Her brothers would have nothing at all to do with her and basically make her life miserable as she's not allowed to be around the family farm when they are there. The father died a few years ago and luckily he left written instructions with the village warden that the plot was his daughters. The young daughters are all young women now and were tough to support on what she could grow on one acre of land. The land around Moshi is suitable only for one crop a year as it almost never rains for much of the year and the land is as hard as rock. From what we could tell, she was growing Maize (corn). As she found it impossible to feed the 4 of them when the girls got older, she sent her oldest daughter off to be a live in housekeeper at some place not too far away. This girl was then raped continually by her employers and became pregnant. As soon as this became apparent, her employers fired her and sent her packing. When she got herself into a medical clinic for her pregnancy tests, it was determined that she also had HIV. They believe she got it from her mother breastfeeding as a baby as she had always been quite sickly. She's pretty resentful of her Mother for not telling her that she was HIV but frankly its such as stigma here, you can understand her Mother's position as well.
The Women's Clinic had been sponsoring this family and had let us know that they could use an outhouse as the women were having to go behind a bush. Crazy as it may seem, Tanzanian law is fairly strict about the construction of outhouses (must be concrete with tin roofs, have porcelain drop holes, and be constructed to fairly high standards so this was something the Women's Clinic couldn't take on themselves and we had indicated that we'd like to help so we went out with a few of the social workers and the "Fundi" (builder) to see what it would entail. They had also mentioned that there were a few holes in the mud hut that needed attention as snakes were getting in so we thought perhaps we could do some manual labor to address that.
What we saw when we got there however removed any doubts about building the "Cameron Crapper". The logs that were supporting the mud hut were completely termite infested and you could push your fingers through them. Basically the only thing holding up the roof was the mud walls which didn't have much of the traditional cow dung & ash "stucco" which prevents the mud from washing away left on half of the house (the young girls room) and you could drive Tonka trucks through the holes in the wall which were allowing snakes, and such into the house in the evenings. With that house in that state, it seemed silly to be spending money building a crapper that would be the only thing left standing come the rains in March so we redirected the Fundi to looking into what it would cost to repair the structure.
Some other Canadian lady had donated a large pile of stones to be used as the foundation material but it was clear that if you rebuilt the walls using traditional techniques, the termites would just get back in and do their damage once again (the place was originally built 5 years ago). The Fundi suggested rebuilding the walls using local stones and concrete and we got a quote for rebuilding (essentially the entire house) from the ground up. The roof rafters were all termite infested as well and the tin roof was going to leak like a sieve once the nails were pulled out so a new roof, windows and doors were required as well. The entire quote was of course larger than our budget but we determined that we could at least do the half of the house that was in the most danger including the interior wall and the Women's Clinic would do some fundraising on their next Caravan (medical tour) to complete the rest in January. This was a fair bit more than we wanted to spend but the thought of the four ladies and a new baby living in a place that literally wouldn't survive the rains in March (when the baby is due) clinched it for us. Construction starts tomorrow and should be complete in a few weeks. We'll likely not be here to see the end of it but the Cameron Bedroom sounds much better than the Cameron Crapper and we're happy to help as we could.
Yesterday afternoon, Theresa (from the Make A Difference Now Orphanage) brought four young (14-15) women over to the local YMCA and we started with swimming lessons for them. None of them had ever even seen a pool before and only one of them could float at all (face down in the water moving her arms a bit to make her move). The rest of them were very timid and had only been in local streams.
I'll say one thing for these Tanzanians... they are amazing athletes. The girl who could float (Jacqueline) and her friend (Neema) who was brave but had never even put her face in the water before, were both gung ho to try it. Jackie could swim about 5 feet and Neema was doing everything she could to keep up. I spent time with both of them giving them basic pointers on how to float, move their arms and kick their legs. Within minutes Neema was putting her face in, floating and flailing away with her arms and legs and swimming 10-20' and Jackie was doing it with her face out of the water. We got them floating on their backs and then Jackie said she wanted to try the deep end. The pool had a pipe welded to the side of the pool wall all the way around (it was an Olympic size swimming pool) with a 3m deep end.
I left Neema in Shawn's capable hands and swam beside Neema as she went hand over hand down the pipe to the ladder at the deep end. Then she said she wanted to reach the bottom... so she'd duck her head but of course she was full of air so didn't get down more than a few feet. I suggested that she use the ladder to help her down and she'd go down 5-6' before coming up saying she couldn't get down any more - with evident frustration. Then I showed her how to exhale and get rid of the extra air to make herself less buoyant and she got to the bottom on her first try. You should have seen her face! She was so pleased with herself.
Then we spent a bit of time showing her how to turn her dead mans float into treading water and she could almost immediately do that... by this time Shawn and Rachel had showed up and were jumping off the diving board and it was very apparent that Jackie wanted to try that. I told her to try the edge of the pool first and she scampered up the ladder and jumped right in. Head completely under, popped back up laughing, paddled back to the ladder and then it was off to the diving board! She'd blast off the board and then paddle back to the ladder over and over.
