That’s what I call sleeping in on a Friday morning.  We have been getting up before 7am every day this week. 

Almost the whole class!

We got to school around 8:45 and had thirty minutes of wi-fi before class started (class starts at 9:15 on Wednesdays and Fridays).  Today, the remaining 3 groups gave their case-study presentations.  The presentations were all really good, and again I learned a lot.  After the presentations, we went to Jacob’s Well Canteen for lunch.  Grace and I shared rice with vegetables.  It was just Grace, Becca, and me at a table for lunch and it was really nice to get to know the two of them a little better.  After lunch, we went back to the classroom for some internet and to check in with Becca (a different Becca--our TA who just arrived last night) and let her know how everything has been going.  Then, everyone went home to drop our stuff off real quickly and we walked to Dr. Stacey Langwick’s house as a group.  Every Friday is reflection Friday.  Dr. Langwick had a very nice house, and it was great to hear everyone’s thoughts on the week so far. 

My case study group minus Masuma

 I’ll touch on a few things that I had to say.  Firstly, I absolutely love my homestay.  Mama and Delke are both so nice.  Mama is really funny too.  She likes to refer to herself in third person a lot and it cracks me up—“Mama likes beer.”  “Beer makes mama warm. Mama like food. Food make mama fat.  Mama gonna make her daughters fat.”  (Adrienne and I are her daughters).  It’s hilarious.  One day she was showing us pictures in an album—“This is mama.  Here mama on her birthday.  Last year daughters give mama cake.”  Second, everyone else in the compound is very welcoming and friendly.  Whenever we get home from school, all the little kids run up to us and give us hugs.  Then they hold our hands and walk us into the house.  All the moms in the compound say hi to us too.  It’s not just mama who greets us, but everyone else does.  And it’s more than just a greeting.  They seem like they genuinely care how our day is going and what we are up to.  I’ve noticed a strong sense of unity that we don’t have back in the states.  An example that I used during the reflection session: back at Cornell, not everyone says hi to you.  In fact, hardly anyone says hi.  You can be walking past someone who you recognize and have definitely seen out at parties, and have maybe even talked to before.  But sometimes those people will look down at their phone when they’re passing by you, or look down at the ground if their phone isn’t handy.  People will do anything to avoid eye contact, and avoid any awkward hello’s.  Here, that is totally unheard of.  Almost every stranger says hi to you, and absolutely no one looks away.  I haven’t said hi to everyone I’ve walked by, but I’ve definitely at least smiled at everyone.  So, that’s something that is very different.  Lastly, I shared one thing that I learned this week.  Yesterday, when I was talking to Mesha, I asked him which tribe he was.  He told me his mother was a part of the Chaaga tribe and his father was a part of the Sumaki (that’s definitely not right… but something like that) tribe.  Therefore, he was part of the Sumaki tribe.  He told me that if your parents are a part of different tribes, the children always take the tribe of their father.  New fact! 

Lodoe, Henry, Grace, Ume, Me (Fun fact: Ume means penis in Swahili)

Yeah... when she introduced herself, all the KCMC students started laughing.  Apparently it means something very peaceful in Nigeria.  But definitely not here.  

            

After our reflection session, we got picked up by cabs and taken to Moshi Club.  We met all the KCMC students there and had food and drinks.  It was a lot of fun and everyone got to know each other better.  I think we tried all the popular beers.  We had Kilimanjaro, Tusker, Castle, and Safari.  In order from favorite to least favorite for me: Kilimanjaro, Castle, Safari, Tusker.  It was def a good time!

Highlight of my day:  Getting to know all the KCMC students in a setting outside of the classroom!