Ok so I know I have been terrible at this but in all fairness I have been extremely busy and internet cafes are only open at certain hours. I will have to fill you all in on Zanzibar and Egypt a little later but for now I will fill you in on what has been going on in Arusha. Everything with Tuamkeni is going excellent thus far. Earlier this week I met with Mr. Mathew to discuss the process of purchasing land in more detail and to work out the final cost for the land. After meeting with him I went and found a lawyers office in town so I could ensure that the process Mr. Mathew had told me about was in fact correct. The lawyer was extremely helpful and she showed me ones that were in the middle of being processed and ones that had already been processed. I feel confident that I now fully understand the proper process. The next step involves me getting all my funds together and figuring out how I will be able to withdraw the money for the land. It is a slow process but hopefully everything works out and Tuamkeni will be able to have a place to call home by the end of next week. Land will do so much for Tuamkeni because it means its a permanent place where they can grow and develop into a better organization. The land I am looking at is extremely fertile so Mr. Mathew and I want to devote a section of the land to a garden so they can either grow their own food or grow food to sell with the funds helping out the school. I am really happy with everything so far and I really hope everything with the land works out.
Catherine
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Monday, June 14, 2010
My mom and Aunt arrive in Africa
So it has been a while since my last update because I am traveling and I dont have a computer to type it out and then save it to my USB but I will give you a brief glimpse into what I have been up to for the past 2 weeks and I absolutely promise to give a more detailed description after I arrive back in Arusha on the 18th.
-My mom and aunt arrived in Arusha and I showed them my school, the town, where I live, and other orphanages in Arusha. Tuamkeni is located in an extremely poor area so they were both in shock at how poor the area truly is. My mom on the walk there was nearly in tears and she told me she had a much better appreciation for what I do and love before we had even arrived at the school. The kids teachers and grandmothers were all so excited to get to meet my mom and aunt, and it gave them a slight glimpse into my life back home.
-After touring Arusha for a few days my mom and aunt went on a 4 night, 5 day safari and they had an absolutely incredible time and saw every animal there is to see.
- On Tuesday the 3 of us left for Zanzibar and spent 2 nights at a 5 star beach resort where we relaxed by the ocean, went kayaking, ate incredible food, got massages, and I finally got a hair cut!
-Thursday we headed to another 5 star resort in Stonetown to spend 2 nights. In Stonetown we relaxed at the pool, did tons of shopping, got a tour of all the historical monuments many of which were related to the slave trade, and ate more incredible food.
-The world cup has begun and Africa is absolutely thrilled to have it on their continent.. you can buy tons of souvenirs and its played on every tv in sight.. its definitely an exciting time to be in Africa
-Saturday we made our way to Egypt and the flight was anything but direct we flew from Zanzibar to Dar to Ethiopia to the Sudan and finally we arrive in Egypt at 2:30am. Even though I just had layovers in Ethiopia and the Sudan I am tempted to count them as countries I have been to in Africa especially because the Sudan sounds so badass.
-We are currently in Egypt and its an incredible place. Cairo is a middle eastern, Mediterranean version of New York and I absolutely love it. Yesterday we went and toured the market and one of the massive mosques, and smoked sheesha at our hotel by the pool. Today we visited the pyramids, crawled through the pyramids, rode a camel on the sahara, visited the amazing Egyptian museum, saw some of the most famous mummies, and bought more cool souvenirs. Tonight we are off to watch the pyramids as they are lite up and although I have heard its extremely cheesy it will be cool to see them at night.
That is a taste of what I have been up to for the past 2 weeks. I hope everything is well with everyone at home!
Love you and miss you all
Catherine
-My mom and aunt arrived in Arusha and I showed them my school, the town, where I live, and other orphanages in Arusha. Tuamkeni is located in an extremely poor area so they were both in shock at how poor the area truly is. My mom on the walk there was nearly in tears and she told me she had a much better appreciation for what I do and love before we had even arrived at the school. The kids teachers and grandmothers were all so excited to get to meet my mom and aunt, and it gave them a slight glimpse into my life back home.