I well remembered learning to swim myself in a similar sized (indoor) pool on the base in Baden Baden in Germany when I was about 6. They had a very tall diving board (about 20') high that I used to dream about jumping off (as well as a regular one about 3' high)). Anytime the life guards weren't watching, I'd run down the pool, climb up the tall diving board and jump off and then barely make it back to the edge of the pool to have at it again. Within one jump, the lifeguards would come chase me and tell me I couldn't be in the deep end unless I swam the length of the pool unassisted. I spent many days getting tested each time until I could finally do it and then jump off the high diving board to my hearts content. I've never forgotten this and figured it would be a good thing for Jackie to be able to swim the length of the pool before I set her free as I was concerned that she'd jump off the diving board with nobody around and get into trouble.
The first attempt, she made it about 1/4 of the way before she said she was so tired and grabbed on to the end. Then I showed her that she was holding her breath to stay afloat and then didn't have enough air to complete the task and I showed her how to take the shallow topping breaths we all know how to do when swimming. She is a very quick learner as the next time she made it to the shallow end before standing up. She was very curious as to how Shawn and I could swim so effortlessly beside her so we took her back into the deep end and showed her how to tread water and take a break. She did it for 8 minutes and then from there swam the width of the pool! If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I'd have never believed it!
By now, her friend Neema, who'd been watching her jumping off the board (and without prompting even tried one dive - and got the usual belly flop) wanted her part of the action so asked to come down. We went through a similar routine with her. Her swimming wasn't nearly as strong as she could still only do it with her face in water but she soon learned to tread water with her head above water (tilted way back so only her nose/mouth/eyes were out). The rest of the girls then all came down the pool (followed closely by Theresa and Veronica (a good looking Swedish young volunteer who looks remarkably like a much heavier version of my cousin Karen) hand over hand down the pipe. They made their way around the entire pool and then we got them all back in the shallow end to dive down for some coins. Only one girl (Omega) who'd had a very difficult experience recently was the least bit timid and even she did just about everything she could to get down and get the coins.
We had to drag them out of the pool as they were all blue and shivering but were obviously having a blast. You should have seen their faces when Theresa told them they were coming back for the next two afternoons! We live for moments like this. It makes our trip so worthwhile.
Its another hot day here in Moshi and the kids are finishing up about 3 hours of school work before we go back to the Y. Jen and I have been working on the plan for the next few months and its starting to come together. Right now it looks like we'll leave Moshi on or before the 3rd of December and head for Zanzibar. We'll take the bus to Dar es Salaam (about 8 hours) and then the 2 hour high speed ferry across to Stone Town in Zanzibar. (This isn't the same ferry that rolled over and sunk in August... that one had mostly locals on it and was severely overloaded. This one costs 10 times as much so it's mostly Muzingu and VIPs/diplomats). We think we're going to stay up around Kwendra Beach on the North West side of the island - 2 hours from Stone Town and I'm supposed to be figuring out transport right now).
On the 17th, we'll leave Zanzibar and then head back to Dar es Salaam to spend the night before our flight out in the early morning on the 18th for Johannesburg and then Victoria Falls in Zimbawae. We've got a 20 day overland trip booked that will take us into Botswana (to see the Okavango Delta), Nambia (to see the Kalihari Desert and the huge sand dunes among other things) and then through Swaziland (to spend a night with a local tribe) and then into South Africa all the way down the west coast to Cape Town. We then plan on spending the better part of a week in Cape Town and then will do a self drive up the Garden Route and somehow make our way up to Johannesburg for the flight to Singapore on or about the 27th of January. If you were paying attention to the dates, we'll be somewhere deep in the swamps of the Okavango on Christmas and we doubt very much we'll see any power let alone internet the entire 20 day trip. (Its a camping trip, not a hotel one).
Once we get to Singapore, the current plan is to spend 5 or so days and then make our way up the Malaysian peninsula to Thailand (hitting Phi Phi, Ko Samui and all those places on the way) and then winding along the coast into Cambodia down the Mekong River into Vietnam coming out on the Mekong Delta. We'll then work our way up Vietnam starting at Saigon (I still refuse to call it Ho Chi Ming City - I'm not much of a socialist!) and up to Hanoi and the North Country. I'm keen to see a lot of the Vietnam War sites that I've read so much about over the last 40 years (and that I remember from the nightly news my parents would watch). Then overland into Laos and then back into Thailand to see Chang Mai and then down into Bangkok. From there, we'll fly into Europe (on or about April 1st).
Jen's already got her Villa rented in the Loire Valley for the last two weeks of April and the first week of May. So we're hoping we can spend some time with Macrae and Jillian in Paris around then sometime (before or after) and I also want to spend some time at Normandy, Dieppe and some of the other WW1/WW2 landmarks. Other than that, we've not got much figured out until our flight out of Madrid for home on the 31st of July. I suspect we'll go down the east side of the Adriatic through Serajavo, etc to Greece after Italy to conserve the budget but we'll see.
We're off to hunt for sleeping bags for our camping trip through South Africa. Bye for now.
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