More volunteering

Not a lot going on the last few days. No pictures either.  Two days ago we traveled to the home of one of the patients of the Pomoja Women's Clinic.  This lady is a good example of why they setup the Women's Clinic in the first place.  The lady is in her late 30's and has three daughters.  One day many years ago, she became quite ill and went for help.  It was determined that she had HIV.  Once her husband found out, he left her (despite him being the one who gave it to her) and her three young babies.  Destitute, she moved back with her parents and their son's but they also shunned her and her children.  The father at least decided that he would sever a small parcel of land at the back of his plot and built a mud hut for her to live in.

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.   

A very special orphanage

The last few days here have mostly been filled by minor shopping expeditions, adventures in trying to get money from African ATM's and school work for the kids.  I must say that I'm also very much enjoying the opportunity to get some reading done in the evenings on the Kindle.  I've downloaded most of my favorite authors and have been going through them sequentially and so far (since I got the Kindle before we left), I've read 23 novels!  That's way more than I've read in the last few years put together and as many of you know, like Shawn, I LOVE to read (just haven't had the time).  This ebook thing really makes a huge amount of sense after some practice with it and I'm already planning on donating the hundreds of books I have sprinkled around the house once I've got electronic versions of them.  I've got more than 300 on the Kindle/PlayBooks and NetBook already.

But enough about me and my sometimes addictive reading habits...  yesterday we had an opportunity to visit with a unique orphanage about 30 minutes outside Moshi (about 15 minutes from Kenya).  On the HASH that I mentioned a few posts ago, Jen met a great young lady named Theresa who apparently made her fortune in Silicon Valley a few years back and decided to come to Africa to see if she could give back to the world.   She started about by funding about 2000 kids in orphanages in Zaire but found that she was just marginally reducing the pressures on the community and decided to try a different approach here in Tanzania.

She approached about 20 different tribal villages and asked the elders to recommend one child that was "most vulnerable" that she could assist by providing room/board and a great education to.  She ended up with this group of about 25 kids ranging from a few years old all the way up to 14-15.  She setup a small gated compound with a class room, multiple rooms (3 to a room) for each of the kids, a large enclosed area for playing, a room for a library, and some outhouses (she didn't want the plumbing to be too different from what the kids would be used to and have to go back to eventually).

The facility itself is very nice, kept very clean (by the kids themselves) and the kids are relatively well dressed (have good school uniforms and play clothes consisting of shorts/long skirt, a tee shirt and sandals (either goodyear or croc type).   They had about 300 books in the library but mostly of the "Cat in the Hat" variety recognizing that the kids when they came could speak no English.

Her philosophy is to take these 25 or so kids and give them an exceptional opportunity by really making a difference in their lives so that they will end up with good jobs and can go back to their villages and do the same thing - i.e. have 25 ambassadors making a real difference.  In theory it sounded like a very good idea so we were keen to see how it is working out.

We walked over to her house which is beside the Pamoja Women's Clinic (about a mile from our guest house) in Shantytown.  When we arrived, she was finishing up lunch with 5 of her senior students who have been away at Secondary School (boarding) and were returning to the Orphanage and then their home villages for the Christmas break (they are off now until mid January).  These students were well dressed and their English was very good.  We learned that Theresa also does special outings for those of her students who excel at something and that this lunch was meant as a treat to celebrate their completion of the first term.

Her place was a nice cement block house behind a gated wall.  Inside, as many of the nicer homes are here, we found wooden wainscoting and wooden boards (like cedar paneling) on the ceiling.  The colour schemes here are very familiar to us as they closely match our kitchen/living area and many of the local decorations fit in quite well.  She also had an older 7 passenger 4x4 Toyota van (it had been used as a Safari vehicle as it had a pop up roof).  Her oldest student, Emmanuel (16), was to be our driver.  I got to ride up front and had a good conversation with him.  His English was quite good and he was finishing what we'd call Grade 9. I must say his driving was quite good as well - if a bit fast but that's par for the course here.