-After touring Arusha for a few days my mom and aunt went on a 4 night, 5 day safari and they had an absolutely incredible time and saw every animal there is to see.
- On Tuesday the 3 of us left for Zanzibar and spent 2 nights at a 5 star beach resort where we relaxed by the ocean, went kayaking, ate incredible food, got massages, and I finally got a hair cut!
-Thursday we headed to another 5 star resort in Stonetown to spend 2 nights. In Stonetown we relaxed at the pool, did tons of shopping, got a tour of all the historical monuments many of which were related to the slave trade, and ate more incredible food.
-The world cup has begun and Africa is absolutely thrilled to have it on their continent.. you can buy tons of souvenirs and its played on every tv in sight.. its definitely an exciting time to be in Africa
-Saturday we made our way to Egypt and the flight was anything but direct we flew from Zanzibar to Dar to Ethiopia to the Sudan and finally we arrive in Egypt at 2:30am. Even though I just had layovers in Ethiopia and the Sudan I am tempted to count them as countries I have been to in Africa especially because the Sudan sounds so badass.
-We are currently in Egypt and its an incredible place. Cairo is a middle eastern, Mediterranean version of New York and I absolutely love it. Yesterday we went and toured the market and one of the massive mosques, and smoked sheesha at our hotel by the pool. Today we visited the pyramids, crawled through the pyramids, rode a camel on the sahara, visited the amazing Egyptian museum, saw some of the most famous mummies, and bought more cool souvenirs. Tonight we are off to watch the pyramids as they are lite up and although I have heard its extremely cheesy it will be cool to see them at night.
That is a taste of what I have been up to for the past 2 weeks. I hope everything is well with everyone at home!
Love you and miss you all
Catherine
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Napenda Afrika sana
Its Sunday evening and I have nothing else to do so I figured I would blog. This past week has been productive and I feel rather accomplished. Monday morning I went to Tuamkeni and helped teach, mark, and just showed the kids some love. Kids at their age need so much love and affection especially when you consider the unpleasant situations they are growing up in. That said, I know fortunately enough that my kids are better off than many other kids in Arusha. Tuamkeni has 40 kids split between 4 classes, 2 teachers, volunteers, and 2 bibis (grandmothers) each day to cook for them. When volunteers are at the school the kids are never left alone in a class for more than a few minutes, and because the classes are smaller they are able to get the individual attention they deserve. Obviously the quality of education is severely lacking but that is something that can be improved upon through better resources and enough teachers per classroom just to name a few.
I spent the afternoon sitting with Bibi Monaca helping her sift rocks and sticks out of the bag of beans. Monaca and her husband Mathew run Tuamkeni but Mathew works as an accountant for a pharmacy in Arusha so he comes by the school very rarely. I was surprised to learn this week that Mathew earned his masters in accounting from the University of Glasgow and worked as a CA in Scotland for 2 years before returning to Tanzania. An accountant is a good job no matter where you are in the world but its funny the differences in life styles. Mathew is paid well for Tanzania and he dresses well but his house is essentially just a slightly bigger mud shack accompanied by a mud yard. Mathew chose to leave the UK to come back to the simple Tanzanian lifestyle. He obviously speaks very good English but his wife Monaca on the other hand does not. In fact I speak better Kiswahili than she does English so we had a basic conversation about life and marriage in Swahili. I understand Swahili significantly better than I speak it which is extremely frustrating because I can understand the questions and discussions but I can’t always formulate a proper response. Hopefully by the end of these 3 months I will be much better.
Tuesday I went to visit Kimondolo Primary School which is a private primary school located just 10 minutes outside of Arusha. I was a little shocked at the state of the school considering that the children’s parents are paying to send them there. The building was bare and practically falling apart, each classroom did have a teacher but the most alarming aspect was the teachers’ lack of care for their students. They would just leave the kids to run rampant for half hour periods at a time while they sat in the office drank tea and marked. It made me realize how lucky my kids are to have teachers who care about them.
