Back to Tanzania

May 3, 2010

I safely arrived in Tanzania after 24 hours of flying! I was pleased to arrive with a proper return flight home after the whole debacle that occurred when I arrived at the airport. Long story short I had to call expedia, expedia (not surprisingly) did nothing and the women working for Delta completely sorted my flight out for me. I nearly cried when she ran through customs and handed me my itinerary with the return date on July 29! She was amazing and I have no idea how I would of ever tried to sort that out from Africa, I was only booked from Amsterdam to Seattle on June 29.
All my flights were really good! I had intended to sleep from Minneapolis to Amsterdam but I sat next to the most amazing 70 year old man and we ended up talking the entire flight. He and his wife loved to travel and they had seen essentially the entire world. He was from Scotland, and his wife was from Australia but they met at a Halloween party in the early 1950s in… Edmonton!! It really made for an enjoyable flight despite the fact that I was unable to sleep.
Arriving in Arusha was completely surreal, I still can’t believe that after all this time of wanting to be back I finally am. Sunday (May 2) was my first full day here and I just relaxed and tried to adjust to the jetlag. During the day our neighbors had a traditional party where the new granddaughter was presented to the grandma for the first time, everyone was singing and dancing so we all went over and joined, it was a ton of fun! Monday I went to Faraja orphanage to drop off pictures for former volunteers. While at Faraja I went and did some home visits for the kids to try and determine why they weren’t at school, words can’t even begin to describe what I saw. One of the home visits that will stick with me for the rest of my life was ran by this 20 year old named Ida. Ida had lost both her parents to AIDS and she herself was infected. She was looking after 3 of her younger siblings as well as her own 10 month old baby. Her house was made of mud cow dung and wood, and was extremely small and dirty. We brought vitamins and food for her and her siblings/child, as we handed the vitamin to her she began to shake and appeared as those she was about to faint. Faraja began to ask her questions in Maasai and it took a while for her to answer but she told us about how everyday is a struggle and she didn’t know whether she was going to live or die. I have never seen such hopelessness and sadness in the face of a 20 year old. It was extremely apparent that she was overwhelmed and unhappy with everything going on in her life. As I sat there listening to this horrific story it took everything in me to not cry in front of her. I tried to imagine myself in her position and I knew there was no way I would ever be able to understand. I think its imperative to understand that Africans have the same emotions and feelings as you and I and just because family deaths occur frequently here it is no less painful.
This story brings me to my first project here in Tanzania, some other volunteers and I are going to set up a weekly women’s group. The whole purpose of this group will be to bring similar young women together so they have a place to escape and vent their stories. We also plan to set up activities for them so that they have an outlook and something outside of caring for the kids and finding food to focus on. We first plan to establish relationships with all the women and make them comfortable with each other, and then we will move onto art therapy. I really believe this will help with their morale, and hopefully in the future Ida will be confident and happy! I will keep you all posted on how this project turns out, I think it will be really great! I will work on this once or twice a week and then I will be back at Tuamkeni for the rest of the time. Tomorrow is the big reunion and I am beyond excited to see all the kids again.

First Day Back May 4, 2010
Today was absolutely amazing! I got to see all my kids for the first time in 10 months. They were all so excited to see me and ran into my arms! The school looks a million times better than last year, they are in a new building and each of the 4 classes has their own room. It’s really great to see that volunteers’ gradual changes end up making a huge difference. The kids had learned so much in the past year and kids who could barely speak a word of English were reading full sentences to me. Today we just hung out with the kids and didn’t do much teaching. Two sisters who have been at the school for 3 months now go home tomorrow so after they leave we will probably each be assigned a class to spend most of our time with. I feel like I might cry when they are crying during their goodbye just because I know how tough it is to leave those wonderful kids. After visiting with the kids we went to visit Kaka, Kaka is the usual security guard at the house except he got hit by a car and has a broken leg. Thankfully he will be back to work in the next 2 weeks. Kaka is the happiest and nicest man on the planet so despite being bed ridden he was in good spirits. I am excited to see how the next 3 months will unfold. Its crazy to think I have only been here for not even 3 full days and so much has happened already. I hope everything is going really well back home.

Love you all
Catherine
p.s my number is +255762568182 but if that number doesn’t work then just add a 0 after the +255


Signing off
Catherine