The Orphanage is out the road that goes off toward the coast and Dar es Salaam from Moshi but continues rather than branching off south up to Kenya (it goes to Mombasa on the coast).  We arrived after about 30 minutes at a nice clean compound with very colorful mosaic painted on the outside showing it was a children's care facility.  Large artwork showing kids studying, eating, playing, etc on it.  We had passed the primary school about 2 miles back on the same side of the road.  That was a very large compound (probably 25 acres) with many buildings and a large 5-6 storey apartment building that was the residence for those boarding).  This was considerably better than what we'd seen in Moshi, and it became clear why Theresa had located her Orphanage here.

We then went into meet the kids and the house Mom who runs the place (normally there are two but one had returned to her family as they had needed her).  Theresa doesn't stay there as having Muzingu around is an invitation for break-ins and theft (and most of Theresa's work is getting permits, arranging for shipments from patrons in North America and volunteer placement/assistance).

The facility was (relatively) nice with painted concrete floors, clean walls, and LOTS of pictures of the kids as well as a wall with newspaper clippings of current events and profiles on significant African men and women that have made a difference.  They are clearly trying to make a good impression on the kids to try to get them to follow the example.

We were then taken into the library and shown their collection of books and their computer (not connected to the Internet).  Shawn was to spend some time with some of the older kids showing them how to use the computer while Jen, Rachel and I would take a child and have them read 1 page of a book to us and we'd read the next to them and so on.  Once they completed the book, we'd ask them questions to test their comprehension of what they learned.   They have a big chart on the wall with each of the kids names on it with a star for each book (some books were considered hard so had multiple stars assigned to them).  We each got a child who picked out a book they'd never read before, took some chairs and sat outside on the front porch with them.

I wasn't expecting a lot after seeing many of the kids at the other orphanages even those these kids were clearly better English speakers but holy smokes were we impressed.  You have to remember that they don't start schooling here until they are 7-9 years old.  The little boy that picked me out  was about 10 (he had come up to me in the hallway earlier all by himself and introduced himself to me and stuck with me through our tour).  He picked out a book called "Do Tarantulas have any teeth?".  It was a science book aimed at kids and dealt with just about every poisonous creature there is.  It had about 100 pages with large colorful pictures of some of the creatures.  I was quite impressed with his reading abilities (and remember that we have two very good readers ourselves and have read to them since they were babies).  He was quite fast and sometimes mispronounced words but when I'd give him the rules of thumb for that word (e.g. he'd say "bit" for "bite"... I would say if it has that final "e", that turns the "i" into an "eye" sound... and after a few tries he'd get it... and apply it to other words like that - we even found an exception to the rule!).   We must have read for about 90 minutes (it was a long book - but very interesting for both of us).  His comprehension was pretty good although he would often steam right over words he didn't understand so I'd have to slow him down a bit to ensure he understood).

My little reading buddy.

At the end, it was clear he got it and then we took the book to Theresa to get some stickers.  You should have seen his face when he realized it was worth 5 stickers!  She tested him on some items out of the book and it was clear he got it all.  Although he's 10, you have to remember that he only started school at most 2 - 3 years ago.  He was doing better than most Grade 3's at home for sure.  I was quite taken with him and he had a smile that would melt your heart.

About 30 minutes before we'd finished, most of the other kids had already had their turns and had taken the soccer ball we'd brought and had started an impromptu game.  This first started out as each kid keeping the ball in the air as long as they could with only their feet.  If one dropped it or it strayed out of reach some other kid would reach in with his foot to keep it in the air.  They were an exceptionally talented bunch!  Then they formed teams (somehow... no uniforms so other than the direction they were going, it was impossible to know which one was on which team).  Unfortunately they were so good at this and moved so fast and so surely that both Shawn and Rachel didn't feel comfortable to join in.