Wednesday Katie and I went with Mathew to look at a possible land option for Tuamkeni. It was ¾ of an acre located 12km outside of Arusha in a gorgeous, safe, and quiet area. The location is incredible except for the fact that it is outside Arusha and thus a bus would need to be purchased to transfer the kids. Land is an extremely vital step for Tuamkeni because they can’t grow as a school until they have a solid home. The land we looked at costs 6 million Tanzanian shillings which is around $4500 plus there are fees of a few hundred dollars for transferring titles. Land is the difficult part; once you have the land it is relatively easy to build a building and then when other volunteers come through they can easily add things to the building and land. One of the biggest issues with buying land is trust, which is unfortunately really difficult to build in Tanzania. 2 of the past volunteers who were at the school for 3 months don’t trust Tuamkeni but Marcell a volunteer who was there for 9 months does, and Andrew another volunteer who came back to the school say he trusts them too. I took everything the 4 of them told me and for the past month I have been figuring out the trust situation for myself and I have come to the conclusion that I trust Tuamkeni completely. I sat down and made a list of all the reasons I should trust Tuamkeni and all the reasons I shouldn’t. My only 2 reasons for not trusting Tuamkeni were because Amanda and Emily don’t, and then also because it’s Africa and corruption is unfortunately such a major issue. My list for why I should is significantly longer.
1.) As a returning volunteer I have the advantage of already having established a relationship with the school so they now know that I will definitely return and continue to return to check up on things. I must add that last year Heather and I bought food, mosquito nets, a few books, and sand toys for the kids, and we delivered it all on our very last day which looking back might have been a stupid idea because they could have just sold it for their personal benefit. However, all the items are still located at the school and the mosquito nets are in all the kids’ houses, which has been beneficial for my ability to establish trust with Tuamkeni. I truly believe you can determine a lot off of gut instinct and last year my gut instinct was to trust them and obviously that was a good decision.
2.) I sat down and talked to Mathew about the school and their finances this week and he was completely honest about how much money they have in the bank account. In fact a former volunteer informed me that they had 800000 ($550) in their bank account and Mathew told me that they actually had over a million tsh and that that money was to be saved for a rainy day. I was really impressed to hear someone in Africa talking about savings and money for the future. At that point I was unaware that Mathew had his masters in accounting.
3.) Mathew has a good job as an accountant in Arusha so he doesn’t rely on the school for money. Furthermore, he could have simply stayed in Scotland if he wanted to make a lot of money and live a frivolous life.
4.) My gut instinct is telling me to trust them.
So that is a brief overview for why I trust Mathew and Tuamkeni. Now my focus will be on trying to buy land so that the school has a place to grow. I also have the advantage of having friends who are now living in Arusha who can go and check up on things for me. I am going to talk with some locals about the land procedure to ensure it is done properly and correctly.
Thursday Katie and I went and did an HIV talk for 6 12-14 year old boys who are sexually active at Faraja Orphanage. It was a really great talk and I think (hopefully) that the boys took a lot away from it. They asked crazy questions about whether goats blood and milk could cure it and if you could tell whether or not people had it, it was truly an eye opening experience and solidified everything I had learned in school about why HIV spreads like wildfire in Africa. At the end of the conversation the boys all had terrified looks on their faces so we offered to take them to get HIV tested. All the boys wanted to go get tested so that’s what I did on Saturday. Testing is free at the local government hospital and luckily everyone, me included, was HIV free. I was obviously not at all nervous for my own test results but I was praying that none of the kids test would come back positive. The nurse who did the tests was herself HIV positive which was an excellent example for the kids of how someone can look entirely healthy and have a good job and still be positive. Furthermore, she was able to tell them her own story of how her husband told her he was negative and she didn’t need to worry and that they should use a condom every single time if they are going to have sex. It was a really good day and the boys took even more away from it. Its important to talk to the guys here in Tanzania because unfortunately the women don’t have much of a say at all and it is entirely up to the man for whether or not a condom will be used. I knew the boys had taken important information away from the talk because at the end of the day they asked us how to convince their friends it was cool to use a condom.
Friday I went to Tuamkeni and we helped the kids decorate the masks we bought them, blew up balloons, sang songs, and helped them clean the school. It was a really productive and tiring day. I am so happy to be back with those kids and I love them to bits. Hopefully everything with the land is able to work out.
So I let this blog sit on the computer for a while before I finished typing it but it is now Tuesday and my mom has arrived in Arusha. Yesterday I took my aunt and my mom on a tour of Arusha and today we went to visit Faraja orphanage. Tomorrow is the big day when they get to meet my kids and see the school. The teachers and grandmothers are really excited to meet my mom and aunt as well, tomorrow will be a great today. Cayley has been MIA for the past few days; unfortunately she got malaria and has been in the hospital. She had a high fever but they only admitted her for precautionary measures because she is a foreigner and has no immunity to the disease. She just got home a few hours ago and she already looks much much better. I hope everything is better and I swear I will be better at updating this!
Over and out
Catherine
p.s I still love and miss you all
I spent the afternoon sitting with Bibi Monaca helping her sift rocks and sticks out of the bag of beans. Monaca and her husband Mathew run Tuamkeni but Mathew works as an accountant for a pharmacy in Arusha so he comes by the school very rarely. I was surprised to learn this week that Mathew earned his masters in accounting from the University of Glasgow and worked as a CA in Scotland for 2 years before returning to Tanzania. An accountant is a good job no matter where you are in the world but its funny the differences in life styles. Mathew is paid well for Tanzania and he dresses well but his house is essentially just a slightly bigger mud shack accompanied by a mud yard. Mathew chose to leave the UK to come back to the simple Tanzanian lifestyle. He obviously speaks very good English but his wife Monaca on the other hand does not. In fact I speak better Kiswahili than she does English so we had a basic conversation about life and marriage in Swahili. I understand Swahili significantly better than I speak it which is extremely frustrating because I can understand the questions and discussions but I can’t always formulate a proper response. Hopefully by the end of these 3 months I will be much better.
Tuesday I went to visit Kimondolo Primary School which is a private primary school located just 10 minutes outside of Arusha. I was a little shocked at the state of the school considering that the children’s parents are paying to send them there. The building was bare and practically falling apart, each classroom did have a teacher but the most alarming aspect was the teachers’ lack of care for their students. They would just leave the kids to run rampant for half hour periods at a time while they sat in the office drank tea and marked. It made me realize how lucky my kids are to have teachers who care about them.
Wednesday Katie and I went with Mathew to look at a possible land option for Tuamkeni. It was ¾ of an acre located 12km outside of Arusha in a gorgeous, safe, and quiet area. The location is incredible except for the fact that it is outside Arusha and thus a bus would need to be purchased to transfer the kids. Land is an extremely vital step for Tuamkeni because they can’t grow as a school until they have a solid home. The land we looked at costs 6 million Tanzanian shillings which is around $4500 plus there are fees of a few hundred dollars for transferring titles. Land is the difficult part; once you have the land it is relatively easy to build a building and then when other volunteers come through they can easily add things to the building and land. One of the biggest issues with buying land is trust, which is unfortunately really difficult to build in Tanzania. 2 of the past volunteers who were at the school for 3 months don’t trust Tuamkeni but Marcell a volunteer who was there for 9 months does, and Andrew another volunteer who came back to the school say he trusts them too. I took everything the 4 of them told me and for the past month I have been figuring out the trust situation for myself and I have come to the conclusion that I trust Tuamkeni completely. I sat down and made a list of all the reasons I should trust Tuamkeni and all the reasons I shouldn’t. My only 2 reasons for not trusting Tuamkeni were because Amanda and Emily don’t, and then also because it’s Africa and corruption is unfortunately such a major issue. My list for why I should is significantly longer.