We watched this for about 5 minutes and then I thought that I'd have a look at the computer that we couldn't get to power on.  I took it outside in the sun, and within about 2 minutes, I had 20 kids looking over my shoulder at what I was doing.  It was clear that they'd never seen the insides of a computer and were fascinated.  I pointed out the various components (CPU, memory, CD  player, hard disks, adapters, power supply, motherboard, etc.) and the functions of each.  I then would point to items and they'd parrot back the name and what it did.  I was quite impressed.... but unfortunately the cause here was a dead power supply so I couldn't show them much... but then I got the bright idea that my BlackBerry Torch was also a computer and I could use that.

You have to picture this, I'm sitting on the step of the front porch and I have at least 15 kids leaning on me, sitting on my lap, all pressed together as I'm taking apart my Blackberry and showing them the processor, memory, battery, sim cards, keyboard, etc.   They were all quite fascinated.  Then I put it back together and showed them how it could play music (they wanted to hear ABBA), video's (showed them a video of Rachel learning to snowboard I had on it), the internet and then they saw a game (Mega Assault Tower) I had downloaded for Shawn/Rachel at one point and wanted to see that.

I'd never played it before so was pretty clueless at how it worked so was picking through it enough to get to Level 1.. then I passed it over to one of them.  They are each reaching in and dragging new weapons on to the battle field, pressing the shooting button, and having a blast.  I never imagined one little BlackBerry could be used by 15 kids at once!   I was very surprised at the level of cooperation amongst them... without words, they'd pass it around, and have one person on one function, another on an another and no fighting or hogging.  It was really something to watch.  In the meantime, I've got two of the smaller ones snuggling onto my lap and putting their arms around my shoulders.  You could hear the little grunts of contentment as I'd reciprocate and make room for more.  I don't think you could have put a drop of water between us all.  Even as I was sitting there, others would be reaching in and touching my leg, feeling my muscles or touching my hair - remember all kids have their heads shaved.

Shawn walked by at one point and said he wished he had a camera... so did I... not to show off but as a way to remember this moment always.  We played like this for over an hour until it was time to go...  I then showed them the camera function and took their pictures...  they'd line up and were pleased as punch to see it as it was taken and then a bunch of them said they wanted to take pictures of me with them in it so they'd line up taking turns taking pictures (generally three people taking the picture and three on or beside me).  It was magical how infectious they were.

Then it was time to go and this little girl came up to me and put her arms around my waist and gave me a big hug.  I put my arms around her shoulders and then she reached up like she wanted a real hug so I picked her  up and gave her one.  I don't know if I've ever been hugged so hard... by this time my eyes are watering up a storm.  These little urchins had made a huge impression on me and Jen/Shawn/Rachel have similar impressions.

The great little hugger!

Its very clear that Theresa is making a HUGE difference in these kids lives.  We met one kid about 15 or so that gave Theresa his report card and he was 1st in his class of 81 people.  Not boastful in the least but you could see she (and he) was beaming with pride - and deservedly so!

These kids spend a lot of time at the Orphanage and the older ones look after the younger ones but they all go back to their villages on a regular basis to maintain ties with their communities.  You look at these kids and see the future of Africa in them.  It is astonishing what's she's accomplished here and we were privileged to be able to join her for an afternoon with them.  Later this week, we're going to take some of the older kids to swim at the local YMCA.  None of them know how so we're going to spend 3 afternoons teaching them how to float, etc so they can help the others as well.  We are really looking forward to spending more time with these incredible children and the young (40 perhaps) lady who made it all possible.

I really think this is a model that should be replicated... providing subsistence living like the other orphanages surely helps but it will never take the pressure off as those kids will more than likely just grow up to to the same things as their parents did (spawn them and abandon them due to death from HIV, separation, etc.).  THESE kids, have a real chance to make a difference and break the chain.  She's not taking more in, and has committed to run them all through this program until 2020 when they should all return to their communities and start doing the same thing (in some fashion) for other kids there.  After talking with Emmanuel and some of the other kids there, I have no doubt that this will happen.

We're off to the Pamoja Women's clinic now to finish up with those kits (we found the missing ziplocs) and then make arrangements to go help a young pregnant HIV positive woman tomorrow build an outhouse!  With love from Tanzania...