1.) As a returning volunteer I have the advantage of already having established a relationship with the school so they now know that I will definitely return and continue to return to check up on things. I must add that last year Heather and I bought food, mosquito nets, a few books, and sand toys for the kids, and we delivered it all on our very last day which looking back might have been a stupid idea because they could have just sold it for their personal benefit. However, all the items are still located at the school and the mosquito nets are in all the kids’ houses, which has been beneficial for my ability to establish trust with Tuamkeni. I truly believe you can determine a lot off of gut instinct and last year my gut instinct was to trust them and obviously that was a good decision.
2.) I sat down and talked to Mathew about the school and their finances this week and he was completely honest about how much money they have in the bank account. In fact a former volunteer informed me that they had 800000 ($550) in their bank account and Mathew told me that they actually had over a million tsh and that that money was to be saved for a rainy day. I was really impressed to hear someone in Africa talking about savings and money for the future. At that point I was unaware that Mathew had his masters in accounting.
3.) Mathew has a good job as an accountant in Arusha so he doesn’t rely on the school for money. Furthermore, he could have simply stayed in Scotland if he wanted to make a lot of money and live a frivolous life.
4.) My gut instinct is telling me to trust them.
So that is a brief overview for why I trust Mathew and Tuamkeni. Now my focus will be on trying to buy land so that the school has a place to grow. I also have the advantage of having friends who are now living in Arusha who can go and check up on things for me. I am going to talk with some locals about the land procedure to ensure it is done properly and correctly.
Thursday Katie and I went and did an HIV talk for 6 12-14 year old boys who are sexually active at Faraja Orphanage. It was a really great talk and I think (hopefully) that the boys took a lot away from it. They asked crazy questions about whether goats blood and milk could cure it and if you could tell whether or not people had it, it was truly an eye opening experience and solidified everything I had learned in school about why HIV spreads like wildfire in Africa. At the end of the conversation the boys all had terrified looks on their faces so we offered to take them to get HIV tested. All the boys wanted to go get tested so that’s what I did on Saturday. Testing is free at the local government hospital and luckily everyone, me included, was HIV free. I was obviously not at all nervous for my own test results but I was praying that none of the kids test would come back positive. The nurse who did the tests was herself HIV positive which was an excellent example for the kids of how someone can look entirely healthy and have a good job and still be positive. Furthermore, she was able to tell them her own story of how her husband told her he was negative and she didn’t need to worry and that they should use a condom every single time if they are going to have sex. It was a really good day and the boys took even more away from it. Its important to talk to the guys here in Tanzania because unfortunately the women don’t have much of a say at all and it is entirely up to the man for whether or not a condom will be used. I knew the boys had taken important information away from the talk because at the end of the day they asked us how to convince their friends it was cool to use a condom.
Friday I went to Tuamkeni and we helped the kids decorate the masks we bought them, blew up balloons, sang songs, and helped them clean the school. It was a really productive and tiring day. I am so happy to be back with those kids and I love them to bits. Hopefully everything with the land is able to work out.
So I let this blog sit on the computer for a while before I finished typing it but it is now Tuesday and my mom has arrived in Arusha. Yesterday I took my aunt and my mom on a tour of Arusha and today we went to visit Faraja orphanage. Tomorrow is the big day when they get to meet my kids and see the school. The teachers and grandmothers are really excited to meet my mom and aunt as well, tomorrow will be a great today. Cayley has been MIA for the past few days; unfortunately she got malaria and has been in the hospital. She had a high fever but they only admitted her for precautionary measures because she is a foreigner and has no immunity to the disease. She just got home a few hours ago and she already looks much much better. I hope everything is better and I swear I will be better at updating this!
Over and out
Catherine
p.s I still love and miss you all
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